Canine Night Vision

The Forces of Dog

In a dream Josie was with me as a little kid, running though golden, mid-western fields. The little girl me says, "I wish Josie would have really been my dog when I was a kid; she would have been perfect for me." 

Some people say that animals don't have emotions as we humans do, that we project our own dramatic feelings onto dogs and such, and that when they do seem to exhibit human emotions that it is just an automatic reaction coming from instinct."Oh, that's just animal instinct," they say, as if instinct is just some sort of base component of a lesser species. Instinct is the higher, the spiritual intelligence of the animal. We people are estranged from this intelligence because of the unnatural way in which we have become accustomed to living.

 Dogs don't have a front brain, even though they would probably like one because they are always trying to communicate verbally with humans, who are mostly too dense to interpret dog-language even after hundreds of years of dog/human interaction. Animals respond emotionally all of the time. Because there is no analytical function to analyze a response before expressing it, there is no delay between experience and expression. When you do something that an animal does not like, that hurts or threatens it, it will immediately let you know. There is no social filter analyzing if it would be impolite to, say, try and bite your ankle after you just stepped on its paw trying to go around it in the hallway. There is no part of the animal mind that is invested in trying to convince other parts that is is imagining things, hallucinating, or overreacting. For that reason they are more in direct contact with reality and more present on the physical plane, than we are.

 Anyone that has owned a dog like a Border Collie or Australian Shepherd knows that they smile from ear to ear when they are happy. The joy emanating from them at these times is so palpable that it is impossible to escape the notice of even the most emotionally oblivious of us.  That's why they have dog therapy (for humans) as a private therapy and in institutions now. Dogs are full of warmth and love, which is why we cannot resist a puppy, and why dog lovers will go the extra mile for the care and protection of dogs. Dog lovers don't just love dogs, they adore them, idolize them; a form of idolatry that marketing execs in turn, adore.