Anthropomorphism and the Stray Beetle

When I began this blog I had an idea that in looking after my dog I would learn some profound truths about the relationship between man and beast and in the process earn a life-changing epiphany or two about very nature of humanity.

Well that hasn't quite happened but I did learn two things this week.

The first was about the different approaches that man and dog have to the conduct of scientific enquiry and how fatal it can be to mistake our methodology for those of our four-legged pals.

My dog's chief analytical tool is what I call Freddie's Razor. It's an intellectual instrument whose lack of subtlety is made up for by its immediacy and it consists of dividing the world into things which can be sniffed and chewed on the one hand, and on the other hand things which can only be sniffed. It's a taxonomical approach whose narrow focus may be criticised, but its devastating effectiveness cannot be denied.

It is essential when collaborating on a piece of research to make sure that all parties have an agreed methodological approach. Failure in this regard can lead to things like the fiasco that was reported a few years ago when French and American scientists who were supposed to be co-operating on a joint project to Mars found their plans collapse when they discovered that the Americans had been using imperial units and the French had been using SI metric units. Did that really happen? Perhaps not, but these cultural differences can have serious implications for research.

The other day, for instance, on one of our lengthy rambles, we encountered a beetle by the side of the road. It was a large grey-pink thing with a sort of dusty green shimmer, unlike any beetle I had seen, certainly in Ireland, and although I am no entomologist I was curious to identify the thing.

When trying to identify an insect I try to find out as much about the thing as I can looking for clues that will place the insect in a taxonomic order. Ten questions (listed on insects.about.com) can be very useful in providing an approach to indentifying an insect, questions like "If it has wings, are the wings leathery, hairy, membranous, or covered in scales?" "Do the antennae appear threadlike or are they club-shaped? Do they have an elbow or bend?" "What about its goddam mandibles, already?" And so on.

I had just identified it as definitely a beetle by its hard veined forewings but could not decide about the nature of its mouthparts so I consulted with my partner, saying "Hey, Freddie! Look at this! Look at this little fella, eh? What do you think of him, doggy? Isn't that a nice old beetle?" Freddie left his inspection of a nearby gatepost and joined me to examine the beetle, taking the specimen in his jaws and chewing it with an unpleasant crunching sound before swallowing it. Naturally, although it proved to his satisfaction that the creature fell into the category "that which is chewable", it rendered my own work into the identification of the beetle practically useless.

And this is the problem with anthropomorphism: that we assume our own ways are the ways of other species. It's a lamentable arrogance that sets true communication back years and I am only sorry that I had to learn this lesson the hard way.

(The other thing I learned it, by the way, is that dogs should probably not eat beetles. Freddie threw up on the carpet later that day. A direct causality between the coleopterophagy and the vomiting has yet to be conclusively established but early research suggests a direct link.)

Making our own entertainment

Last night as I got on my bus, after going to my Irish class, and having discussed with a colleague some of the finer points of the language question over a patriotic pint on the eve of the Feast of St Patrick, I found to my pleasure a discarded copy of The Irish Times.

Have you ever tried to piece together a discarded copy of The Irish Times in the elbow-stifling confines of a Dublin Bus seat, with the glow of patriotism fizzing in your veins? Well it's hard, particularly in these days of the various "metro-seized" excrescences that pollute our daily lives, phenomena that have had a degenerating effect on the wrists of an entire generation of Irish newspaper-folders. The staples in the tabloid Irish Independent represent the infantilising effect of the modern world on a once-proud race.

Such thoughts served to steel me against the reluctance of the unruly newspaper as it dodged my grasp, defied my authority and wrestled to assert the power of chaos over civilisation. To begin with it seemed a simple task, a matter of finding the front page and folding it back from the inside to the outside. The wily rag would not be beaten so easily, however. For not only were the individual sections all over the place, they were folded in upon each other and assembled with such a disgusting disrespect for the moral and physical order of the world that they seemed the device of some diabolical agent of Chaos.

