“Do you think it’s weird that we talk to a street dog and share almost everything with him/her?”
Recently I questioned myself when my face was stuffed in the fur of a six-year-old dog affectionately named Celsius. He’s so hyperactive and full of energy that he doesn’t stop or sit in a place for even a moment. He’s almost aggressively cute and inspires the kind of love that demands to be vocalized. Not that only one dog stays in our society; we have six other dogs who have been sterilized and cannot reproduce. The question made me think about these dogs and our varied conversations in the past 5 years.
I tell them I love them; sometimes I ask them if they know how much I love them. On days away from my apartment, I return home and greet them by asking how their day was. It’s not like I expect them to understand or respond; it just sort of happens. I’d never really given it much thought. But why do we do it is the question.
Well, ask yourself why we talk to each other. We use our voices to communicate concerns, orders, requests, etc. When I ask my dogs if they wanna have a treat? they start barking, wagging their tail, and meet me where their collar is. So, when I ask them if they wanted to have a treat, I communicated that if they want to, they can go outside their boundaries. They understood what I meant and “talked back”. Saying “Hell yeah!”
It’s no stretch to suppose that a person with few or no friends would treat a pet more like a human friend. Perhaps, too, people speak to their pets because they like to believe the animals understand, and perhaps people like to believe they understand because the alternative is kind of scary. To share a home with a living being whose mind you can’t understand and whose actions you can’t anticipate is to live in a state of unpredictability and disconnectedness.
People imagine a mind that understands and talk to it.
But when it comes to our impulse to speak to our dogs, it seems their understanding of what we say is kind of beside the point, anyway. Those who talk to their dogs likely aren’t doing so because they believe those pets are processing language; they do so because they tend to see something human in them—and a pet’s cuteness and responsiveness enforce that tendency.
Learning vocabulary is a lot of work for a dog, but they pick up on emotional cues a lot easier. They can tell what kind of mood you’re in by watching your face while you talk and listening to the slight changes of pitch in your voice.
Words are only a small part of communication. When you talk to a friend, you string words into sentences, but you also use tone and body language to get your point across. Your face contorts into specific expressions that reflect your mood, you wave your hands for emphasis, and your tone of voice is more honest than the words you say.
I talk to my dogs, and I think all that makes me is a guy who sees animals as individuals with souls and memory and feelings and character.
I am convinced that it is the way to be. Animals are not furniture, or objects, or toys. They are little versions of the same recipe that brought us here, and just because they can’t navigate our world as we can doesn’t mean they are any less entitled to dignity and respect than you and I.
We can’t navigate their world either, can we?
NO ONE understands what you are going through.
NO ONE!
We often expect understanding, rarely recognizing that no one is capable of giving it. We end up blaming them for it, which is unfair to them.
And then we end up blaming ourselves for being the way we are.
Which is unfair to us.
We have to understand that we can never be truly understood.
We can only be heard.
And that I achieve through these small, cute four-legged creatures who just hear me out, just take out every bit of small stuff from me, and put it out there without judging my thoughts or feelings!
Grateful to have such friends and will continue to have them, cherish them lifelong all and all.
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