In early 1998, a little white dog somehow managed to stay alive for days in the fairly wild country of north Texas, dumped there by her owners, eluding coyotes, cars, and who knows what other dangers.  When I found her, she was emaciated, terrified, and covered in fleas and ticks–but alive.  She was a puppy, clearly a Westie mix, and just adorable.  I figured she had been someone’s Christmas puppy, but when her fireball terrier energy became too much for the new owners, they decided to dump her and be done with her.  I fell in love, and took her in.

This was my little Pip.  After a flea bath and taking nearly 100 ticks off of her, she settled right in and started to destroy my house.  Nothing was immune–she was a whirling dervish of destruction.  I kept a large teddy bear on my bed, and one day I found her locked in mortal combat with this teddy bear, furiously fighting it–how could you be angry at something that made you laugh so hard?  Houseslippers were another major enemy, and needed to die.  Clothes got dragged through the house if left anywhere within her reach.  Shoes walked around the house too.  But this little dog was just so fearless and full of personality.  She went everywhere with me, had no fear of the horses, and loved farm life.  She slept with me every night.  I was going through one of those epic, horrible divorces, and Pip made me lighten up and laugh.

My other dogs pretty much accepted her, except for my Rhodesian Ridgeback mix, Spike.  Spike decided Pip had to die–Pip was far too cute to keep around.  Numerous times, I woke in the middle of the night to dog fights going on, on top of me, with Spike trying to kill the much smaller Pip, who nevertheless was willing to fight.  Whenever Spike thought I might not be looking, she would try to hurt little Pip.  This went on until Spike’s death, but Pip’s terrier heart knew no fear.

Pip also became the best friend of the last dog I got, Fergus, a melancholy brontosaurus of a fellow who was devoted to his little friend.  Pip and Fergus were inseparable, and his life’s work was to look after his little girlfriend.

Pip never met a child she didn’t love–children who came to visit my farm always asked if they could take Pip home with them.  She loved to play with children, and would run and jump around them, and tune into them completely.  When it was time for the children to leave, she’d invariably jump into the mini-van with them to say goodbyes.  She also loved all other dogs, and was always looking for a new playmate.  Pip was simply a blithe spirit, one of those lighthearted souls whose spirit helps darker souls, like mine, find a measure of happiness.

Last week, I had to have little Pip euthanized, and it simply broke my heart.  She hadn’t been acting right for about six months, and when I took her into the vet, he x-rayed her and discovered a large tumor on her bladder, pressing on her colon and spine.  There was nothing he could do.  So I took her home, put metamucil in her food daily, and started watching closely for any deterioration.  It came quickly.  At the end, she stopped eating completely, no matter what special meals I made for her (bacon, chicken, her beloved cat food), and she lost the ability to walk, as the tumor pressed on her spine, crippling her hind end.  This may have been the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make, but I knew what the right thing was.

So here’s the point of this column–appreciate your pets while you have them, spoil them rotten, love them.  And make the tough calls, so that they don’t have to suffer unnecessarily.  What they add to our lives is immeasureable–all we can do is try to give that same kind of devotion back to them.

Many of us winterize our cars–check all fluids, add antifreeze, make sure tires are properly inflated.  But how about our pets?  We just had a terrible cold spell here in Kentucky, and I couldn’t keep potable water for my barn cats.  The cold has been gone for a few days now, but I still have buckets full of solid ice that, if dumped in the ocean, could sink the Titanic.  I ended up bringing hot water from the house for a while, pouring it into the buckets to try to keep them liquid, but it got so cold I had to give up on that and go to plan B–bring little pots and pans of water from the house many times a day, and implore the cats to come get a drink while they could.

