The Past Catches Up with Me (In Two Parts)

(If only!!! Could not resist this image.)

 “They never did anything with that degree. What a shame!” Oh, yeah?

 

Some people probably think I have always lived in the past: books printed on paper and bound between covers, handwritten correspondence, two-lane roads, and so on. Not to mention (but here I go, doing it) memories! And on that oh-so-postmodern platform called Facebook – Is this a paradox? Life is a paradox! -- I have reconnected with many friends from my graduate school days at the University of Illinois.

 

The latest reconnection, however, came from a surprising and unexpected quarter. A friend back in Leelanau County, Michigan, mentioned in a brief e-mail that he had been in contact with a “a philosophy prof and--as are so many--a professional magician,” Larry Hass. Larry Hass? Could it be the same Larry Hass who completed his Ph.D. work while I was in graduate school in the philosophy department at the University of Illinois? Larry, the Merleau-Ponty scholar, married to Margie, the logician, the couple who hosted the only Super Bowl party I have attended in my life? 

 

It was! Holy cow! Talk about a career change, Larry!

 

Magician Larry Hass onstage

Back in graduate school, we downtrodden students used to peruse the APA’s monthly “Jobs for Philosophers” bulletin every time it came out. At my already advanced age (old enough to have been the mother of a couple of my office-mates), I figured gloomily that the best I could ever hope for would be a series of one-year sabbatical replacements. Two of my cohort have remained in the academic world (Larry and Margie were a year or so ahead), but others in that group have taken diverse paths --one a lawyer, another with his own IT company, a third a prize-winning winemaker, and so on. Now, from the cohort ahead of us, a magician! I figure this gives new meaning to “Jobs for Philosophers”!

 

Actually, when I was still in graduate school I thought there would be an interesting book in real-life JFPs. Some of my early examples of people who studied philosophy for shorter or longer periods of time and ended up in very different fields included: filmmaker Errol Morris, who also worked for a while as a private detective, as you’ll see if you follow the link; warlord Charles Taylor of Liberia, not to be confused with the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor, please; and comedian Steve Martin. And, of course, not to be immodest, how about bookseller moi? My magician friend and I agree that neither of us regrets our time spent in graduate school or the degrees we earned. We feel fortunate to have had that experience, both the agony and the occasional ecstasy of it.

 

 

“There is no shortcut to a long relationship.” 

 

There. I have quoted myself. It’s what I said to someone long ago who expressed a wish to have a relationship like the one the Artist and I had. 

Our love affair, the Artist's and mine, spanned nearly 47 years, and there were many, many complications and difficulties along the way. It was certainly not all moonlight and roses, especially for the first decade and a half. There was a long stretch when we thought we had lost each other forever. And when we made the decision to give each other -- and ourselves! -- another chance, the issues that had brought us to grief before remained to be worked through, and the working-through was not always easy, let alone idyllic. That second honeymoon period was, however, because of our deep love for each other and because we were finally ready to start growing up, more heavenly than hellish, and the heavenly portion grew richer as the years went by. 

 

Growing up is something I’ve been thinking about in terms of long relationships, too. The Artist always said that living me was like living with a 10-year-old girl, and I would tell him that living with him was like living with a 14-year-old boy. Neither of us wanted to be, ourselves, or wanted the other to be, completely grown up. Where would the fun be in that? We both loved each other's (often unleashed) inner child, and it was lovely to act like kids together, singing silly songs in the car on road trips, for instance, and generally sharing our enthusiasms with each other. The aspects of being not grown-up that had been terrible pitfalls for us in our first decade together were what we had to leave behind in order to go on together.

 

One reason I’m dwelling these days on the subjects of long relationships and growing up, other than reliving my happy marriage and missing my husband, is that I have a very young puppy. And oh, the trials of puppyhood! This little girl is very lively, willful, and challenging, and there have been days when I have felt overwhelmed, even at times discouraged. But I keep renewing my personal pledge to guide her to maturity as a good dog, one with whom I can grow old, and in the past couple of days I have seen noticeable progress.

