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Sabrina I love Sabrina, and she loves me. I confess I don’t know the exact meaning of what I have just said, but it is as close to describing what I think is true about our relationship as any other way of expressing it, and way shorter than my other attempts. I know that “love” and “joy” and “think” are complicated concepts that humans can understand. I don’t know what dogs “understand,” but I bet it is not much like what we think they do. “Love,” “joy,” and “think” are human terms. I don’t know the corresponding “dog view,” but I can’t go through this whole article putting quotation marks around every concept. Please accept the fact that I understand that we “think” differently. If Sabrina has not been with me for a while and she senses me in a crowded room, she becomes very excited. She races to me immediately. Actually, that is true for every place on earth except one; if we are in the main room of my house, she rushes immediately to the cabinet where I keep her food and toys and sits there, looking at me with great anticipation. It is not the food she wants, but her toys. I need to bring them all out, or she will dig into the cabinet until I do. When they are all lined up on the rug, she picks her favorite ball and starts circling the room, challenging everyone to try to take it from her. If no one seems interested, she goes directly to the person who seems least interested, and drops the ball on his foot. What Sabrina is thinking is a source of continual fascination to me. I realize many of you will say, “Get a life!” I assure you, I “have a life.” My answer to you is, “Develop some imagination.” I am always empathetic to animals, but because I love Sabrina, empathy and curiosity become fascination. Perhaps you, like so many people, feel that you have to justify the fact that you love your pet, and in some way you have to apologize for it. You don’t have to do either, but you will have a wonderful time if you try to understand it. Sabrina knows how everything in life is supposed to be done, and becomes quite impatient at how slow the rest of us are to see the obvious. She has a way of playing ball, and if you try to play it your way, she will insist on teaching you the right way. She loves predictability, and fears anything that might separate her from people. She panics when she suspects that separation from me is imminent. I suppose that if I never knew what I would be asked to do, and were totally dependent on people for food, water, and companionship, it would make me a little nervous, too. Sabrina has many different barks. Some people laugh at me when I say this, but it is absolutely true. Someone said recently that when dogs bark, they are saying, “warning!” That person needs to learn to listen more carefully. I have become aware of the meaning of many of these attempts at communication. I can be in another room, and usually I can tell what she wants. I have names for these barks: Let me out. Help! My ball is stuck under the couch! Someone is coming! I see Sherry! This last is my favorite. There is a perch by my living room window on the top of my couch where Sabrina sits when she wants to survey the world. From this spot, she can watch my next-door neighbor, Sherry, as she comes and goes. Once she sees her, she puts her ears back and bays. I call it her “Sherry woowoo.” She and Sherry are great friends, and no one but Sherry can elicit this sound from her. She also has a growl that I recognize the minute I hear it. She rolls over on her back on top of her ball and squirms ecstatically while growling constantly. This is Sabrina’s method of announcing that this is a benevolent universe. I call it her “ I am rich and life is good” growl. One of the clearest examples of a benevolent universe is the evolution of the connection between man and dogs. Nathaniel Branden wrote that we love dogs because they make us feel visible. He and Barbara had a dog named Muttnik, and, one day, while playing tug-of-war with Muttnik, he realized that Muttnick “saw” him. I believe that is a large part of what dogs give us, but it is not all. Wolves are playful when they are puppies, but outgrow it in adulthood. For people, dogs are a great improvement. They remain playful all their lives. It’s a dirty job, keeping us amused, but somebody has to do it! People don’t pick dogs; dogs pick people. No matter how we treat them, if a dog has decided you are his guy, you are his guy. Many of us don’t deserve such loyalty. I am touched by this devotion, and I try very hard to live up to it. If I am sitting on the couch and there are other people in the house, Sabrina will often jump up, come over to me, and sit with her back pressed up against me. I am still learning what this means. I have it down to two possibilities; “He is mine”, or “This is a safe place where I can check out things and see what is going on.” Either way, it is an honor that I have earned by being consistent and predictable with her. Sabrina is a healer, too. When she was a puppy, I went through some terribly difficult chemotherapy, which led to an extended period of chemically-induced depression. She knew something was wrong, and stayed by me with a fierce loyalty. What a comfort she was for me! Sabrina has always been important in my life, but when I have been sick, or unhappy, or alone, she has given me treasured companionship. I don’t know what dogs sense, but I know that she often realizes that I am leaving the house before I have consciously decided to do so. She knows my behavior patterns and knows where they will lead me before I do. She also loves my partner Sergio and follows him everywhere. She lies by his feet at night, and looks at him with adoration. (I have been known to do that myself, on occasion.) Sabrina was the only source of communication that I had with Tjie for a long period of time. She helped us to keep trying to communicate through a difficult transition from partners to friends. I know the relative worth of things. I have a definite hierarchy of values. I am deeply aware of the importance of friendship, and my love for my friends and my partner is at the center of my existence. But I have plenty of room for Sabrina, and I know that if I made light of it, I would betray my honest feelings. If any of you have questioned that I am a blithering, wallowing, sentimental, romantic, bliss-loving, hopeless optimist, it is my hope that this article will remove all doubts. But you must know that I am all these things because the universe is a beautiful place to be. I am all these things, but I am also a realist. This week, Sabrina turns nine years old. If I could straighten out some of the mistakes creation made with reality, somewhere on the middle of page one I would insert the line, “Man and dog: same lifespan.” Whatever happens and whenever, Sabrina and I are having a wonderful time together sharing this world. The world is a wonderful place to be. I have a constant reminder of this truth whenever I look into Sabrina’s eyes.
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