I was not put off. I am devoted to the principles of Apollo and messiness of any kind sets my heart to revolt. I improvised a cunning taxonomical method whereby I classified the contents of the newspaper not according to each segments general "feel" but by observing the order of the numerals printed on the top of each page. This effacement of personal taste in submission to a larger guiding principle is the very cornerstone of my artistic philosophy.

I managed then to arrange the business section and the cleverly inverted sports page, the pages dealing with World News, letters and Opinion and Analysis, Home News, Arts, Features and television. Some pages slipped to the floor and had to be retrieved; one had to be held in my mouth as I wrestled the broad pages into submission. More than once the whole thing fell apart and I will admit that more than once I was tempted to give in. Fellow passengers on the 44 bus may this morning count themselves privileged to have witnessed my struggle, physical and spiritual, with the renegade newspaper. It was a test of determination, dexterity and sheer guts to rope, wrestle and beat the paper bare of all its creases. By the time I applied an authoritative hand to smooth the broadsheet against the back of the bus seat, I was already in Dundrum and a little out of breath.

I sat, settled, and perused the dealings of the world, and my labours were rewarded because there was an article about a (sort-of) new play by celebrated English poet and dramatist William Shakespeare and an interesting thing about the current diplomatic crisis between the US and Israel.

Anyway, the point is - is this the way my dog thinks about the frenzied attacks he makes on the little corduroy coat which was a present from one of his admirers? If so he lives a very fulfilling life.

A Bone of Contention

Last night I found myself waiting up until nearly two while my dog was out having fun. He might as well have been guzzling vodka from a bottle concealed in the toilets of a teenage disco. I sat watching my grown-up television programme while he was off doing something in the garden. Occasionally I went out and called his name weakly, but all I could hear in the freezing dark was the dog running away from me, hiding from the majesty of my authority and snorfling away as he nibbled on a bone. I couldn't chase him in the dark and he absolutely refused to come when called, so I waited up muttering comforting words to myself until he decided to come in, at around what-kind-of-time-do-you-call-this.

Since the staking of a new fence in the back garden it has been a pleasure to let Freddie have the run of the garden. I believe it is good for his intellectual and moral development to conduct private research into the various smells to be found in the garden, the chewability of various sticks, etc, but he discovered a breach in security yesterday so I was concerned to keep an eye on him.

He was out there for nearly two hours, between Vincent Browne and the end of Mad Men, and no amount of cajoling would induce him to chew whatever he was chewing in the sociable warmth of the family hearth. I understand that a dog needs his private bone time, but it puzzled me that he should be quite so determined to remain outside.

Then I remembered that the bone he was working on - a very large bone for such a small dog, what looks like the swivelling ball of a cow's hip, shiny and perfectly round and covered with delicious gristle - was in the most literal sense possible, a bone of contention between us. I got it for him several weeks ago to reward his stout courage while getting his stitches out, and for a while it seemed that bone might have had him beaten. He had difficulty getting a purchase on the slick sphere of bone with his small jaws, and it seemed too heavy for him to carry comfortably. Frankly I was a little disappointed in the animal, that he should have let himself be bested by a bone, but I didn't think much of it when the thing seemed to disappear from the house, like an unused exercise machine.

Anyway, this was the same bone that turned up again last night and I was reminded that it had been the centre of an ugly scene between us. Some time in January I removed Freddie from the leather sofa in the kitchen, and I instructed him to take the bone with him (I'm not going to get into the appropriateness of otherwise of not wanting the leather sofa polluted by bits of bone right now). This was the first and only time that the dog growled at me in a non-playful way, the growl of a dog being separated from his bone. It has been argued that I should have let him be, but the principles of law and order in this house demanded that I smack him very sharply on the nose and throw him violently into a small dark room. (The fact that I collapsed in remorse and begged forgiveness as I released him a few minutes later does not detract from the forceful and decisive manner with which I responded to this threat to the social order.)

I don't know what to think about all this. Why did the bone resurface after so long? Could Freddie's refusal to work on his project indoors be related to the painful memory of our first fight? It's confusing. In any case I now have to find and act on this security breach, but I am glad that a) there was something on television while I kept my vigil and b) that the dog has finally shown himself the master of the recreant bone. Still it gives me a little pang of loss to think that I can never fully enter into the private thoughts of my poor old pup, although of course that is as it should be.

