We’ve written about this love before. It’s specific, palpable, and in the aftermath of separation, the kind of thing that tugs at your heart, that whispers, Oh, please, not again.
Megan and Nika were home for eight days over the holidays. From the moment they entered the house, Nika and Noah were out the porch door and into the yard, barking at phantom possums in the bushes, looking for squirrels, Nika tugging at Noah’s ears, Noah biting at her rear legs until he took her down. They yapped and played until they collapsed in Rob’s office, her head against his belly.
I’m home again, Nika thinks. But my human is only visiting here.
She’s here, Noah thinks, she’s back, biting at my ears, leaping up against the door and yapping like a maniac because she thinks that cat she saw in the tree months ago is still there. Maybe it is. Maybe I’d better get out there and bark loudly and hopefully… And suddenly he’s up and racing out the door and trying to climb a tree with Nika, where they believe a squirrel or a cat or a possum is hidden.
The adventure is a work in progress, a diamond in the rough that is polished and perfected each time they are together. They ride companionably in the back seat of the car en route to the dog park, to the place where we buy our Cuban coffee, to Home Depot, the grocery store, wherever and whatever, they are fine together. It’s a doggy past life karma, a meeting of souls who have spent lives together before in some form, doggy, human or something else altogether. But the point is simple: these two dogs know each other, love each other, and when they go their separate ways, they are depressed.
Yes, I know. This is called anthropomorphizing. I’ve been accused of this before. I’m attributing human qualities to…snicker, cough, giggle, gag… dogs. But who can say with any certainty that animals don’t feel? I mean, really, why wouldn’t they?
The research suggests that many animals have complex emotional lives. Read When Elephants Weep (non-fiction) and you will never again view an elephant in captivity in the way you may have in the past. Read A Dog’s Purpose (fiction) and you will always wonder about your dog’s…well, inner spiritual life.
The day that Nika Left, the moment she jumped into Megan’s car to head back to Orlando, Noah was in a slump. He stood outside her car, staring in at Nika until she leaped out and dived for his rear legs, nipped at his ears, licked his snout as if to say, Hey, I’ll be back, it’s all temporary.
Well, temporary or not, she was suddenly gone. He skulked around the house for a couple of days, didn’t eat much. Megan said that Nika seemed depressed, too, sleeping a lot, not her usual playful, joyful self. When we went to the dog park, Noah actually sought out other dogs, greeting them, tail wagging, as if to say, Hey dude, glad you’re here. Usually, he just wants to play Frisbee or chase a ball and doesn’t pay much attention to the other dogs.
There’s something about dogs and cats, our most domesticated animals, that tell us a lot about who we are, what we seek, where we are headed as a species, a collective, a consciousness. Unconditional love: will humans ever get here? Can we even aspire to that?
I don’t know. But cats, in their odd way, are there. And so are dogs.
Nika (whispering): Dude, when can we get together?
Noah: I’m working on them, I figure late January, early February, some place that’s dog friendly.
Nika: Make it so. Love and miss you bigger than Google.
And that’s how I see this love affair, Nika, Noah, and their humans.
Terri, I’ll never forget when my black female Great Dane died many years ago. She was AKC pedigreed and we had bred her to a Harlequin. She was my first Dane, but not my last. On the day she began to deliver a litter of thirteen gorgeous puppies, her skin and eyes turned lemon yellow, and within hours she was gone. She had lepto spirosis. But each of her pups, one by one, had contracted it thru the umbilical, and altho born alive, I watched them, one by one, within a matter of a couple of minutes have a hard seizure and die. It was one of the most catastrophic , tragic days in my life, and I was inconsolable. The neighbor who was supposedly ny best friend said to me, “I can’t understand why you’re so upset! For god’s sake, get over it! She was just a dog!” I left that friendship behind me from that day forward. Just a dog? No. My precious companion and devoted TRUE best friend, yes. People who don’t honor animals have no place anywhere in my space. End of story.
Well, of course they mope when their loved one is suddenly not there. The thing I always wonder is how much they live in the moment. They have no way of knowing when they will see their loved one next and we can’t tell them. I just LOVE that picture of the two of them, touching and loving each other. It makes me sad that they can’t be together all the time… but I’ll get over it. I can understand why, and it makes it easier, and I wish I could tell our furry family what’s going on. Love is love, whatever creature is experiencing it.
