For the Love of Man’s Best Friend

by Bill Peak

Growing up, my family always had a dog; on at least one occasion, we had two. But the first dog I ever had in my own right was a Norwegian elkhound mix I adopted out in New Mexico. Tristram’s dam was a pure-breed, but, from his size, I always suspected he’d been sired by a coyote. And his semi-wildness fitted my own in those days—I was twenty-two and liked to think of myself as foot-loose and fancy-free.

But however foot-loose and fancy-free I was, I still had a fairly typical, middle-class notion of how my dog should behave. I had grown up watching Lassie on TV, and one of the things I had always liked about Lassie was that she slept with Timmy on his bed. As a little boy I had spent hours trying to get our family dogs to sleep with me like the television pooch, but none of them ever took to the practice. And it turned out Tristram was of the same ilk. Every time I coaxed him into jumping up on a bed, he just as promptly jumped back down again.

But he was an otherwise wonderful companion. He camped with me at Chaco Canyon; climbed with me to the top of the falls at Nambé Pueblo; and, in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo, we saw our first pronghorn together. Still, I missed having some canine company in my bed. Fortunately, however, within a year or two of acquiring Tristram, I was acquired in turn by Melissa McLoud—and my bed has never felt lonely since.

Melissa and Tristram had a close relationship. Once, when we were living in Northern Virginia, he showed just how close that relationship could be. On a night whose date I no longer recall, Melissa stepped next door to borrow, of all things, a cup of sugar. As soon as the door closed behind her, Tristram did something he had never done before: he walked over, sat down in front of the door, and carefully placed his nose against its surface. When I called to him, he refused to budge and, statue-like, remained there till Melissa came home a few minutes later.

For the next hour, Tristram would not leave my wife alone. He followed her around the house and, whenever she sat, he sat at her feet, watching her closely. None of this was like anything he had ever done before, and Melissa and I were both equally mystified. Then, about an hour later, my wife went deathly pale and had to lie down to keep from fainting. It soon became evident some kind of medical emergency was afoot and I called an ambulance. At the hospital, the doctors determined that a cyst had ruptured in one of Melissa’s ovaries and, somehow, Tristram had sensed it before she did.

But the incident that really solidified this semi-wild canid’s place in my heart occurred not long after Melissa’s father—at a too early age—passed away. For some time after his death, the love of my life suffered a great sadness. One day, while I was away at work, Melissa found herself sitting on our bed upstairs quietly weeping. After a minute or two, she felt the mattress shift beneath her. Turning, she discovered Tristram sitting on the bed beside her, forehead wrinkled, eyes dark with concern.

So far as I know, that was the only time Tristram ever willingly got up on a bed. But for the rest of his long and active life, that good dog could do no wrong in my eyes.

I’ve been thinking of these things because of a book I found in the 500s during one of my strolls through the Talbot County Free Library’s fabled aisles. Jeffrey Masson’s Dogs Never Lie About Love: Reflections on the Emotional World of Dogs was a bit of a surprise for me. Given that the author trained as a psychoanalyst, I was expecting a book that told me the latest science on canine intelligence and behavior. But Masson also has a doctorate in Sanskrit from Harvard, and his book—as its subtitle suggests—ends up being more of a meditation upon the mental life of dogs than a science text.

But it is a meditation by an author who has done an immense amount of reading on his subject, quoting sources as rich and diverse as Voltaire, Montaigne, Kafka, and Freud. And the stories he digs up! There are rescue dogs that become depressed if, searching through the site of a plane crash or tornado, they find only dead bodies. So now and then their handlers have to conceal a live person among the wreckage to allow the dog the sort of success that makes it happy.

Then there was the dog brought in to be the companion of an elderly Japanese professor who sometimes forgot his way home when he exited his train. Every day at the appointed hour, this animal faithfully trotted down to the neighborhood train station, sat, and waited for his master. But a day came when the professor failed to appear. Unbeknownst to the dog, the man had suffered a coronary in his office and died. Nevertheless, the next day, and every day thereafter for the rest of its life, this wonderful animal insisted upon walking down to the train station to wait upon his friend, a friend he clearly hoped might yet someday return.

Masson’s speculations on the mental and emotional life of dogs range far and wide. One of my favorites involves canine dreams. Masson makes a good case for the fact dogs have excellent, long-term memory. Given this capacity, Masson wonders about the content of dogs’ dreams. When we see their legs twitching or their lips fluttering as they sleep, we imagine they dream of the chase. But who’s to say they may not be dreaming about running toward some object of their affections, their owner perhaps, or even their mother?

Dogs were the first animal we humans ever domesticated. For thousands of years they helped us hunt, guarded our encampments, and—many believed—accompanied us into the afterlife. Today, they guide us when we’re disabled, comfort us when we’re ill or unhappy, and read with our little ones in the children’s section of the Talbot County Free Library. And who’s to say, following us everywhere else, they may still follow us into the afterlife as well. For reasons lost in the depths of evolutionary time, these splendid creatures have come to love us unconditionally. It is a relationship unlike any other in the animal world. We owe it to them to study and honor that relationship as they study and honor it.