I was watching the news last night and saw a feature they did on how the mortgage crisis affects the dogs that people have to give up when they lose their homes to foreclosure. Many people are forced to move to an apartment that does not accept animals. The report focused mainly on dogs and how over-crowding is now occurring in many areas due to this. It is heartbreaking to see what people go through when they have to leave their animals behind or give them up because of life’s occurrances, but this raises the question of how do the dogs feel when they are left behind, in an unfamiliar place, and watch their only friend that they have known possibly all of their lives, walk away for the last time.
To put this into perspective, dogs do not “think” like we humans “think.” Theirs is a world of instinct and acting on trained behavior or “cause and affect.” Much of what we feel toward our pets is born out of our own projected image of that animal and what they mean to our individual lives. We sometimes “humanize” them to a level of comprehension that they cannot possibly reach. I am guilty of this with Butch as you can read throughout this blog and the upcoming book. This is not to say that dogs have no feelings for their owners but they do view us, in my opinion, as an extremely smart, large dog, and one of their family pack. They are, in most cases, a very social animal and they cannot reach this level of sociability without having some instinct or inner value system that tells them how they feel about a certain person or situation. I have never hit Butch once in our nearly 4 years together, yet when I scold him, which is quite rare now, he cowers, folds his ears back , and retreats to his cage until I tell him to come out. If I raise my voice on the phone which is also rare, he will retreat to his cage but he always comes back out on his own. This proves that he is capable of discerning the situation, he can tell when he has done something wrong, and when I am raising my voice and it is not directed at him. This type of understanding endears dogs to us and causes us to recognize that dogs do have feelings to a great degree. They have the most basic instinct of fight or flight but they also possess deeper feelings of affection for those around them on a more consistent basis. They show it in so many different ways that it’s hard to see them all. I think that there are many people that see this as an opportunity to love another being when they are left alone in life for whatever reason. A dog is something that is capable of accepting love and yes, I think they can return that love also. A dog can and does fill a void created by the loss of a loved one, for the elderly who are alone, and even younger single people who are alone.
There are many people in the world that have so much love to give yet no other being there with them to accept it, let alone return love to them. The giving and accepting of love is one of life’s most basic needs and pleasures. It is a shame that anyone should have to go without it. There are many people who are depressed, brokenhearted, and poor in spirit because of this dead end of emotions. There are also many depressed, brokenhearted dogs in pounds and shelters through no fault of their own with this same problem.
I feel that they would do a world of good for each other if we could just get these two types of individuals together. Keep in touch with your local shelters and help find these deserving animals someone new to love. It would do them both a world of goodand help fill the void!