Keeping the horses safe was even tougher–I have automatic waterers that are supposed to be safe in cold weather, but when it gets to below zero, that guarantee is like a verbal contract, in the words of the immortal Yogie Berra–not worth the paper it’s written on.   All my waterers froze, and I had to go kick them free numerous times a day, until even that didn’t work.  Then I carried hot water in my plastic kitty litter containers all over the farm, pouring the hot water over the waterers to thaw them temporarily–and then more imploring, begging the horses to drink.  This was a real measure of my horses’ intelligence, and I have to admit that only two of them demonstrated any real understanding of the situation.  One of these was my remarkable colt, Kong, who would wait and watch for me to thaw his waterer, come right over to drink, look up at me with love in his eyes, and drink some more.  The other who would respond was the cantankerous mare, Miss Philpott, who also evidenced awareness of the situation, and came to drink as soon as I got her waterer defrosted.  The others clearly believed the cliche that “you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink.”  I had one colic from this situation, when I found Peggy Sue down and in pain one cold morning.  Without potable water, horses can die from colic, and my stress over this was immense.  Luckily, with a shot of banamine, Peggy recovered.

But in cold weather, we need to be hyper-aware of our pets’ needs.  Animals which live outdoors, in particular, are at the mercy of the elements while we are safe and warm inside.  So keep an eye on all your pets this winter–any unusual behavior, any reluctance to eat or drink, and you need to do something.  If the ground is icy or frozen hard, geriatric pets may have trouble walking on it–my older dog, Pip, had to be carried up and down the front porch steps a few times, as she just couldn’t make it on her own.  They rely on us to care for them in difficult times–this winter, please be extra-aware of your pets and their needs.

To know John Nash was to love him.  To be able to call him your friend was a rare and precious gift.  The many facets of John’s personality are almost too numerous to describe–he was gentle and kind and great fun, but he also had a rapier wit and strongly held beliefs that were always on the side of the humane and the compassionate, for both humans and animals.  He had a lightness about him, making him absolutely delightful, but at the same time he knew exactly what he wanted, and could communicate that clearly and succinctly, so that he could get what he wanted–anyone who works at Nash can attest to that.  He was generous and caring, always fastidously groomed with that slightly artsy, black on black, look that he favored and carried off so well.  More than all of this, though, John was a thinker and an innovator–John’s mind was always looking for something new and better, always unsatisfied with the status quo.

John revolutionized dog grooming training, inventing it in the first place, refining it, bringing it online.  He started foreign exchange programs, so that students could experience other cultures and other techniques.  He began to develop encyclopedic online tools to provide a common, international language for dog groomers worldwide.  John was a communicator, and he saw no reason why the dog grooming industries shouldn’t have their own, established language and means to communicate clearly, both for the good of the pet, and for the professionalism of the business that he loved. 

As it turned out, John had another quality that many of us would not have guessed at until he became sick–John was double-tough.  His gentle demeanor and small stature didn’t hint at his toughness, but when cancer asked the question of John, “what are you made of,” John’s answer was, “steel.”  John fought with such courage and bravery, while still working to improve and contribute to what I always called “the Nash plan for world domination,” so strong was John’s vision of what the future would hold for the pet care professions.

And the great love story of Vivian and John Nash has to be mentioned, as these two wonderful people were soulmates and workmates and visionaries together.   Vivian was there, 100%, for John every minute–the two of them really did seem to be one entity, with a single purpose. 

John Nash died on December 17, and those of us who knew him and were lucky enough to call him friend are heartbroken.  The world is a much worse, duller, sadder place without his brightness to light the darkness.

One of the greatest horse trainers of our time, the late Bobby Frankel, who grew up on the streets of Brooklyn, far away from horses, used to say that working with horses was just common sense.  An old friend of mine who has trained horses for me says the same thing.  Certainly, in working with any animals, there is a wealth of knowledge that you should have, that will help you both in the day-to-day dealing with companion animals and in an emergency.  There is, however, much to be said for simply utilizing common sense.

