by Jennifer Diane Reitz » Wed Aug 05, 2009 1:10 am
Yes, I am a 'dog' person.
I like cats, and cats definitely like me, (too much, since I am desperately allergic), but I am way preferential towards dogs.
I'm not big on anthropomorphizing animals (except in art and storytelling, of course), and I enjoy them being what they are - completely different animals than Man. A cat is very good at being a cat, but a cat is very far from having any deep connection with an ape, which is to say a human.
Don't get me wrong - I am not implying that cats are incapable of forming attachments or any other such nonsense (cat lovers, just settle down now!), rather that cats, house cats, are not primarily social mammals. Big cats can be, some of them (most aren't), house cats are essentially solitary. They don't actually need a human around, and as solitary hunters, they mostly just tolerate the convenience of having humans dote on them. It is possible they have adapted the act of purring to actually enhance this benefit during their domestication, but I never have any illusion that they are capable of truly social bonding and interdependence. It isn't their nature, and that's OK.
Cats, beautiful and graceful, relatively low maintenance, as I said, are very good at being cats.
But dogs really have co-evolved with us funny apes. They have no culture of their own anymore, which is why in feral packs they can easily take down wolves (if they do not turn on each other first); wolves will ritually submit, but dogs have no law. The only culture they have anymore is what we give them. They are dependent upon us.
Dogs really do know more of our body language that of their own species, they retain only some of their native canine 'language'. I've learned a bit of it; try getting down on all fours in front of a dog, elbows on the ground, make sure your hands are in front of your head, lower the front of your body and arch your ass up - that is Dog for 'Let's Play'. That is the dog word for 'Play'. It's still hardcoded into them, they haven't yet lost it, and all dogs know that word. Speak that word to a receptive dog, and he will consider you a friend for life; it seems to matter to them somehow. Greatly. It's an amazing reaction, actually.
Be sure a play with them for a bit, after, though. Dogs have some form of a sense of 'social fairness' in them, and can be distressed by unfulfilled expectation. A social animal trait, just like in humans.
A dog is capable of an actual social bond. I like that. Dogs need hierarchy, just like humans, as well as structure, purpose, and trust. Dogs understand the function of loyalty, as well as the evolutionary super-adaptation of personal sacrifice. Just like apes. Just like Man.
Above all, dogs can robustly communicate, and be communicated with. Dogs can take instructions, and also give them, if one pays attention, and the situation is appropriate. They can act as useful, functional partners, not just as ornaments, and can accomplish real work.
My great-grandfather had a sheep ranch. He would feed his main dog a fine steak dinner every night. The reason? He claimed the dog did the work of ten adult men. If you have ever seen video of modern sheepdogs working, a traditional activity, it will seem unreal, impossible. It is incredible.
A skilled Shepard can not merely pilot a living sheepdog (using whistles and hand signs) with such precision that the dog might as well be a remote-controlled robot - but that dog can also reason out how to do the same job entirely on its own, in its own way, and succeed. The Shepard almost doesn't need to even be there, save that the dog will feel slighted if its partner shirks.
I am fascinated by that.
Mutuality, trust, communication and cooperation. With an entirely non-human species. Dogs provide that.
The interaction between dogs and humans is so robust and profound that I can easily understand how people can start thinking of dogs as basically 'furry little people', rather than domesticated, co-evolved canids. In a way, perhaps they are, a little, what with all the evolutionary adaptation to cooperate with us.
But in the end, they are not human, and they truly are alien; they are dogs, and their world and their life and their senses are not ours, and their thoughts are not human thoughts, though I do suspect their emotions are like ours.
I suspect all emotion in all life is like ours. All pain, all sorrow, all love, all fear, all anger. Because it is very essential to life and survival, and very primitive and very universal in what it is based on biologically. I strongly suspect that we feel the same emotions as any other form of life, because we all share common neurotransmitters, common neurons and neurological components, and in the exceptions, commonality of overall form and function. All life shares much in terms of genes and structure.
No fear means no survival. I am sure the fear of all life is the same for all life. A universal sensation shared by all creatures.
Why then not also anger, love, and more?
That said, it is doing a disservice to dogs, or cats, or anything else, to imagine that they are little humans in there. They are another species, and that is just astonishing. It is amazing to be able to share deep relationships with another species.
Dogs permit the closest and most robust version of that wonderment. They alone can live with us, share all our (primitive) work as equals (guard, hunt, war, search, track, shepard, haul, pull, defend, and so on), and demonstrate deep and abiding social loyalty to us, all despite being a very different species.
Yes, I am definitely a 'dog person'.
Jennifer Diane Reitz
'Giniko-chan'
