My dog transformed my life. It taught me how to give and receive love. I never knew how to do it before. Booze got in the way.
That fat, stinky, speckle-bellied hound is excited every time I come home. She has made me gentler, kinder, and more compassionate. She affirms me. She sees me for who I am and loves me anyway.
Hitler also had a dog. So did Augustus. Vladimir Putin has a few. Trump didn’t take White House pets.
“It would make me feel a bit phoney,” he explained. Who knows, the dog might have felt the same.
“Don’t trust people who don’t like dogs,” goes the saying, “but trust a dog when it doesn’t like someone.”
I am contemplating these thoughts as I write a presentation for Mental Health Awareness Month about how the relationship with my dog did more to change me than going to rehab and AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) meetings, and why it would be the case.
Blondi, Hitler’s German Shepherd, no doubt looked at him in the same adoring fashion as Bonkie looks at me, with a face slightly tilted, ears pricked up in interest, and eager to obey. Augustus is said to have taken Rufus, a small white lapdog, to meetings and public events. He showed Rufus a kinder side of himself than he reserved for other humans.
If Donald Trump had a lapdog, it might have been called Hegseth, Musk, or Fox News – a fox terrier, perhaps. But it would have been the foxiest and terrierest of all white dogs that ever lived, and its belly would have been more speckled than any hound before it.
Humans have a long history with dogs. We domesticated them 20,000 years ago, and they have been companions, pets, and mirrors. Wolves are the only large carnivores that have been domesticated as work animals for humans and can be trained to perform tasks, such as hunting and guarding.
As far as I am aware, no one has attempted it with lions or cheetahs, or other large cats. Why this is so is the source of much of my speculation. At a primal instinctive level, I suggest it has to do with the wolf’s family structure, as opposed to the lion’s tribal structure.
For wolves, social cohesion is vital for hunting and rearing young. In human terms, this relates to concepts of loyalty, trust, and love. In contrast, the alpha male in the lion tribe rules by authority and fear. In a very redacted form, kitties simply don’t need our approval as much as dogs. Our neurochemicals are also much more closely aligned with dogs than cats. When they look at us and maintain eye contact, we release oxytocin, the drug of bonding. Dogs experience that too, in a similar proportion.
Equally rewarding
It is equally rewarding to both parties. We exhibit similar adrenergic and serotonergic reactions as well. Cats also have these chemical prompts, but in a much-reduced manner. The close bonding experience, which craves frequent feedback, occurs at a much lower level in cats. Dogs can not only see us, but they feel us, and feel like us, and we like them. It is a powerful connection across species.
Trainers of Siberian Huskies and Foxhounds report that the dogs enjoy what they do, not just to please the ‘owner’ but to be part of the pack. They pull the sled or pursue the quarry out of a sense of pride and enjoyment of belonging in a pack and understanding their place in it. They have no idea of the destination and care nothing for any obstacles or hardship along the way.
They are in it for the thrill of belonging. Maybe this is what drives the fierce human ideological tribalism we see today. We like to stand aghast at how the ‘left’ and the ‘right’ can adopt such vicious and unrelenting attitudes towards each other. We shake our heads at how ill-informed each side’s arguments are, and how similar, except for the loyalty to a different flag. Perhaps it is this pack mentality that drives war.
It is not really about the details of the fox or Fox News – we are in it for the thrill of the hunt, the rest is rationalisation. We just want to belong, to be patted on the head and rewarded for our virtuous and unflinching loyalty. We are dogs to our ideological masters.
Putin has a few dogs, gifts from the leaders of other nations. He has a Bulgarian Charakan dog given to him by the Prime Minister of Bulgaria, a dog gifted from Japan, one from Korea’s Jim Jong, and little Verny, presented by the President of Turkmenistan. ‘Verny’ means ‘faithful’ in Russian. What an apt display of subservience and allegiance; it barks louder than a trade agreement.
I have watched Putin’s face when he looks at his dogs. His eyes crinkle into a warm smile as they cock their heads to one side when they greet him. I have no doubt that he experiences the same release of bonding chemicals as I do when I rub Bonkie’s speckled belly and hug her tightly as she absorbs all my anxiety and guilt and tension and simply licks it away.
Dogs are great as therapy animals for addicts, criminals, and people with neurodivergency. They help us be better humans. Maybe they are a better version of us. It is a ridiculous notion to compare homo sapiens to a canine as a different version of us, but we do.
Jane Goodall, who passed away earlier this week, said her favourite animals were not chimpanzees, but dogs: “Chimpanzees are so like people. Some chimpanzees are not nice at all, like some humans. My favourite animal is a dog, because dogs have taught me so much, and dogs are so faithful, and dogs give unconditional love, and I don’t like to think of a world without dogs.”
Unwavering
I am fully aware that I am projecting very complicated prefrontal cortical ideas onto my Jack Russell. And yet, if it was not for witnessing her unwavering, positive regard for me, moment by moment, year after year, as I took it one day at a time, I doubt I would have survived sobriety.
A thousand steps with a dog bestows more humanity than the Twelve Steps of humans.
[Image: Angela Handfest on Unsplash]
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