For example, someone I know who has a few Thoroughbred horses, but knows nothing about them, recently attempted to wean a mare from her foal, following the advice (which I suspect he misunderstood) of someone who said just put the mare in one stall, the baby in another, across the way, and let them get used to being separated.  An iota of common sense would have indicated that this was a terrible and potentially dangerous idea.  But no common sense emerged in this situation, and the bright idea was put into action, with nearly disastrous results.  The mare went crazy, the foal went crazy, and this fellow was lucky to be able to open stall doors, get them back together, and not get himself or the horses hurt in the process.   Even if this was indeed the method suggested by someone who supposedly knew something about horses, common sense should have prevailed–this gets back to another issue dear to my heart, questioning authority at all times, using your own standards, morals, ethics, and, of course, common sense, instead of just blindly following along…but this is just the old hippie in me.

With dogs and cats, in a salon or in your home, the same kind of common sense must be used.  In my salon and first aid classes, we frequently discuss the issue of leaving animals on a grooming table, even if just for a moment, to retrieve a tool needed for the grooming, or to answer a phone.  Some students will suggest that, if this is done just for a moment, it would be okay.  Others say they would grab a buddy from the salon to watch the animal for that minute.  Others suggest putting the dog on the ground and tethering it, with its leash or whatever has been used to tie it to the grooming arm, just for a moment.  All of these might be recipes for disaster, and they all strain credulity and common sense. A dog on the floor of the salon, tethered by a leash, is at risk of being attacked by other dogs being walked through the salon;  that leash is a tripping hazard;  the dog might become entangled and hurt itself.  Dogs left alone on grooming tables, just for a moment, may fall of the table, or jump, and literally hang themselves.  Common sense dictates that if you must leave the dog on the table, even for a minute, you must put that dog into a kennel if you want that dog to be absolutely safe.  The rule at Nash is that a groomer must have one hand on a dog on the table at all times, or that dog must go into a kennel.  Why take chances?  This dog is your responsibility when you are grooming him, and someone’s beloved pet.  Common sense tells us that, when working with living animals, anything can happen, and sometimes will. 

You can never be on auto-pilot when working with animals.  You must be constantly aware, and questioning your own course of action, and the response of the animal.  If you do this, chances are good that your own common sense will prevail, and the safety of all will be preserved.

Just read this on AOL news, and loved it…sorry I’m not smart enough to remove the ads at the end… 

Did We Domesticate Dogs, or Did Dogs Domesticate Us?

Posted:

11/6/09

Filed Under:Science

(Nov. 6) — A new book by two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning science journalist Jon Franklin concludes that man’s best friends may have been responsible for our emergence as the alpha dogs of the animal kingdom.

We wouldn’t be who we are without them. So we rewarded them with a lifetime supply of Snausages and Purina Puppy Chow.

Well, it’s a little more complicated than that.

Eugene Hoshiko, AP

Franklin’s book, “The Wolf in the Parlor” (Henry Holt, 2009), traces “the eternal connection between humans and dogs” through the millennia. His 20 years of research convinced him that we couldn’t have made it without each other.

Dallas critic Bill Marvel calls the author’s deductions a stretch. “Franklin seems to suggest that while we were taming the dog, the dog was civilizing us,” Marvel wrote. “He reminds me a little of the dyslexic churchgoer who worshipped Dog.”

But biological anthropologist Forrest Smith, a professor emeritus at the University of Akron, isn’t troubled at all by the results of Franklin’s detective work.

“I agree with him 100 percent,” Smith said. Wolves and man were once virtually equals at the top of the predatory food chain, he said. It’s logical to believe that the species had to collaborate to survive.

He said it’s much the same conclusion that Michael Pollan reached in his book about plant life, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma.” “Did we domesticate corn or did corn domesticate us?” Smith asked. “We needed each other.”

Franklin’s book is a blend of emotion and science. Which is a lot like his career. His book “Writing for Story” taught a generation of journalists to bolt past details to the emotional center of the story. Yet he’s equally respected among scientists. “I’ve been carrying around something he wrote about the importance of science for more than 10 years,” said Dr. Emilie Clemmens, a professor at Cascadia College near Seattle who has a Ph.D. in bioengineering. “It defines who I am.”

