Life as a Dog

There are few things more satisfying than saving a dog. Last year I adopted a year-old black labrador retriever, Hailie, who had been scheduled to be euthanized that very day. She has proven to be a wonderful companion, despite her rather juvenile approach to life. My success with her, and her need for a companion of her own, inspired me to acquire this week a stray border collie who the vet puts at about 3 years, and who is now named Cormac after the author Cormac McCarthy. While he has a few emotional problems due to either maltreatment or neglect, he is slowly getting adjusted to his new life as a member of our pack. The last two weeks have been a series of coincidences around the issue of dogs. While preparing for our guest speaker in November, I listened to the podcast of Speaking of Faith where Jennifer Hecht speaks about the Cynics, or Dog Philosophers ("cynic" comes from Greek for "dog"). They were so-called after their penchant for "living like dogs," which did not necessarily have the negative associations (at least in their minds) that we assume today. Their argument was that human beings should live like dogs in so far as accepting what life has to offer and enjoying every moment of every day - a far cry from what we today mean when we call someone a "cynic." Two days later one of our philosophy instructors, upon hearing the rest of us discourse about our dogs, quoted the chief Cynic, Diogenes, as saying "The more I know of men, the more I like dogs" [although I found this quote attributed to a number of other people too]. The philosophy guy said this in the way we read it today, as intending an insult to men, but I think the Cynic, if he said it, was more praising that dogs knew how to live better than men. [The Cynics, of course, were Greeks. The Romans saw dogs differently and many of their mosaics have the phrase cave canem (beware of the dog) alongside a picture of a dog on a leash, usually growling.]


In many ways, the cynical philosophy closely resembles the Buddhist philosophy. For example, both philosophies denied that pleasure was equal to or had anything to do with true happiness. Both philosophies also held as fundamental aspects of their ethics that one should neglect the body for the benefit of the soul. Finally, the common, crucial ingredient in both philosophies was the sufficiency of virtue for the attainment of happiness (enlightenment in Buddhism). -- Jason Merrill

And speaking of Buddhists and dogs, when I told my daughter that she needed to cultivate the Buddhist attitude toward gentleness, she pointed out to me that Buddhists don't have dogs. I'm not sure if that's true, but she did have a good point: dogs can try a person's patience...but also help them learn some.

Finally, when I told a good friend of mine that I was looking for another dog (although at the time I didn't know what kind), she put on order for me a book. It must have been fate. The book arrived the day we picked up Cormac and it was A Dog Year: Twelve Months, Four Dogs, and Me, by Jon Katz. It's about Katz's adoption of a troubled border collie after having lived a few years with two calm, companionable labrador retrievers!

Q: What do you get when you cross an insomniac, an agnostic, and a dyslexic?
A: Someone who stays up all night wondering if there is a Dog. [Groucho Marx]