Even my hubby’s middle-aged tuxedo cat, who is an indoor/outdoor feline, accepted Storm immediately. It’s a fun and funny realtionship with the six-year-old intact male cat, and this young puppy. Storm plays with the cat; the cat “tolerates” it, just looking at his canine as if to say, “OK, we’ll do this for a few minutes, until I say I’m done with it!” When he “gets done with it”, he narrows his eyes to slits, tucks his claws in so he won’t hurt his canine charge, slaps her with his paw across her busy little nose, and makes a brief hissing sound at her. It works. She backs off and knows playtime with her feline elder is over for awhile. It’s precious and delightful to watch them. This already powerful six-month-old puppy and a much smaller cat….but the cat is definitely the Alpha in terms of the animals here, and he lets her know it in no uncertain terms. He loves her; licks her; rubs back and forth against her; plays with her. Then says “enough!” and she lookes shocked, but never fails to obey his command.Who wants to be slapped across the nose by a feline paw, even with the claws tucked in! 🙂
I’m so delighted storm came into your life, math!
Wonderful post. There have been many times when I was teased about my concerns and objectives regarding our “pets” that are variations of “It’s just a cat,” or, “They’re dogs!”
My reply has always been the same, “I am not an animal person, I can only treat them as if they are children – with special needs.” I’ll probably always see “pets” in my life that way, even when I am dog-sitting some else’s pet.
Fantastic reply, Terri. I’m using it, okay?
Dogs know and show love, it’s not just for us humans it encompasses everything.
It really does encompass everything.
You know my recent story, Guys, and it continues to unfold. I lost my beloved Sunshine on November 17, 2012, to cancer, with the assistance of our vet. Sunshine had fought such a long and valiant battle against a foe she simply couldn’t conquer, and I had to finally release her to…..Somewhere Else. Saying I was devastated doesn’t even begin to express my grief. And I won’t try. I didn’t feel ready to think about finding another canine companion. But Destiny (our soul’s plan?) often has its own plans, and on December 7th I felt tugged to go to our local no-kill humane facility. I didn’t want to go. I reisisted the tug. It just got stronger and stronger until finally
I relented and went, not expecting to do anything except weep when I looked at the homeless creatures there. A young employee named Jennifer walked with me thru the adoption kennels, and when I got no farther than kennel #2, a small black Lab pup jumped up on her gate and whined and looked into my eyes. I had been having
sleeping dreams and visions about an adult black Lab whose name was Storm, and I sensed Storm was a male, and would be coming to me at some point much later.
But this pup….I asked Jennifer to let her out, and we went outside. The moment I sat in a chair, the pup put her paws on my knees, leaned against me, and laid her head on my leg. Jennifer wqs amazed. She said this pup had nothing to do with ANYONE since she arrived, and they had only put her into the adoption paret of the facility an hour before my arrival! She had seemed extremely sad and aloof, keeping to herself. My response: “She’s going home with me”. I asked her name…she didn’t have a name.
I brought this magnificent young pup home, and she crawled into my lap in our SUV and stayed there all the way. I noticed a small white lightning bolt on her chest, and immediately told her, “Your name is Storm”. She vigorously wagged her tail. This is her story: An AKC breeder of registered Labrador Retrievers had a black female and a chocolate stud. They never bred with each other for obvious reasons. But somehow, the two managed to get it together, and a litter arrived. The puppies didn’t meet the color standards of the AKC breed, so the owner couldn’t sell them with pedigrees. Ultimately, she took the litter to the shelter. My Storm looks super black until she gets in the sun. Then she becomes ultra-sleek black chocolate, a gorgeous and rare color that almost lights up, it’s so shiny. And she and I bonded at our soul levels the moment we met. Sunshine’s departure left a gaping hole in my life, and all the love I had for her remained but had nowhere to go. Storm doesn’t fill that hole, but she has given all this love a place to go, and she returns it a thousand-fold. She is without a doubt the most affectionate, most loving animal who has ever shared my life. And she arrived at the perfect time for both of us, apparently. We are inseparable, and I thank the gods for sending her to me. Nika and Noah are soulmates, absolutely. And as humans have human soulmates of all kinds, I have the conviction that we also have animal companion soulmates who move with us through Time and Experience. My Storm has been with me many times in the Past. I KNOW this. I feel it, sense it. She has Come Home to me….again….and Love from her lights up my life from moment to moment. Like Nika and Noah belong together, my Storm and I belong together, and Together is our true Home. Many find this odd. I find it one of the greatest gifts in Life, and my gratitude is inexpressible.
Tears to my eyes . . .and I forgot what I was going to say . . .
So true!!!!
If you think dogs have no feelings like love and depression, then you have never had a dog. Lucy loves Jen’s dog Layla, but she really loves Jill’s crazy neurotic lab (just like her), Lhasa. Lhasa gets on her bed with her and Lucy actually sighs a big loud sigh as if to say – “okay, I guess it’s okay if it’s you, Lhasa.”
It’s so obvious!