In an interview with Sphere, Franklin that he’s shown the book to scientist friends and received little resistance to his results or his methods. “Science begins with emotion. Something triggers an emotional response, and then we investigate it.”

His emotional response was triggered when he met the love of his life, Lynn, in the late 1980s. “Love me, love my dog,” was their unspoken pact.

That’s how the descendant of the wolf, a standard poodle named Charlie, came into his parlor.

The marriage and his relationship with Charlie flourished. The feelings that grew toward the dog piqued his scientific curiosity about the link between the species.

A decade earlier he had seen a photograph of the fossilized remains of a man who had been buried with a small dog or wolf cub in what is now Syria some 12,000 years ago. The man was reaching furtively toward the small creature.

Franklin stuck the picture in a drawer until he met Charlie. Two more decades of research led to the book.

Scientists generally agree that the first domesticated dogs appeared around 15,000 years ago, give or take a few dozen centuries. In those days, humans, as they still do, left a mess as they wandered about the planet. Some wolves found it was easier to follow the garbage buffet than to hunt for them.

Dr. Ray Coppinger, an animal behaviorist expert, argued in the book “Dogs” that the wolves began to domesticate themselves as they learned to live around humans. “It was natural selection,” he said in the New York Times several years ago. “The dogs did it, not people.”

Franklin suggested, though, that humans did play a role in the selection process. Sometimes, the wolf cubs made for a convenient dinner. The cuddly ones were less likely to meet the end of a club.

He noted something else unusual was happening then. The man in the photo’s death occurred near the end of the ice age. About the same time, fossils show, the human brain was shrinking by as much as 10 percent. Yet we got smarter. “Suddenly and inexplicably we began to herd, dig, build, draw, plan and invent … we became uncontested masters of the planet,” he wrote.

He believes that our evolutionary dance with the wolves made it all happen. As wolves became dogs — as the genetic research of Dr. Robert K. Wayne of UCLA has shown — they herded our flocks. They warned us of nearby predators. They helped us hunt more efficiently. That gave us time to think.

Dogs, Franklin reasons, made us better people.

Just as Charlie nurtured him during their dozen years of walking together.

It’s a lesson for us all.

“Just remember,” Franklin said, “there’s an animal on both ends of the leash.”

Stuart Warner, an aol.com editor, also teaches journalism at Case Western Reserve University. He has worked with Jon Franklin on several writing projects. Dr. Clemmens is Warner’s oldest daughter.

Not all dogs are created equal.  I was reminded of this yesterday, when I got an e mail from my dear old friend, DB.  We go way back, and both knew each other’s greatest dogs.  DB had Polly, and I had Wooly Bear–two seriously great dogs.

Just like we enjoy the companies of some humans, love some, and can’t stand to be around others, we have better chemistry with some of our pets than with others.  Surely, we tend to love all our dogs, or why have them?  But some dogs are extra special, and touch our souls as our other pets cannot. 

DB’s dog Polly was a gigantic mixed breed who looked exactly like an Irish Wolfhound.  And as big as she was, that was how gentle she was, and what a great soul she had.  She was a watchful, intelligent dog who always seemed to take everything in.  She was, also, a perfect guest–DB lived in Santa Fe, and I lived in Las Vegas (New Mexico), and when DB came to visit, Polly came too, and fit right in with my dogs.  But my cats were a different story.  Polly didn’t have her own cats, and she found the existence of multiple felines in my house, co-existing with my dogs, nothing short of miraculous and amazing.  She would lie very very still in a room, observing cats, for what seemed like hours, a look of utter perplexity on her face.  Occasionally, something else swept through her gaze–when a cat would suddenly leap or run or behave provocatively in another way, Polly’s stare would become keener and her eyes would light up, and she seemed to be thinking about pouncing, and about how good a cat body would feel in her mouth.  She considered this idea, and then dismissed it as unseemly for a guest.  Polly’s understanding of appropriate social interaction clearly exceeded most humans’ ideas of etiquette.

