My dog is a person. The contingencies and implications of his personhood are things I’m happy to let other people think about. I find its truth trivially apparent, and have no patience to debate it. He has a steady personality, ranges among a variety of moods, and, like the rest of us, rides the silly merry-go-round of daily desires. Though his language and psychology are not my own, I will brook no argument that something as minor as his species should have any bearing on the existence of his vast inner world. Some days he is a toddler. Some days he is a wild animal. Never in any of my days will I doubt that he’s an entire guy.
He knows both friend and foe, and guards their status in his heart jealously. He feels his bonds truly from his fur to the marrow of his bones. A single encounter with a kindly person will lock him into a lifelong contract of adoration. There’s no limit to his roster of beloved folks, nor is there much precision in the outpouring of his love: anyone who shares just a couple of physical traits with one of his people is liable to find themselves on the receiving end of a 60-pound, leaping, open-mouthed kiss. His loyalty extends even to institutions, or so it seems from the ecstatic yodeling we’ll hear from the backseat when we drive towards his daycare spot or the surge of energy he’ll exhibit when a walk takes us in the direction of his favorite place in the world, which, surprisingly, is the vet’s office. However, those unlucky few (dogs, mostly) who have the misfortune of living too close to us or coming around a corner at the wrong time or smelling off somehow will never get the tiniest grain of clemency from him. Like his love, his wrath is full and eternal.
He wants things, often specific things at particular times. At all times he wants to be fed. So shockingly, instinctively intense is the need for food that it can drive him just as easily towards obedience as it can towards devious delinquency. He’ll prance for a treat, but he’ll also risk it all for that slice of pizza on your plate. In between feeding opportunities, smaller desires shape his day. When it’s time to chew, he’ll go find the toy that feels right in the moment, even if that means growling at his toy box until we help him dig out the exact scrap-of-fabric-that-used-to-be-a-toy that he has in mind. When the wrong portion of the floor is sunlit, he’ll stand in the pool of light and stare at us until we move his bed into its glow so he can finally nap again. When he needs pets, he’ll assume a position that affords easy access to an itchy or tough-to-reach spot—usually, unfortunately, his ass—and maintain eye contact until he’s gotten enough body contact. When I’m reading in our best chair, he’ll pretend he needs to be let out, wait for me to walk to the door, then claim my spot.
In our home, he is one of us. We talk to him, and, I think, he listens. He speaks to us, too, in his way. He can plead with his eyes and make demands with a swish of his tail. He will often tune us out, like when he’s completely incapable of making room for us in bed, but, at his convenience, his psychic antenna is dialed to our movements and rhythms. He can read our posture or momentum well enough to know when he ought to be interested in whatever we’re getting up to do, and sense in the tone of our voice whether he’s being called for a meal or for a bath. He regards us with juvenile defiance in one moment, and childlike desperation in the next. He’s a member of the family, a participant in our little project of compromises and collaborations.
His guyhood is undeniable to me, but occasionally I see him as something totally else. On the sidewalk he will fall under the thrall of a passing siren, planting his feet, lifting his gaze, howling in tune, eyes half-closed and utterly apart from me until the sound is distant and he blinks back into himself as if surfacing from a dream. Or, off-leash, running with abandon, an electric glint in his eye and a killing shine in his smile, he and his breath will blend into the wildness of the air and the grass. In these moments I imagine him in prayer. His kind is an offshoot, an errant branch of mankind’s making. When, briefly and beautifully, the scaffolding of his domesticity falls away, I wonder if he is traversing some genealogical connection and communing with the beasts he’s descended from. I wonder what he thinks he is or should be. I wonder if he is happy with what we can give him.
When the day comes that he is no longer with us, a part of my soul will go dim and will never be illuminated again. Only the imprint of something altogether lovely will remain where he used to be. His completeness will be felt in its absence, his imperfections swept away. To be bound to another living thing is to see it wholly, all through and around, and to try to bear that understanding with reverence. When he goes, I will miss him like a limb.
My dog is a person, and I am an animal. I wake up each day, sort through my moods and manage my desires until that day ends. I eat enough food to keep going, until eventually I will eat no more and go no further and become nothing more than another piece of what everything else is made of. In the meantime, I am lucky to receive any patience, to be loved, to be seen as the person I am or might be.