Thinking about giving me backtalk

 

One of Sunny Juliet’s most annoying habits and one that made me very sad was the way she would bark at strangers. Men, women, children – bark! bark! bark! So I’ve been working on that by taking her to different places and feeding her treats when anyone appeared, telling her “No barking” and “Good dog!” And I can now report that it is paying off at last. As of yesterday, I don’t even have to provide a steady stream of treats! She went into the office at the tire shop with me and didn’t bark when another customer came in. I took her into the library, and she did not bark at the librarian. Today at the coffee shop, she didn’t bark at all, at anyone, not even the delivery person carrying huge boxes up the sidewalk to the front door. I tell her “Sit,” and she sits, “Down,” and she lies down. She doesn’t stay seated or prone, but she’s only a puppy, and when I repeat the command, she obeys again. She is maturing, and we are both learning patience with each other. 

I know the road ahead in my relationship with Sunny will not be all moonlight and roses, any more than a marriage can be a honeymoon every day. I’m not that naïve! Sunny is getting through her toddler testing period, and then in a while will come her rebellious teen period. But it doesn’t matter. We are bonding, and we’re in it for the long haul. No shortcuts but enormous rewards. And fortunately, there is always an inner puppy remaining in the oldest dog.

A future of Sunny mornings

Lessons Without Words

"Backstage" at Junior Rodeo, Willcox, Arizona

In the preface to his book, Life Lessons From a Ranch Horse, Mark Rashid writes that his old horse, Buck, made him realize “that I wasn’t going to be able to get better in my work unless I first improved other things in my life.” In one of his books about dogs, Jonathan Katz recounted a dog trainer’s telling him (I have to paraphrase, since I don’t have that book in front of me) that if he wanted a better dog, he was going to have to become a better person. Finally, I recall reading that at a certain point in his career as a “dog whisperer,” Cesar Millan realized he needed to become a “people whisperer,” also, to achieve lasting results, since when he was done working with problem dogs, their future was in their owners’ hands.

Some people who would never hit a dog will whip or spur a horse. (Does that seem strange to you? It does to me.) There are riding instructors – I know because I had one once -- invariably kind to horses but cruel to other human beings. We humans can see through each other’s inconsistencies, but I’m pretty sure the horses and dogs see through us much faster. 

Calm. Confident. Consistent. Kind.

Not only do we get better results with animals if we approach them calmly, confidently, and consistently, but partnerships that develop between human and dog or human and horse strengthen those desirable traits in us. You’ve heard of a vicious circle. Well, this is a virtuous circle – and who wouldn’t prefer to ride that happy merry-go-round? 

Competing at Junior Rodeo, Willcox, Arizona

And the practice of kindness is very compatible with working on the other three behavioral traits. Now that it’s come to my mind and I reflect further, I realize that a certain quite horrid type of person might manage to be calm, confident, consistent, and cruel, which cannot be our aim, either in working toward partnerships with our animal companions or simply in becoming better human beings! So while I’ve had ‘3Cs’ in mind for 35 years or so, I see now that the addition of that ‘K’ as absolutely essential. 

If we approach them with kindness from the start, our speechless friends usually forgive us our lapses in calmness, confidence, and consistency. Isn’t that wonderful?

So how about leading with kindness -- with our fellow human beings? What do you think? 

It is not always easy! Being kind can be a struggle. Flashes of anger visit almost all of us from time to time. 

Here's a thought: Maybe looking at other humans as if they were horses or dogs would make it easier for us to remain calm and treat them better. Does that sound totally wacky?

Sarah likes my idea. Good girl!

Book Review: YOU WOULD HAVE TOLD ME NOT TO

You Would Have Told Me Not To

by Christopher Coake

Encino, CA: Delphinium Books, 2020

Hardcover, 304pp, $25.95
Release date: July 29, 2020

The title of this collection is a clue to what unfolds in the stories as, with unfailing empathy for his characters and a flawless ear for natural dialogue, author Christopher Coake takes readers down one surprising life path after another. And if I say that I looked back to check the name on the cover more than once, confirming that indeed a man had written this book, I intend that as a high compliment: I’m talking about the way Coake gets inside each character’s head so successfully that he seems to be narrating from a life other than his own. Each character, regardless of gender or age, is fully realized, that is, fully real.