My Wooly Bear was a different story–she was a German Shepherd/Border Collie mix, with a bone structure more like a hippo than a dog, another gentle giant.  But despite her size, Wooly Bear was frightened of just about everything– especially horses, which was unfortunate, as she lived on a horse ranch.  If a horse came anywhere near her, she would run for her life, and more than one young horse believed this to be an invitation to chase Wooly Bear.  Like Polly, Wooly Bear was as lovable as a dog could be.  She was, outside of her fears, completely happy, a delightful, blithe spirit.  Everything amused her, and her little stub of a tail would wriggle in happiness all the time.  Wooly Bear had a sense of humor–once, when she had the hiccups, I sat down next to her, and every time she hiccupped, I imitated her, and pretended to hiccup too.  After two or three times, she got the joke–her little tail started wagging, her ears went up, and she looked me in the eyes and put her big front paw on my chest–she thought this was hilarious.

Wooly also hated the heat–so she wasn’t happy when we moved to Texas.  One summer day, with the afternoon temperature well over 100 outside, and the air conditioning blasting inside, I let the dogs out–and they all went out the back door, except for Wooly Bear.  She stood there, at the open door, her little tail wagging, and looked up at me with her alert, amused mien.  “Go outside, Wooly,” I said, but she wouldn’t.  This stalemate went on for about a minute, and then Wooly did this hilarious thing–she ran away and hid.  The other dogs came in–no Wooly.  I searched the house–no Wooly.  After about an hour, she emerged from wherever she had been hiding, very pleased with this charade.

Polly and Wooly Bear will never be forgotten–they were both truly great dogs.  I know I miss them, and I guarantee DB does too.

I’ve been teaching the Nash online courses for a few years now, and it is something I truly love doing.  Before that, I was a professor of English at a small university in California, where I taught various literature courses and creative writing courses–I’ve always loved teaching, I guess.  I think the Nash online courses do a great job in providing a beginning student with a wealth of basic information about dogs, cats or horses–information that every pet care professional should have in her or his head, before he or she ever puts hands upon a client’s dog.  So i believe in the importance of the information in these courses.

I have, however, come to a conclusion about teaching that has changed my methodology and outlook on teaching forever.  I actually have come to believe that the subject matter of the course is unimportant–whether you’re teaching dog first aid, or European literature of the nineteenth century.  The subject matter is simply the vehicle for the actual purpose of teaching any class–and that purpose is to teach your students how to think.

Students get through school without ever learning how to think all too frequently.  They memorize information, regurgitate it on tests, and never learn how to analyze, synthesize or be creative with the material presented to them as the subject matter of the class.  This creates generations of automatons, or robots, or Stepford Wives, who know a lot, but understand little. 

For pet care professions, this is, in many ways, especially frightening–do you want some robot who doesn’t  know how to think creatively handling your dog and grooming your dog?  What if an accident happens–how does the robot handle the potentially life-threatening situation?

Everyone needs to learn how to think.  Those who work with animals need to learn how to think more than most.  For these reasons, my teaching methods have evolved over the years, so that no answer in a discussion is 100% right, and no question is ever completely answered.  The job of every teacher is to keep asking provocative questions that force the student to think afresh about the subject matter.  If a student demonstrates mastery (and thinking) about one aspect of the subject, another, deeper and more complex, question is called for.  The job of a teacher is not simply to teach–that is, to lay out the material in a comprehensible fashion.  The job of the teacher is to question and confound, so that the student comes to comprehension on his or her own, following the road signs posted along the path by the teacher, road signs which have arrows pointing in two directions, and the text: “Right or left?  You decide, based on what you’ve learned” on them.  Contrary to popular beliefs, this is what teaching is all about.