Domestication of the dog

I have just turned in the work that I was doing, so it's time to start paying attention to my poor old dog again.

When I first got Freddie, a friend was telling me about his determination to find a wife. He's a man in his early thirties and I suppose he considers it about time that he established a house and did his bit for the family line or something. Anyway, he accused me of in some way neglecting my duty to society by giving up on women in favour of this pup of mine. While it is flattering to think that what the country really needs in these difficult times is more of my genetic material in it, my immediate response was to scoff at my friend's rebuke, but maybe he had a point.

For a start, apart from various misguided mortgages and things, my domestic arrangement with my dog is the single biggest and longest-term commitment I have ever made. All going well, little Fred will live for another fifteen years or so and in the meantime I am responsible for him every day of his life. That's longer than a lot of marriages. Also, since I live alone, the dog is the thing I come home to. Walking him is the single constant in my daily routine, holidays if I have them have to be planned around him. We spend a lot of time together. We are in a sort of honeymoon period, granted, but we seem to have found a natural working rhythm to our days.

So does this mean I am married to my dog? I don't think so, but it is amazing how much sustenance the animal gives me and maybe it's not total nonsense to suggest that since I have a seemingly limitless supply of affection and hassle at home, I am less motivated to go out and wive. (And can we please, just for the moment, for once, leave the subject of sex out of this? Can we agree on that? Thank you.)

Hmm, reading back over that I do sound like some kind of cynical misogynist, which I hope I am not, but perhaps it does suggest a different model for my domestic arrangement. Rather than a marriage maybe what we have going on here is one of those old-fashioned households where two old bachelors sit and smoke pipes in the nineteenth century. Certainly Freddie is a confirmed bachelor, as in confirmed surgically.

The other way of looking at my relationship with this dog is as some kind of child-parent thing (this is the view propounded by a married friend, as yet with no kids). I can see the justness of the comparison, but I don't think it accords either of us much credit. Besides, the little savage would chew the nipples off me.

Sedition

I have been kind of busy lately and neglecting this but before I go back to work, I want to make a point about the deplorable political apathy among dogs.

Freddie is a good dog. He is more or less house-trained, well-mannered to children, respectful of his elders and pretty good about not chewing stuff he's not supposed to. In fact his status as a good dog depends on all this. But the dog remains fundamentally an animal stranger in a human world. He is kept apart from other dogs, he is forced to comply with human laws which must seem completely arbitrary and capricious to a dog of Freddie's intellect and sensitivity to natural justice. He strains at the leash when he sees other dogs and calls to them in the same way as I would call to another human if I encountered one on another planet. "What the hell is going on here?" I would ask, "Who are these oddly shaped people? Are there others of our kind? Do they have meetings I could go to?"

I suppose dogs and people have been living together with no major breakdown in relations for thousands of years, and little yokes like Fred have probably been catching rats and things for us for hundreds of years at least, but blood is thicker than water and when a dog sees a dog, he knows it's a dog, and it must remind him of their shared alienation in a foreign world.

And yet, he whimpers with pleasure when he sees his leash being unhooked from the wall. He dances with giddiness when I fix a tether to his neck and lead him by the throat like a slave in a Roman triumph. Personally, and because of certain inherited loyalties, I am on the side of the imperialist human oppressor over the loyal and humble dog race, but a less partisan observer might be disappointed to see the lack of political maturity that seems characteristic of most dogs. But then, I suppose it's always a danger with an enslaved population, who have more to lose than their leashes, that they end up internalising the logic of the oppressor. It's what makes him a good dog.

Hats

I take Freddie on his daily walk up and around my immediate neighbourhood, a place which retains wistful memories of being something close to countryside, even though it is buried under a spreading blanket of suburban housing.