In “The First Time,” the opening story in the book, we meet Bob Kline, on the verge of divorce from Yvonne, the girl he took to the prom years before. Out of the blue, Bob receives an e-mail from a woman whose name he does not recognize, telling him that another woman, also with an unfamiliar name, has recently died and wanted her friend to notify Bob. Who was this Annabeth, anyway, and why would she have wanted Bob to know of her death? Looking for answers, Bob agrees to meet Vicky, the e-mailer, for drinks, and as he gradually learns why long-ago events he barely recalls mean so much to a surviving friend, he also relives his own “first time” with his soon-to-be ex-wife.

Often in life, what is essentially important to one person in a relationship plays a much smaller role in the mental furniture of another. In the haunting story simply titled “Waste,” the near-homeless narrator, a day laborer in an urban setting that could be Anywhere, U.S.A., is reminded of a teenage girl (he was "first time”) he knew briefly once in Reno, Nevada. The reminder comes when a new young kid joins their cleanup crew in a building scheduled to be gutted from top to bottom. As is true of all the stories in You Would Have Told Me Not To, this story does not telegraph its destination ahead of time. Rather, it unfolds – like life.

The title story involves a mother, her adult son, the son’s wife, and the mother’s ex-husband (son’s father). A fractured family, these four come together following a shooting incident, but in coming together they still have difficult waters to navigate. Doesn't the title sound like something someone would say to a parent when explaining why important news had not been communicated?

An abused ex-wife (“This Will Come as a Surprise To You”) wonders if she should warn another woman about getting involved with the same man. Has he changed, or is he the same? … A college student (“Getaway”) is separated for the summer, as punishment, from a girlfriend whom he is not sure he loves but with whom he maintains forced, lukewarm telephone contact even as he finds himself in another sexual relationship. Each story, characters and setting, forms a movie in a reader's mind. 

Those with a penchant for longer fiction may want to begin with the novella that closes the volume, “Big Guy.” 

Doug Ritchie had heard the nickname for years, and he’d never allowed himself to mind it. He had no right to mind—he was after all, a fat man….

As was true of the first story (in this sense, “The First Time” and “Big Guy” bookend the collection), Doug is also being divorced against his wishes by a slim, beautiful, successful woman who wants to move on. When after an initial period of wallowing in junk food, Doug vows to lose weight and become a new man, his high school English students become his cheering section. A colleague, Nancy, joins him on the school track every morning, and after a while they appear to have embarked on a new life of weight loss, new clothes, attractive appearances, and happiness. How hard will it be, though, for Doug to see not only himself but another as deserving of understanding and encouragement? And how hard will it be for him to leave behind dreams of the old life with Wendy?

Individual growth, sometimes painful struggle, miscommunication and unrequited (or unequally requited) feelings – as well as daydreams, speculations, fantasies, and newfound happiness – these are the author's subjects. And while Christopher Coake’s stories do not all wear the adjective ‘domestic fiction' comfortably, all focus closely on individuals both as they are in themselves and as they are in relationship. Do we ever “move on” without taking with us everything from the past that formed us, terrible errors as well as youthful dreams?

Want a series of little vacations from your own life? This book will do it for you. Look for it when it comes out in July.

Companions in Our Isolation

We are not “birders,” the Artist and I, but here in Arizona on our annual seasonal retirement (scheduled to end in May, but who knows right now, given the current world situation?) we pay a lot of attention to birds. The hawk that swoops in front of our car and settles with beating wings on a mesquite tree by the side of the road, the droll little roadrunner, the “confiding” canyon towhee, and all the rest. But I told the Artist the other day, as we sat out watching birds, that every time I see the bright red male cardinal, I am carried back to my graduate student apartment in Cincinnati years ago. 

