What Animals Have Done For Me Lately

In keeping with my theme of contrasts, of one thing side by side with a very different thing, I offer an image:  large dog lying near person working at sleek computer.  Dog – a black one with tall ears  – is patient for good long time, but eventually he rises and comes over to his person; wet nose pushing lovingly against person’s arm.  Dog thereby interrupts person’s struggle to find the right words at the computer by saying, in his own completely clear and silent way:  “It’s time for us go out now.”

I don’t know about you, but the more time I spend with technology, the more I appreciate animals – their basic needs, their joy in sensory experiences, their immunity from any kind of forced connectedness other than the most essential kind.

During the past couple of weeks, in particular, I feel as if I have creatures on the brain.  Our Rocky – a dog we collected as a handful of pup from a shelter in northern Vermont – is now turning three and is very much in his prime.  This spring, a friend published a book about dogs who are trained to provide valuable service to people with various kinds of handicaps  (http://www.bauhanpublishing.com) I’m also wondering whether or not I’ll try to resume a life with horses (who were a big part of my childhood) when I make a middle-aged move.  And I’m imagining my brother on his Vermont farm, overseeing the well-being of about 70 heifers.

The media has not come up short on this topic recently, either.  I just read an article in Harper’s by Barbara Ehrenreich about our often contradictory relationships with wild animals:  as we experience less of nature in our daily routines, more people sign up to go find animals in faraway places.  But just as we may pronounce them marvelous, they can still turn on us.

The movie We Bought A Zoo (rentable now) tells the story of a family whose lives are transformed when they make the completely impractical decision to move into an animal park to resurrect it for the public. It’s all about life and death, and how the two roll into one another.  Matt Damon, who plays the main character, has to face down his demons while deciding what to do with an aged tiger who is in pain.  We feel how hard it is, and yet how important, to try to look into the creature’s mysterious eyes to understand him.  And, of course, the quest to understand him allows the zookeeper to reach what he needs to reach in himself in order to move forward.

A new book. Zoobiquity: What Animals Can Teach Us About Health and the Science of Healing is about the many similarities between diseases in humans and diseases in animals.  It took a physician who also occasionally visits veterinary practices to describe for us non-medical people something that likely isn’t news at all to insiders in either profession:  over and over again, there are examples of animals having just about identical conditions to what we see in our species.

Going back to my own dog for a moment (as is always my pleasure), I notice on a daily basis his own emotional life, which adds a kind of richness to my own.  The other morning, when my husband and daughter were trying to leave on a trip during a raging thunderstorm, Rocky was so frightened  that he actually jumped into the trunk of the car for safety.  By contrast, when he first sees our 13 year old son each morning, he is so beside himself with joy that he leaps up on the bed and smothers the boy with licking and tail wagging.  No holding back any feelings here.

About a month ago, I read a story in the Sports pages of the Times that has stuck with me. A horse named Arcadius won a demanding steeplechase race in Tennessee, far outpacing the other horses; he went to the winners circle and then, a few minutes later, collapsed and died.   A picture taken of the stunned jockey, as he first heard the news, appears on the front page of the paper.  Talk about contrasts:  this guy went from complete ebullience to crushing despair in a moment.  The whole tragic story reminded me of something my mother used to say years ago after we watched the Kentucky Derby:  “They just ran their hearts out!”  Seeing those beautiful animals gallop with all of their might down the track is always thrilling, but you can’t escape the dark side of it, either.  Whose race it is, anyhow, and for what?

My son Henry and I are about to head to Kentucky, actually, while my husband attends the Episcopal Convention in Indianapolis.  I hope we’ll be able to get a feel for the bluegrass country, to watch horses prance around and toss their heads in freedom.

In the car, as we continue on to Nashville, we’ll be playing all country music —including one of our favorites:  Bill Currington’s “Like My Dog.”  If you don’t know it:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wa8LpP-GlQg.  I guarantee you’ll be smiling when you hear:  “ I want you to love me like my dog does Baby/When I come home, I want you to just go crazy.”  Oh yes, we can learn a thing or two from our four-legged friends.