So what this means is that I am not the only person out there walking in wet weather. There are joggers and pairs of speedwalking ladies and the odd woman with a baby in a buggy (the baby, let's hope, experiencing the rain on its clear plastic cover as something melancholic and psychedelic rather than feeling like a processed chicken left in a shopping trolley). If it is raining and I am feeling gloomy I find myself judging these people - especially the speedwalkers since I find it difficult not to be a little judgemental of speedwalkers at the best of times - but I also find myself wondering how I appear to my neighbours as I rove out with the little dog trotting along beside me. Some young mothers give me distinctly hostile looks as I pass, others give a friendly little smile and a nod to the dog. Some give me a look that seems to say "Yeah, right you think your dog is cute. My child surpasses the living shit out of your stupid dog when it comes to both cuteness and responsibility." I may be too sensitive.

Dog walkers tend to either give a firm and friendly nod of solidarity or else avoid eye contact altogether, depending largely on whether or not one of our dogs looks like it may be trying to ride the other. I haven't figured out the complex nexus of solidarity, competition and wariness that seems to constitute the casual encounter between dog owners. I'll keep an eye on it.

But I think I look the part out walking the dog. I feel like I am cutting, if not a dash, then at the very least something resembling a figure. I have got into the habit of wearing one of my dad's old hats when it rains. It's a grey felt trilby or possibly a grey felt fedora (I do not - to my very great shame - know the difference between a trilby and a fedora). It's quite a grown-up looking hat, and not something to be worn by a callow boy. I feel quite responsible and respectable walking along with my nice little dog and my grey felt hat, although I am not certain if that is how I appear to others, particularly when Freddie and I take a detour through my old primary school. I sometimes think it would be nice to bump into an old teacher from primary school and introduce them to my dog, but there is a strong possibility that they would consider me an undesirable type and call the Guards. (My image as a solidly respectable citizen may be compromised a little by the rainbow scarf which I have sometimes worn out. If I were a primary school teacher I would look askance at a man in a rainbow scarf walking a puppy around a primary school, no matter how distinguished their trilby or fedora.)

Or homburg, but I'm pretty sure it's not a homburg.

Dogshit and the Responsible Citizen

What do you think when you see a person bending over to pick up a lump (if they are lucky) of dogshit while their dog waits with an air of patient condescension to get on with its walk? Do you think "There goes a responsible pet-owner fulfilling his or her civic function with regard to their dog and showing the correct consideration for his or her fellow citizens!" or do you think "Look at that poor sap picking up dogshit, and note also the smirk on the dog's face..."?

The picking up of dogshit is not something I really want to dwell on, but the question of cleaning up after your dog throws light on a person's approach to their civic duties. I don't throw litter and I have even been known on a rare occasion to pick up somebody else's (I also rescue earthworms who find themselves stranded on the concrete after rain, but that is a slightly different matter) but I do find it hard to stoop to handle and dispense with Freddie's excrement. I feel a curious mix of heroism and humiliation when I place a plastic bag in my pocket before a walk.

My current policy is largely influenced by whether or not the dog has been observed shitting, and where. If I'm on a country road and nobody is about I am happy to consider the dog's droppings a gift to nature and a contribution to the country air; if I am near houses and bins I make the effort to demonstrate my sense of civic spirit by bending over to pick the shit up. If the dog has been observed by another pedestrian and the pedestrian looks like they might have an opinion about a dog-turd being left in their path, I generally do the right thing; but if the incident is observed by slow-moving traffic, I tend to hover over the shit, looking like I am going to do something about it, and then proceed when the traffic is out of the way.

I also don't know if I am more embarrassed to be seen picking up the dog shit or not picking up the dog shit. I should really have developed enough of a sense of my own self, and of right and wrong, not to be so easily led by the opinions of others, but there you go.

What does my unprincipled approach to dogshit tell me about the deeper workings of my soul? Well, for one thing, my conscience requires a public. The continued dance of seduction between my sense of duty and my personal convenience is conducted through the specific circumstances of Freddie's crapping. I hope some day to achieve an ungrudging and unsupervised sense of responsibility to my fellow citizens when it comes to this, but while I am working towards this state of political maturity I can only promise to try to overcome my natural selfishness for the good of my neighbours and, indeed, of the country and the Irish people generally.