It was one more evening alone, studying in a one-bedroom apartment much roomer than necessary for someone with almost no furniture. My few clothes hung in a luxurious walk-in closet that could have housed, I often thought, an entire refugee family. Few clothes, little furniture — and yet I felt unbelievably fortunate, for in my first year of graduate study I received a monthly fellowship check which, thanks to frugal living and cheap beans and cheap beer the last week of every month, covered my living expenses. And all I had to do to earn that check was read and write: my obligation coincided with my chosen work. Heaven!

But the scholar’s heaven could be lonely, too. 

I think I must have been holding my awareness of loneliness at mental arm’s length for quite a while, because when a tiny red mite appeared on a page of my book, I was struck with inordinate delight: another living creature! Charming! Fascinating! A companion in my evening solitude!

If you search online for information about bright red clover mites, tiny creatures each smaller than the head of a pin, you’ll turn up all manner of pest control results, although everyone admits that the clover mite is harmless. It isn’t poisonous. It doesn’t bite, anyway. And even if it invades en masse, the invaders won’t live long indoors. 

Well, easy for me to say, maybe, because for me there was only the one. One tiny, tiny creature the brilliant color of a cardinal. What happened to it? I don’t remember. How long does a clover mite live, anyway, in the best of circumstances? That minuscule receptacle of life achieved a kind of immortality, though, because even now, years later, every time I see a bright red cardinal I remember with fondness that other, much smaller, long-ago, anonymous visitor.

The following day, when I shared the story and my response to the mite with another graduate student, expecting him to laugh, I was surprised and gratified when he shared a similar story. For him, a spider had provided companionship during a long evening of solitary study. A memoir called The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating, by Elisabeth Tova Bailey, tells of how much a small creature’s presence meant to one woman confined to her bed by a mysterious illness, and Barbara Kingsolver, in High Tide in Tucson, tells of a hermit crab she inadvertently brought back from a Caribbean vacation and the efforts she and her daughter made to keep it alive.

Other living things! They mean so much to us, these our fellow passengers on spaceship earth, perhaps especially when our socializing with human family and friends is necessarily limited. 

While those of us who share our homes with dogs and/or cats — or birds, fish, or reptile pets — know better than to take their companionship for granted, ever, I’ve been thinking of how much comfort and companionship we gets from plants, as well as from animals, during these days of staying home and “sheltering in place.” When I first shopped, as advised, for a possible two-week quarantine — how long ago was that? — one of the impulse items I added to my cart was a little $4.99 plastic pot containing a clump of three small succulent plants. The souls as well as the bodies of our household require feeding, I felt. And I don’t even know the name of this succulent plant. Maybe it’s some kind of hybrid. It doesn’t matter. I had bought the beautiful round clay planter at an estate sale, and the planter begged to be filled. A rusty piece of found industrial iron added height and variety. 

I can’t tell you how much I love looking at my little pot (it is right here beside me now) and inspecting the largest of the three small plants to see if it’s any closer to flowering than it was the previous day. On warm days it lives outside, but with the threat of freezing overnight temperatures (and we did have a hard frost that night) it came indoors, taking priority over stacks of books and magazines (can you believe it?) on the little table between our reading chairs. And actually, carrying the planter outside and back indoors increases my feeling of relationship with the plants in the pot. 

When the Little Prince in St.-Exupery’s story of the same name discovers that the rose he tended with such dedication was not, as she claimed to be, the only rose in existence, at first he felt hoodwinked, as if he had wasted his time caring for her. He is set straight (was it by the fox? I don’t have the book at hand) thusly: “It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.” 

The other day my hiking partner neighbor, after we had been out in the foothills with our dogs for a couple of hours, asked me if I would like a planter of mint. Sarah and I continued home, and Therese left the mint outside her gate for me to pick up with the car later. So now, when the Artist and I sit behind the cabin watching the birds, I also gaze fondly at a planter filled with healthy, vibrant, bright-green mint. My friend had advised me that I should water the mint when I got it home. Oh, good! The mint needs me! Responsibilities of caring for animals and plants that share our lives, like the responsibilities we have to each other, create bonds. 