I’ve had an interesting couple of weeks. I was out petting and loving my favorite foals, and suddenly found myself flying through the air and hitting the ground, hard. I had no idea what was going on, and all I could do was attempt to keep my head from hitting the ground, which I did. When I got up, just a little bruised in various places, I saw a bite mark on the hip of the baby I’d been petting, my favorite, Kong, and realized that the ornery mare in the paddock, Piroette, had gotten jealous and run at Kong, biting him. Poor Kong, terrified, knocked me down in his attempt to flee Piroette’s jaws.

Then, just yesterday, I was weaning two foals. I had a friend helping, a big, strong fellow, who had the one foal pinned up against the wall so I could put a halter on her. This is the only foal that I haven’t been able to make friends with–she’s one of those who thinks humans smell terrible, and who looks at me like she’s seen my face on a wanted poster at the post office. When I attempted to get the halter over her nose, she bit me, hard, on the wrist, actually drawing blood, which is very unusual. I’d never been bitten by a foal before.

Friends ask me why I do this type of work, which can be dangerous. They just don’t understand why anyone would want to work with animals who can hurt or even kill you. This is a fair and relevant question, and is one anyone who works with any animals must consider.

There was a terrific show on television about a man in Alaska who lives in the middle of a forest, and whose home is a haven for grizzly bears and brown bears. He feeds them (which is illegal in Alaska, unless you are doing it while hunting them–an irony, of course, that you can feed bears which you intend to try to kill), and considers them friends and family–he naps with them, hugs them, pets them, names them, and one of them even comes into his kitchen to visit. He has been hurt by them, of course. Bears are a totally different kind of danger than horses–they are top-of-the-food-chain predators, and the instinct to kill is paramount in their brains. People always ask this man why he lives as he does, endangering his life on a minute-by-minute basis. But his love for these magnificent animals, and the way their existence moves him, was profound and deeply affecting. He lives with bears because he loves them more than anything else, and the risk he takes is more than outweighed by what these animals add to his life.

No matter what animals you work with, there is always danger–out of fear, out of predatory instinct, out of anger or bewilderment, animals will hurt you. If you work with animals, you will, eventually get hurt. In my experience, most horse-related injuries can be blamed, at least in part, on human error. In the first incident mentioned, I know better than to turn my back on Piroette. She is smart, a little nasty, and jealous, though I love her and enjoy caring for her (she’s also very pretty). But I was so involved in hugging Kong that I forgot all about Piroette. I’m guessing that, in a salon, most injuries also involve some type of error in judgment.

But if you love animals, you probably cannot imagine any other type of job or life. I know I can’t. So all we can do is attempt to be aware, prepared, and tuned in to all of the animals in our environment, and of anything that can go wrong. The rewards of working with animals far outweigh the possibility of injury–but any mistake can cost you dearly.

A recent news article declares that dogs are as intelligent as two-year-old children. I would love to know how scientists conducted tests, and what the tests included. When the intelligence of animals is tested, it is usually with such an ethnocentric bias that the tests are rendered meaningless. Intelligence is measured by the nature of human intelligence, a species bias that is unreasonable. Dogs and humans are not exactly alike in the way they interact with the world, and to measure dog intelligence by the same or similar standards that are used to measure human intelligence means that what is unique about dogs is not included in the measurement.

We all know that in many ways our dogs are smarter than two-year-old toddlers. I’d suggest that there are many ways to measure intelligence, among them the measurement of trainable intelligence, important for dogs, and emotional intelligence, important for all species, as well as the kind of intelligence measured in IQ tests. By considering these three types of intelligence, it should be clear that many dogs would excel at the first two, and fail miserably at the third.

The dog breeds with the most trainable intelligence (border collies, for example) must be considered far smarter than the normal two-year-old human. If you’ve ever been to a herding trial, you know that no two-year-old could do what a trained border collie can do. Some of these dogs must be considered geniuses because, utilizing their instincts and training, they are able to carry out amazing and independent feats of herding. Show me a two-year-old that can corral sheep!

