Perhaps it's a case of over-thinking, but I've noticed a certain quirk exhibited by us residents of the top rung in the food chain.
It seems, in an effort to try to understand the world around us and all its many and varied residents, we tend to look for and identify often non-existent human traits in, well, just about everything.
To some degree that's perfectly understandable. Even a species that can invent wondrous things like airplanes (so we can fly, like birds) or submarines (so we can swim, like fish) can still be challenged to grasp the nuances of the natural world without falling back on our perspectives. Sort of a zoological version of "if all you've got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."
Definitely a First World sort of problem, and not one I'd be doing much trading down to fix (I mean, what part of the "food chain" is unclear to you?). But as someone who spends more than a little amount of time observing (or navel-gazing), it's just something that came to mind for me the other day.
That's because I was informed that a real-life authority on the subject has determined that our dog has anxiety issues.
How this was determined I'm not quite sure. Apparently, it came through trained-eye observation and not years of analysis that included long discussion of our dog's childhood and sense of abandonment when we all go off to work and leave him to sleep under the sofa. Which we're pretty sure he actually likes.
But apparently the frantic barking to go outside, followed almost instantly by the frantic barking to come back inside, followed by incessant pacing (which I mistook for his being one more member of our family who came into a room and forgot why) are indicators that he has issues. Again, why should he be the only one here without them?
However, I'm not sure exactly why he would have them. For one thing, while I'm definitely no expert, I've always operated under the impression that experiencing issues with anxiety was at least to some degree the result of having things about which to be anxious.
A person can be anxious about job prospects or health issues or where the next meal is coming from or the current political environment or any of a thousand things. My dog can, literally, be anxious about none of those. In fact, he has, basically three things to do: eat, sleep and manage to make it outside when it's bathroom time.
He has a warm bed (several, if you count all the rugs and the aforementioned spot under the sofa). I personally don't know a kibble from a bit, but he's got those, every day. And as far as having to go outside when it's "that time," well, the weather may not always be conducive, but no one gets on him about leaving the seat up.
If he's harboring any long-standing resentment about getting fixed, well, at least he doesn't have to figure out how to put the puppies through Obedience School. And any chance he's upset because he's getting older and there just isn't as much color in his world is probably tempered by the fact that apparently he can only see grey, anyway.
Which leaves me to wonder if the concern here isn't with him so much as it is with us. OK, yeah, he does whine to get out and in and pace around, so those are definitely his, and by extension, our problems. But Big Picture here: Does all this really rise to the level of an Issue?
Or is this one of those cases where we as humans, in a somewhat vain attempt to understand concepts we can't quite grasp, push human characteristics onto nature? Sort of like inventing ancient Greek gods or giving names to trees or mountains or having dancing pigs. Alright, maybe a little too close to home there...
Maybe we should just let things be things and not try to make them into miniature, furry versions of ourselves, complete with our issues and foibles.
On the other hand, I looked out the back door the other day and saw him sitting in the bright sunshine. The breeze was blowing slightly and he was squinting into the bright afternoon with his nose slightly raised and what looked like a slight smile on his face.
I may not necessarily understand what my dog is thinking, but I'm pretty sure I know "content" when I see it.
Commentary on 05/04/2018