Is it time to put another suet cake out for the birds? I’d better check....

…I thought I had finished a draft of this post, and then I looked online for other quotes from The Little Prince. When I got to this one, my skin broke out in goosebumps: 

“What makes the desert beautiful,” said the little prince, “is that somewhere it hides a well….”

He loved his desert, I love mine. 

I ask you, what does it matter if the imaginary cat in the box is alive or dead? What matters to me is whether or not the sheep has eaten the beloved flower…. Books are also our companions, and The Little Prince gives us, in fantasy form, another example of an everyday hero, along with an ethics of care. Be well, stay safe and healthy, my friends!

Book Review: IF THE BUDDHA HAD KIDS

If the Buddha Had Kids: Raising Children to Create a More Peaceful World, by Charlotte Kasl, Ph.D.

Penguin Books

$14.00

paper

Be forewarned: As is the usual case with “Books in Northport,” my take on If the Buddha Had Kids leans in a personal direction, emphasizing what the book means to me. I suspect that it will have similar meaning for a lot of other readers, and this book certainly deserves wide readership.

When contacted by Penguin Books to see if I would review If the Buddha Had Kids on my blog, I agreed without imagining it would be directly relevant to my own life. After all, the next crying babies in our family will be great-grandchildren, and raising children—well, that chapter is closed for me, isn’t it? So on the one hand, thinking as a bookseller, I know parents of young children, and a number of them already find Buddhism a helpful spiritual path, so I thought the book would appeal to my customers. On the other hand, I thought, as for me, I am too attached to the world and too happy in my attachment (so went my thinking) to want to disengage, so the Buddhist way is not my way. Good thing I'm a bookseller and read the book, because it was full of important surprises.

My first error in thinking should be obvious to any parent: once a parent, always a parent! It never ends! How do I connect with and respond to my 42-year-old son? To my stepchildren, my nephews? To grandchildren of school age and beyond? Connection and dialogue with my mother and sisters is still and always will be family connection and dialogue.

The title sounded a trifle gimmicky, but this book stopped me in my tracks right at the prologue. There, before the first chapter, the author (a practicing psychotherapist for over 30 years) tells of her 33-year-old daughter’s final illness and death from pancreatic cancer. She tells of parenting this daughter from the time the girl was three years old and arrived from a foster home after having spent the first year and a half of her life in a dangerously violent home. Kasl says that her daughter “was attached to me by a thread so thin it barely held at times.” And now the daughter was dying. And leaving behind a six-year-old son for whom the grandmother had already felt strong concern. All the things Kasl wanted to say to her daughter she says in this book to other parents. Right away any reader must realize that the author is speaking out of deep personal experience, and the lessons she will share come out of that experience.

It goes beyond parenting, too, as is quickly apparent. If the Buddha had Kids is specifically aimed at parents, but the practical advice on how to listen to others and how to explore one’s own feelings applies to all human relationships. For example, Kasl gives a list of examples of “living out of the ego” that create problems for parents. Here are a couple of them:

4. Difficulty seeing the need beneath the surface of a behavior. You might react to a child’s behavior as irritating, a nuisance, or difficult without seeing the underlying need. The child may want attention or feel angry, hurt, hungry, tired, or lonely. 

5. Difficulty acknowledging your own part in the child’s behavior—that is, perhaps your inattention, control, intrusiveness, or volatility contributes to a child’s whining, rebelliousness, depression, or being explosive or unable to concentrate.

Now read those two points again, replacing “a child” or “the child” with “someone else” or “the other person.” Read this way, we are on an even wider path to peaceful living, in much the same ways recommended by William Ury in The Third Side: Why We Fight and How We Can Stop--also published by Penguin, I note and reviewed on this blog.

Finally, what about that attachment/detachment stuff, always the biggest hurdle between me and Buddhism? It isn’t simply that detaching is “too hard.” No, I didn’t want to give up attachment. I had (and still have) no desire to remove myself from the wonders of life or to observe the world as a bemused and distant spectator. So what a wondrous revelation to read Kasl’s chapter on pleasure in the natural world, entitled “Wow! I Climbed the Mountain,” with the statement that “there is mounting evidence that disconnection from nature affects our mental and emotional well-being in ways we do not fully comprehend.” Wow, indeed! This is more like it! Have I had Buddhism wrong all along, or is Kasl’s a departure from the classical version?