By emotional intelligence, I mean the characteristics that define the manner in which a species interacts with the world–loyalty, love, compassion, generosity and the like. Humans are frequently lacking in these qualities–and this may be the reason the world is in such a mess today. Let dogs rule the world–they excel at emotional intelligence. Their pack instincts and their concern for the survival of their species and their families is far greater than what we humans are capable of. Most people who own dogs wouldn’t hesitate to agree with me when I say that dogs are far better than we are in terms of emotional intelligence.

But give a dog an IQ test, of the type that measures human intelligence, and of course the dog would fail miserably–it’s my guess that it is this type of test that tells scientists that a dog is the equal of a two-year-old. This, however, sheds no light on the nature of dogs and how smart they are. And think about other species–try giving an IQ test to cats! They probably wouldn’t score as well as the average human infant, yet we all know how smart our cats are–a recent news article discussed recent scientific findings about how successfully our cats manipulate us. Each species has its own kind of intelligence–by measuring other species by human standards, all that we really reveal is about ourselves, and how narcissistic we are in our considerations of the rest of the world. I’d suggest that dogs frequently judge us by dog standards, and find us equally lacking–the reason so many dogs believe they have to take control of their “pack” and become pack leaders, just as cats judge us lacking in our most basic faculties, and, pitying us, bring us mice and birds, left on our doorsteps, lest we starve to death.

Our cats manipulate us. Is this news? It was this week. A new study of cats determined that cats make a particularly unpleasant sound when they want something from us, akin to fingernails on a blackboard, and it almost always works. This highpitched, loud cross between a cry and a purr is a vocalization designed by cats to get us to do their bidding, and according to this new study, usually occurs when cats want food. We humans find this sound unbearable, and give our cats what they want when they screech in this manner.

My cats make this sound too, though not for food–they usually make it for attention. My cats have endless food available to them in a feeder that I fill, on average, once a week. They never go hungry. They do, however, compete for love. My Manxes want their tummies rubbed many times a day. My old cat, Meester, wants to sit on my lap and be stroked. My youngest cat, Daryushka, demands attention in general, and is perhaps the best example of a cat who makes this screeching sound to get what she wants; she also uses door jambs and walls as scratching posts to get my attention. My newest cat, a feral cat who moved into my barn recently and has since fallen madly in love with me and wants more than anything to be an only child, follows me around while I feed the horses, screeching at me for love. He also hisses and swats at my feet when he knows my feet are taking me back to the house when my work is done, which cracks me up–I’ve never seen a cat blame feet before. And he comes to my back screen door at night, and performs the most sultry dance, crying out and, when I come to look, rubbing on my porch furniture, rolling around, behaving in a seductive fashion to try to get me to let him into the house. Cats have plans for us, and are creative in attempting to get these plans to become a reality.

Our dogs understand us–again, is this news? Another recent study took a new look at an older study, which proved that dogs are far better at interpreting our emotions than primates, our closest cousins are. Dogs are tuned in to us more than any other species, and do a very good job at understanding both language and gesture. Unlike cats, they don’t have plans for us; they just want to understand our plans.

This, then, is the most basic difference between cats and dogs. Cats make no attempt to understand us–they don’t care about our hopes, fears, dreams and desires. Instead, they try in any and every way possible to get us to fulfill their desires and, if my cats are indicative, are usually successful. Dogs, on the other hand, seek to be our partners in carrying out our desires, if they can only understand. This temperamental difference reminds me of recent studies done about birth order and the way it affects personality–eldest children are independent and adventurous, with their own agendas, while middle children are people-pleasers who are less adventurous but more tuned in to the needs of others. A family made up of both cats and dogs would seem to be the ideal here–cats and dogs create for humans a simulacrum of the family, a balance. Don’t we all desire to be both seduced and understood?