The relationship between dog and human surpasses all other animal-human relationships. Cat lovers will take issue with this, and let?s go ahead and set aside parasitic relationships ? neither of those is healthy.
Owning a dog has become a lifestyle, with different lifestyles possible depending on the type of dog. Given a patch of wilderness, a hound often means an outdoor hunting life, whereas a yellow Labrador retriever roughly equates to the suburban fences that enclose it. A dog may engender a lifestyle, or vice versa, a particular way of living being conducive to a particular breed. Either way, dogs become entrenched in our lives, and we love them for their companionship. But that?s not the whole story. A trained bird will sit on your shoulder, but it?s not the same.
All the essential reasons why we love dogs have to do with our own egos. Unlike ideal human-human relationships, the human-dog relationship is unbalanced, being one of dominance and subservience. It is the tension between having a friend and controlling ? owning ? that friend that we find so desirable.
My female golden retriever, Dixie, barks when thunderstorms approach. She is scared because she has absolutely no idea what to make of the sound of the rapid expansion of air following a sudden electric discharge very far away. It?s endearing. She pants and paces anxiously, and we comfort her with petting and soft voices, the way we would speak to a child who is afraid of the dog behind the fence. Maybe it is the way dogs need us, or the way we think they need us, that we are most in love with. While we love to control, we also love to feel needed.
Or perhaps we are most in love with their uncanny ability to gaze into our eyes, as we gaze into each other?s eyes. It is this talent of adjusting to the actions of humans that has made us think of dogs as more than pets. We project onto dogs our own humanized personalities, many of them stereotypes, incidentally ? the wise old man, the naive child, the Jersey juicehead, the Irish drunkard. Dixie, nine years old, is a needy elderly woman who only cares about eating, sleeping and receiving attention, and who crosses her forelimbs, ladylike, when she lies down. My male dog, Kody, two years old, is the gentle giant, the big baby, who goes running at the first sign of danger ? a rustling of leaves ? though he feigns courage by turning his head and barking as he retreats. My girlfriend?s male golden, Winston, is effeminate and prim, carefully testing the ground under the water?s surface before going for a swim. Hence the nickname, Winnie.
This personified view of dogs raises them to a level beyond the dumb animal, but our egos obscure the reality that dogs have much simpler emotional capabilities than humans. They do not love us the way we love them. They stare into our eyes because they have seen us staring at each other, and they have a knack for mimicry. A dog does not ?feign courage,? much less act courageously. He relies on impulse and instinct, and he reacts negatively to the unfamiliar or uncertain. Kody may bark at sinister footsteps crunching the leaves, but he also barks at the wind turning them over.
The fact is we are so self-centered that we see complex human emotions such as regret and shame in our dogs? eyebrows. Although it is a dangerous way of looking at things, we will never get past that humanized way of seeing a dog?s open mouth as a smile.
We will continue to believe our dogs do tricks because they want to please the ones they love, rather than the ones who provide them food. We will continue seeing our relatives in our dogs? faces, and we will always look for common interests between ourselves and our dogs, even if they don?t exist.
And yet some do exist. It must be true that dogs really do enjoy our company, that when we leave they really do miss our presence, that they are not just anxious about the unfamiliar, not just acting on mechanical reflex. We want it to be true, and I believe there is a balance of instinct and affection in a dog?s brain.
But then a pressure shift in the atmosphere, the detection of a new scent, and static building ? all the things humans only recognize in their gout and boils. There is pacing and barking, and mommies and daddies saying, what?s wrong, Charlie? Then, after several minutes ? hours, days ? faintly, a low, slow, rumble of thunder in the distance, and we realize how differently dogs perceive the world.
? Robbie Hargett is a graduate in English. He can be reached at ghargett1@utk.edu.
Article source: http://utdailybeacon.com/opinion/columns/shallow-and-pedantic/2012/jun/5/man-dog-relationship-complicated/
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