When a child loses his sensory capacity for connection with nature, he may also lose the capacity for contemplation, relaxation, and comfort with stillness. In general, when we can’t go deeply into the human experience, we turn instead to counterfeit stimulation—computer games, TV, the Internet, texting, tweeting, everything that is fast, and stimulating. We can’t sit still. The more we become dependent on constant stimulation the more quickly we feel boredom.... The hunger never abates.... The person feels increasingly helpless to feel satisfied and happy, as if he were losing control over his own life. This feeling also contributes to depression and anxiety.

In the frenzy that is August, I have fallen behind with my stillness project, but even having it on the back burner is a comforting thought. Kasl offers practical suggestions for things parents can do to get children “back to nature.” They are simple ideas, as is appropriate to the subject.

Related to the “back to nature” chapter for me, because it also relates to my stillness project, is the one called “The Amazing Sounds of Silence.” The author recalls her family’s tradition of setting aside an hour after lunch on family camping trips as quiet time. “We could sit in a camp chair or lie on a cot and read, embroider, carve, write, or sleep.” After my own father’s parents retired to Florida, our family traveled south every other year for a visit, and after lunch adults and children alike had “nap” time. Reading was allowed, but no talking, no radio, no TV or games. Shades were pulled down, and a peaceful quiet filled the house. I liked the feeling of being alone with my own thoughts and dreams during that time.

Happily, just as we are not required to detach from nature but to be present in it, we are not detaching from other people, either. The detachment is from our own egoistic preoccupations and from the ego’s insistence that other people should not be the way they are but should be some other way we think would be better. Again, the author’s focus is on the adult-child relationship, but I find it insightful across the board, helpful for all relationships,. The chapter “Deep Listening and Loving Speech” tells parents how to give empathy and understanding. The whole idea is to be fully present and open and to create connection rather than separation (and again I am put in mind of the William Ury book). Resistance and argument escalates anger. The idea is to defuse anger and prevent its escalation by giving the gift of peaceful, active listening.

My only quibbles with this book are very minor. I would have appreciated an index. The claim of 2-3% Cesarian sections in a nurse-midwife birthing center compared to 30% hospital rate did not take into account mothers’ ages or complications during pregnancy that would have influenced the choice of childbirth location. Absence of commas in compound sentences sent me back to the beginning of more than one sentence. As I say, all pretty minor points.

Most of what I have written here in praise of the book is either personal or general, with only a few direct quotes. The reality is that it is a wealth of ideas, examples, exercises and practical advice. Beyond the basics, the author covers topics such as education, sexuality, money, modern technology, and food. Exercises in various chapters offer the parent-reader (or nonparent adult) opportunities for self-reflection, but there are no scorecards attached: In going through an exercise and answering the questions posed, the parent is encouraged to practice with him- or herself the same loving kindness to be offered to the child.

--What I’m telling you is that you, parent or not, can read this book and learn from it without feeling scolded. So please do read it. It’s what the world needs now, and there is no one whose life does not have a corner in which to apply these ideas. One conversation at a time....

There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.

That's the Story of, That's the Glory of--

Imagine if each detail of our visual world were matched by a corresponding smell. Each petal on a rose may be distinct, having been visited by insects leaving pollen footprints from faraway flowers. What is to us just a single stem actually holds a record of who held it, and when. A burst of chemical marks where a leaf was torn. The flesh of the petals, plump with moisture compared to that of the leaf, holds a different odor besides. The fold of a leaf has a smell; so does a dewdrop on a thorn. And time is in those details: while we can see one of the petals drying and browning, the dog can smell this process of decay and aging. Imagine smelling every minute visual detail. That might be the experience of a rose to a dog.

