A Big Little Life

extends only to human beings, that other living things on this Earth are pretty much like the low-paid extras that fill out crowd scenes in movies. I suppose they must interpret the biblical admonition that God knows of every sparrow’s death to mean not that He cares for all of His creatures in this fallen world, but instead that He has a worldwide surveillance system so awesome that even Homeland Security could not replicate it.
    A few correspondents reject the concept of human exceptionalism and believe that any animal is superior to any person. If I ascribe human qualities and characteristics to a dog, these folks feel that I am demeaning canines.
    Finally, an animal psychologist or a zoologist, or a naturalist of another kind, will assure me that the human qualities and emotions I see in dogs are not what they appear to be, that the mind of any animal is radically different from ours. Depending on their area of expertise, they will assert all manner of astonishing things: that a dog has no sense of its individuality, no true self-awareness, as we do; that a dog’s mind is insufficiently complex to engender emotions; that a dog cannot reason from a cause to an effect.
    Nonsense.
    All of us, scientists and nonscientists alike, find it difficult almost to the point of impossibility to see the world through another human being’s mind, which is why we’re continually surprised by what even our friends and neighbors are capable of doing. The serial killer next door is routinely described as a quiet, nice, ordinary guy by those who imagined that they knew him.
    What a leap it then is to insist that we can know absolutely how the mind of another species works. The great advantages of a mutual language and a shared culture fail us daily in our efforts to understand our own kind. With dogs, the experts have only theory. Evidently, the prospect that the world at its deepest level rests on a mystery we cannot solve this side of death is so terrifying to some that our wondrous dogs must be regarded as nothing more than meat machines lest their true and astonishing nature should cause us to consider how magical is our very existence
    One caveat: When discussing the possible thoughts, reasoning, and intentions of a dog, we must remember that overall intelligence varies from breed to breed. Levels of intelligence also vary from individual to individual within the same breed, just as it varies from one human being to another. Trixie was a very smart golden.
     
    I HAVE OFTEN read and been told that dogs have no sense of time. I don’t believe this, but what I do believe is that the people who say it have no sense, period.
    Believing dogs have no sense of the passage of time, you should not be concerned if you leave old Spot alone for one hour or four hours when you go out for an evening. In either case, his perception supposedly will be that youhave been gone awhile, for a period he can’t measure, perhaps for a minute or perhaps for a day.
    Trixie possessed such a precise and reliable sense of time that we would not have needed clocks or watches to keep her on her daily schedule. After a breakfast of kibble, she received an apple-cinnamon rice cake at eleven thirty, just before her midday walk, and then a dish of kibble at three-thirty, prior to her afternoon walk. Gerda, Linda, Elaine, and I daily experienced Trixie’s uncanny promptitude. Never later than the appointed time, but never more than a minute or two earlier, she came to whoever had custody of her; with the tap of a raised paw or with a bump of her nose, or by placing her head in your lap and rolling her eyes, she announced that in case you hadn’t noticed, the hour had come for food, exercise, and toileting. Year after year, she announced these daily routines with accuracy.
    Eventually, we grew so accustomed to the reliability of the clock in Trixie’s head that it ceased to amaze us, but we never stopped being impressed by the way she adapted to daylight-saving time. When we sprang forward an hour in the spring and then fell back an hour in the autumn, she was never an hour late or early, but still to the minute in sync with the reset clocks.
    When she came to us, Trixie accepted the work schedule that Gerda and I maintained, which kept us at our desks until at least six o’clock, often until seven or later, though we were up every morning by five thirty or six.
    Within two weeks, however, Trixie decided that we were insane for working past five