Appreciation for Dogs
- Lee Alexander
- Jun 27, 2017
- 4 min read
Today my appreciation goes out to dogs, the undisputed owners of the title Man’s Best Friend. Before I go any further, allow me to preface this post by saying that there is absolutely nothing wrong with cats, birds, rodents, reptiles, turtles, fish, crabs, snails, spiders, ants, sea-monkeys, or whatever the heck else people may have as pets. They’re all cool. Please don't take offense, but I’m just praising dogs today. So haters back off.
A few days ago I attended the memorial service of Max Mayo, a sweet-natured, shiny-eyed sheltie who belonged to my friends Edie and Troy. Some of you may have even seen him on the news or social media in this touching news story last year. It went viral, with the facebook video getting an estimated 2 million views worldwide.
At the end of the service, Discovery Green, the central Houston park where Troy and Edie took Max every day to enjoy the outdoors, unveiled a memorial pavestone in his honor. This loving gesture is reminiscent of other tributes to other dogs who captured people’s hearts around the world like the Owney Stamp, or the Hachiko Statue.
So why all the hubbub over some dog? I think anyone who’s a dog owner (and that’s 79% of us American pet owners) knows the answer to that question. Because they are essentially people. Hairy, four-legged people who occasionally pee on the floor, but still people all the same. And you can’t really hold the floor-peeing against them because, let’s be honest, who hasn’t peed on the floor at some point in their life? Heck, I can recall at least 3 occasions that I did, and I’m currently making plans to urinate on the floor a few more times when I’m in my autumn years.
But enough about me and my household tinkling, we were talking about dogs right? This human-canine bond is an old one. Almost 40,000 years old it’s speculated. In fact, in April of 2015, a German archeological group uncovered 15,000 year-old dog bones buried alongside their human family members. This gives pretty concrete proof of how strong and ancient the Canine-Human family bond is. So to grieve over the loss of a dog the same as one would a human loved one is by no means an abnormality. Just like our prehistoric ancestors, our relationship with dogs is more than just symbiotic. Perhaps this is because in them we see much of ourselves. How else can we explain the literally hundreds of idioms and metaphors personify dogs and dogify persons? Lucky Dog, underdog, the black dog, that dog won’t hunt, his bark worse his bite, bulldogging, my Dawg, are just few. When’s the last time you heard a human comparison to a hamster or a parakeet?
Dogs seem so human to us I think because they embody many of the best attributes of human character and behavior. Love, loyalty, bravery, affection, concern, compassion, and even a sense of shame, all qualities that we admire in friends and loved ones. And like friends and loved ones, they have their own particular quirks and idiosyncrasies that endear us to them, and bring us joy when whenever we’re in their presence. But the overall proof of the strength of this family bond with dogs isn’t their presence, but it’s in their absence.
Heart-wrenching is a tired and overused phrase, but there is simply no better term to describe the feeling of losing our canine family members. I remember everything about my first dog, Charlie, like she was here yesterday. Her big kind brown eyes, the way her fur felt whenever I clipped her, the purplish freckle on her tongue, the way she followed me all around y neighborhood on my bike. And my heart often grows heavy with regret when I recall how, in my teen years, I spent less and less time with her. These memories, the physical sensations, the joy, the regrets…do we not lament these same things when our human loved ones pass away?
But more than anything, it is the joy we remember of course. The first day a dog became a family member, the clumsy puppy days, playtime, the silly moments, the mischief, even the floor-peeing…or at least the way they skulk away from the scene of the crime and hide after the aforementioned peeing. You have to admit, even that’s funny in it’s own way. It’s that joy that keeps us coming back for more. Frankly, I’ve never known a one-time dog owner in my life. Anyone I know who has had a special dog in their life eventually will get another, and another, and another. When a dog passes away, it feels like a part of your chest has been ripped out, and it’s truly hard to imagine having the capacity to allow another dog into your heart. But with time and healing, we usually do. Because as the poem Desiderata so eloquently states, “Love…is as perennial as the grass.” And dogs remind us of that simple truth every day.