- Alexandra Horowitz, Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know

Earlier than 5 a.m. these days, it is still dark, but when sunrise comes at last it is a quiet symphony of color. The pictures in this post are from Sunday morning, when I went out with a cup of coffee and ever-amenable Sarah (bless her doggie heart!) to watch sunrise from the bridge over the North Fork of Hammock Creek. The tide had reached its highest level a couple of hours earlier. Faint ripples of breeze stirred the air. Sky shades of mauve and rose, peach, gold, orange and yellow found, at last, a visual echo in lantana blossoms.




By jumping up and resting her front paws on concrete, Sarah can look over the bridge to the water below or sky beyond. If a bird flies overhead, she notices, but otherwise she is much more interested in the world at road-level, sniffing the pavement to determine who’s been here, what they were using for bait, and what if anything they may have reeled in or spilled or dropped. Fish guts, mussels, candy wrappers—it’s all grist for her nose. Sometimes excitement comes from a more unusual source. Dead possum? Fascinating! Skeletal remains of an armadillo? Cool! But whatever her little nose finds, the world is never boring to Sarah, and that’s one of the wonderful things about her. She never blows off anyone or anything with a jaded “Been there, done that” shrug. Sarah loves the world! She doesn’t yap and yap about it, either. Horowitz notes that

..despite their marvelous range and extent of communication, it is the very fact that they do not use language that makes me especially treasure dogs. Their silence can be one of their most endearing traits. Not muteness: absence of linguistic noise. There is no awkwardness in a shared silent moment with a dog; a gaze from the dog on the other side of the room; lying sleepily alongside each other. It is when language stops hat we connect most fully.

One of the points Alexandra Horowitz makes in her book is that wolf society is based on family. (What humans have seen for years as a pack is really a family.) Another of her points, made over and over, is that dogs are not wolves. They are perhaps as much not wolves as they are not humans. Humans are primates, dogs canids, but beyond that wolves are wild, dogs domesticated. Or, as I like to say, “We co-evolved.”

Extrapolating, I conclude what I have probably always believed without reflection, which is that a dog “living free,” i.e., in the wild, without human company, is not living a fully dog life. What do you think? More controversially (I can already hear the howls from cat-owning friends), I’m tempted to say that humans with resolutely “dog-free” lives do not have fully human lives.

Our bond with dogs is strengthened by contact, by synchrony, and by marking reunions with a greeting ceremony. So too are we strengthened by the bond. Simply petting a dog can reduce an overactive-sympathetic nervous system within minutes: a racing heart, high blood pressure, the sweats. Levels of endorphins (hormones that make us feel good) and oxytocin and prolactin (those hormones involved in social attachment) go up when we’re with dogs. Cortisol (stress hormone) levels go down. There is good reason to believe that living with a dog provides the social support which correlates with reduced risk for various diseases, from cardiovascular disease to diabetes to pneumonia, and better rates of recovery from those diseases we do get. In many cases, the dog receives nearly the same effect [my emphasis added].

Tempted, I said! Of course I’m not going to argue for such a strong claim, much more extreme than claiming childless people do not have fully human lives, which I would also never say. Part of the richness of human life, after all, is the variability of its possibilities. There is more than one possible way for a human being to have a “good life.” Okay, I get that. Still....

Unlike the double-blind nature of scientific experiment, Horowitz notes that the human-dog bond is “happily double-seeing.” Dogs search human faces as much as we search theirs. We gaze into each other eyes. Ours mutually overlapping worlds are enriched by the bond.




When David and Sarah and I are out together, each of us is experiencing the world somewhat differently, but we are together, too. Sarah takes in her surroundings primarily by scent, David and I visually. Like Sarah, I am distracted by tiny details, David focusing more on “big picture” views. But we all love the feeling of sun and breeze, and Sarah’s pleasure adds to David’s and mine. Reading Inside of a Dog this morning (that sounds funny, doesn't it?), with Sarah beside me and David nearby, has banished all my recent angst.


What was it the Jane Austen character in Northanger Abbey told the naive country girl who had just learned to love a hyacinth? Loving, cherishing, paying attention--for what else do we live?