The Raging Elitist

Over twenty years ago, I was humbled by my childhood dog, a golden retriever named Daisy, and ever since, I’ve felt that dogs come by certain kinds of wisdom more easily than humans do. I was sitting on the front steps at my father’s house when it happened. I’d just carried Daisy’s cancer-ridden body to the yard so that she could do her business, and, growing tired of her sniffing routine, I said something to the effect of “Go ahead and do it then.” She was not amused, and rather than get on with things, she paused her search to stare up at me with a look that so clearly said, “You just don’t get it.”

I’d always thought of myself as Daisy’s superior, but in that moment, it was obvious that she knew something important that I didn’t, something that had nothing to do with pooping in the grass and everything to do with the acquaintance of fast approaching death. I could do the math. I knew that Daisy, at thirteen, was supposed to be the equivalent of a nonagenarian, but this thing we call “dog years,” this superimposition of human aging onto a dog, it’s a blunt instrument at best. Dogs pass through this life as if fired from a slingshot, flying towards their peak and hovering there ever so briefly before plummeting back down. Meanwhile, we walk on the ground below, pointing to a spot on their steeply arcing path and saying things like, “That’s like being fifty-six.” As a nineteen-year-old watching my decrepit dog, I didn’t understand what it felt like to be ninety, but maybe one day I will; I’ll never know, however, the rapid acquisition and deterioration of abilities that thirteen-year-old Daisy had experienced. Daisy pointed out as much with her stare, and, sitting there on my perch atop the steps, I managed a pitiful “Sorry girl” in response.

Observing my current dog Sammy for the last nine years has mostly confirmed my belief about dogs’ knack for beating us to the punch. She was eight weeks old when she charged into my life, and at an age when humans are semi-blind, immobile, and toothless, she was already a hyper-alert playing machine – running, wrestling, and absolutely destroying bowls of kibble. Getting what she wanted out of life was urgent, and although she’s certainly into her decline now, that urgency remains. It’s as if whoever fired her out of the existence slingshot whispered into her ear at the last second, “Fetch,” and she proceeded to go about collecting all of life’s fullness to bring back to her master in the realm of the nonliving. Joy and appreciation are ever at Sammy’s whiskertips; the world’s richness floods her nostrils, and whenever possible, she takes that richness into her mouth.

By richness I don’t mean food, something which Sammy defines very liberally. No, I’m talking about the non-calorie-driven ways in which Sammy mouths, and thereby draws supreme satisfaction from, the world. For instance, Sammy is not interested in gaining sustenance from a tennis ball; she simply loves the feeling of a tennis ball squishing between her teeth. When I walk through the door, she often cuts her greeting short to pull a ball from her bin and tease me with it. She makes a show of playing soccer with herself, pounding her forelegs onto the carpet between episodes of gnawing. She goes to the dining room where she trots in circles around the table in such a fashion that with a bare minimum of effort, she ensures no human could ever catch her. Throw her ball into the ocean or the marsh, and she will retrieve it, squeezing the salt water out of it and into her belly as she swims back to the shore. Playing with a tennis ball is a joy that surpasses even eating.

Moles are a little like tennis balls, except better, because they are alive (until Sammy uncovers them). Sammy’s whiskers and the fuzz around her lips prickle with excitement as she sniffs out their subterranean hiding places. When her nose is full with the scent of a mole, she digs frantically until a swipe of her paw finally throws the poor creature into the air, at which point she lustily clamps her jaws around it and with a whip of her head, flings it sideways to its death. We, her humans, stop the game there before she’s able to pounce the dead mole, so I can’t be sure she doesn’t intend to eat it; however, it seems to me that this primal, ferocious act is driven not by the need to eat, but by the desire for sweet, savage, bone-crushing play. To kill and possess a mole in one’s powerful jaws is pure delight, pleasure for pleasure’s sake.

More mysterious is Sammy’s attitude toward wasps, another of the things she is determined to get into her mouth. Is she offended by them? Do they seem good toys to her? Most importantly, is she immune to being stung? The buzzing of flying, biting, stinging insects in Sammy’s vicinity commands fully her attention. Every muscle is tensed as the huntress stands motionlessly stalking her prey, poised to quickly turn her head, make a tiny hop, and snap her jaws. It could be she’s after the calories, or it could be that she is at war with these pests, but I suspect that, as with most of Sammy’s behavior, it’s part of a game.

While Sammy’s unflinching commitment to playing with wasps might evoke in me questions about her body’s immunity, I’m absolutely certain that no such immunity exists as concerns the treble hooks that dangle beneath artificial fishing lures, a fact that does not deter Sammy. Since she was a pup, she’s chased the shiny spoons and spinners on the ends of lines at the lake house in Sapphire. She wallops into the water after them much to the irritation of fishermen who frustratedly adjust the angle of their retrieve while Sammy happily paddles in circles, searching in vain for the shiny toy and scaring away all the fish in the process. I used to be one of those fishermen, cursing as I reeled in my Little Cleo, wondering how bad it would be if I wasn’t able to avoid hooking Sammy’s flank. Now my kids do most of the fishing, though, so everyone, not just Sammy, is at risk of catching a stray lure in the face. Seeing Sammy swim helplessly back and forth at the mercy of my boys’ incompetence has cured me of my frustration. Her oblivious, self-destructive pursuit is as involuntary as the kids’ indignant protestations. The sight is not frustrating; it’s pitiable.

This involuntariness and the resulting pity recently caused me to doubt my beliefs about dogs’ wisdom. I was driving home from the boat landing in the golf cart, and Sammy was riding shotgun, standing on the floor with her head looking out the passenger side, tongue lolling, just as content as could be, full princess mode I call it. When I parked and moved to get out, I almost forgot I had a fishing pole in my hand. Walking towards the door to the house, Sammy hopped and made a little snap like she was going for a wasp, prompting me to chasten her, “No, girl.” And that’s when I saw it: the primal instinct that drives Sammy’s need to play. It flashed across her face and spread the whites of her eyes like she was the host for the parasitic comic book villain Venom. I followed her gaze to the end of my line where a Little Cleo hung turning back and forth, catching the sunlight perfectly. I was sickened to see my Sammy so possessed by the glint of the little silver spoon.

In a way it was like the pangs of sympathy I’ve felt seeing severely obese people at an all-you-can-eat buffet, only worse. The monster in those situations is an underutilized capacity for self-control; such a capacity clearly did not exist in this situation. Temptation ceases to be temptation when it’s completely unchecked. At that point, it’s just impulse. Faced with Sammy’s unsightly, fish-brain-level baseness, I wondered, “Do I really even know this animal? Are all the human qualities that I project onto her just that, projections?” In other words, are all my assumptions about my dog’s personality kind of like trying to pin her age to dog years? If Daisy had been there to see me doubt my dog’s life experience, she’d have fixed me with a cold, judging stare. Sammy just went inside and got her ball.

“In some ways your dog knows you better than you do,” I told a friend just a few nights later. This was the idea that cured me of the revulsion I felt at watching Sammy morph into Venom: I’m a fish-brain too. Countless times I’ve caught myself being impulsively drawn to my phone or my laptop, pulled into the promise of text messages and emails as if by the Death Star’s gravitational field. Countless other times, I’ve not caught myself in those moments and instead thoughtlessly spent precious minutes scrolling Facebook and sports message boards. On many of those occasions, I’ve been aware of a pair of hazel brown eyes watching sadly, a ball dropping onto the floor, and a sigh of exasperation that says oh so clearly, “You just don’t get it.”