Kathy and I love our two golden retrievers, Bobbi and Ellie, very very much- but then something will happen which either deepens that love still further or at least makes us acutely aware of that love and its intensity. A couple of days ago, good friends of ours had to put their dog to sleep because of the encroachment of a serious medical situation. (Cancer, I believe.) This wonderful dog had already been through more than enough trouble in its life because a few years back it was actually struck by a train- and survived, although obviously with some scars. If life’s scripts were written fairly, then that dog’s life from that point on would have been nothing but joyous hunting trips and Alpo Beef Chunk treats by the case. Instead, another sad chapter was awaiting him and his loving owners. Our hearts just broke to pieces when we first heard the news that their dog was so sick- and we were sadder still when we learned that the end had to come so soon.
Later that day, as I packed our two dogs into the car and drove them down to the Petrifying Springs Dog Park, I found myself so aware of those two hounds of ours and of how good they make me feel when I’m around them. In a documentary airing this coming Tuesday night on PBS called “The Way We Get By” (I will almost certainly blog about it another day) one of the senior citizens showcased in this program, Jerry Mundy, talks about his beloved dog Mr. Flanagan, and describes how no matter what rotten things might be going on or no matter how bad a day it might be, his dog has this uncanny ability to almost absorb at least some of what might be bothering his owner – obviously not by offering any advice or any tangible assistance but just by being there. Plain and simple. By the end of the program, Jerry has had to put down his dog- and I will not soon forget the sadness in this man’s face – or the love in his voice – as he talked about what his dog meant to him.
I have several marvelous “dog books” on my shelf, including “Marley and Me” by John Grogan and “A Big Little Life: A Memoir of a Joyful Dog” by Dean Koontz. But my favorite is “Dog Years” by Mark Doty, who shares all kinds of remarkable insights on the powerful connection that can exist between a human being and their dog. Among my favorite passages:
No dog has ever said a word, but that doesn’t mean they live outside the world of speech. They listen acutely. They wait to hear a term – biscuit, walk – and an inflection they know. What a stream of incomprehensible signs pass over them as they wait, patiently, for one of a few familiar words! Because they do not speak, except in the most limited fashion, we are always trying to figure them out. The expression is telling: to “figure out” is to make figures of speech, to invent metaphors to help us understand the world. To choose to live with a dog is to agree to participate in a long process of interpretation – a mutual agreement, though the human being holds most of the cards. . .
Being in love is our most common version of the unsayable; everyone seems to recognize that you can’t experience it from the outside, not quite – you have to feel it from the inside in order to know what it is. Maybe the experience of loving an animal is actually more resistant to language, since animals cannot speak back to us, cannot characterize themselves or correct our assumptions about them. They look at us across a void made of the distance between their lives and our immersion in language. . . Maybe they remind us, in this way, of our own origins, when our bodies were not yet assumed into the world of speech. Then we could experience wordlessly, which must at once be a painful thing and a strange joy, a pure kind of engagement that adults never know again. . .
Love for a wordless creature, once it takes hold, is an enchantment. . . *
I am grateful to have been so powerfully reminded of this, but so sad that the reminder comes wrapped in the sorrow of our friends and their heartbreaking loss.
* Mark Doty’s Dog Years: A Memoir is published by Harper Collins.
pictured above: Bobbi and Ellie, joyously bounding around the Petrifying Springs Dog Park. I had just dropped off a sympathy card to our friends before coming to the park, and I found myself drinking in every moment with the dogs so gratefully.