And the dog said woof

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, animals, psychology

I once heard of a dog that could respond appropriately to about 200 spoken commands. Considering that no human has yet to understand what dogs' barking means (except maybe "Hey, there!"), who is the better linguist? From this I infer that, if a dog could be given the power of speech, it would probably have at least a few things to say; they can process speech, they just can't produce it.

In Soul of a Dog: Reflections on the Spirits of the Animals of Bedlam Farm, Jon Katz ruminates on a deeper question than speech: how and what do they think? His main conclusion is that animals think differently than we do, in ways we cannot imagine.

The book's title contains the modern confusion of soul with spirit. They are different things. Considered as psychological organs—and keeping only humans in view for the moment—, the Soul is our personality and includes the functions of thought, emotion, and decision, while the human Spirit has the functions related to God-consciousness and morality, including conscience, discernment and fellowship. In a God-believing person, soul and spirit work intimately together, which leads to the frequent confusion. The best reference on the mechanics of these "inner parts" is The Spiritual Man by Watchman Nee.

The Catholic doctrine of the soul, which also embodies the confusion of soul with spirit, considers the soul the entire immortal part of a person. The soul is described as that part which is taken upon death to heaven (for a believer) or to hell. What the Bible actually says is that at Christ's second coming, the believers will be raised from the grave. It says nothing about them being brought from heaven for this resurrection. Rather, at the end, the eternal City of God, AKA "new Jerusalem", is written to descend from the new heaven to the new earth, where it will be the dwelling of God and His people. Folks, we aren't going to heaven, we're going to a restored Earth. And plenty of Bible verses mention that animals will be there.

The whole of Soul of a Dog is stories of various animals the author has observed, and the extraordinary things he has seen among his dogs, sheep, goats, donkeys, cattle, and a cat. I can put these together with stories of, not just other mammals, but geese and other birds which are also among those creatures that, when you look at them, look right back and seem to have some opinion about you. They may think differently, but they do think.

In one chapter, a friend of the author's who is a preacher tries to disabuse him of the notion of animal souls, saying they can't choose to believe God and so can't "go to heaven". Then Katz wonders if they must go to hell. Jon, I can tell you, no. If the Bible is your authority, it tells us that when animals die, they die to nothingness: neither heaven nor hell. They just go out like a burnt-out light.

Along the way, though, they sure have behaviors more complex than most people would credit. The personalities of his three dogs are as different as the huge diversity of humans; we all know people who are "all work and no play", like his border collie Rose; some who exist only to love and be loved, like his Labrador Lenore; and some who can relate to, and cheer up, just about anybody, like his other border collie Izzy. Izzy is the one he takes to the hospice on a regular basis. One cannot imagine taking Rose.

Lenore has even befriended one of the rams, something that puzzles everyone else, dog and man (and sheep) alike. Even more befuddling, one of the hens, Henrietta, seems to have a lot more "on the ball" than the other hens, and has co-opted one of the donkeys for occasional transportation. Any other chicken would become a kick-smear, but not her.

The author devotes about half of all the stories to Rose. Though she is devoted to him, she lives to work. Not one for being petted or cuddled, she only seeks personal attention when she has a medical need. Otherwise, she just wants to herd sheep. She would herd the andirons around the fireplace if she could induce them to move. She has learned that donkeys and goats can't be herded, so they leave one another alone. She is able to help Katz control the cattle when needed. Her understanding of all that herding requires, and ability to get right to the requisite task, often amaze him.

It is a given that animals are not deep thinkers. The stories here show that they are not as shallow as is commonly believed. It is only in the recent generation or two that large numbers of people began to think of their pets as family members. Yet for many generations, those who kept animals that they didn't intend to promptly kill for food have usually come to respect them, even love them. I've seen the way a farmer of the old school and his plow horses greet one another daily. A Percheron weighs 10-15 times as much as the heaviest dog; imagine a Labrador's enthusiasm in a Volvo-sized animal!

Yet the love on their part is probably a result of the single great, unequal fact of the relationship: we feed them. Without their owner, the animals would not be fed. Yes, many animals can go feral and learn to fend for themselves. But they don't know this a priori. And this explains much of their social skill, and our lack of it. They—dogs most especially—really need to be able to read us. We have no such need, except in certain narrow areas related to mutual work. For example, a fowl hunter learns to recognize a Point by a pointer (said Point being an exaggeration of a posture that hunting dogs have used for ages to communicate with one another), and other hunters learn the different baying sounds of their out-of-sight hounds on the chase. But we aren't in danger of death for a social misstep; our animals are.

Not having read his other books (yet), I don't know just what prompted Jon Katz to buy a farm, save that it was a consequence of his knowing his first border collie, Orson. Wherever he is, he observes his animals and remembers. He has let us in on some of these fragrant memories.