The day this photo was taken, it was 95 degrees in the shade and the heat index was 105. Cody, the husky, and Red, some sort of hound, were so hot they simply found a cool spot in the dirt and panted.
Red belongs to Estis, a pianist who teaches music to elementary school kids and is on break this summer, and Cody belongs to Karin, who was out of town. Estis usually shows up at the dog park around four, and she’s chatty and happy. But when she walked in today with both Cody and Red, she looked miserable.
“What’s going on?” I asked her.
Estis rolled her eyes. “Well, Karin left town on Thursday. My husband was going to drive her to the airport, so he first dropped me off at the dog park with Cody and Red. I had forgotten the park is closed for maintenance on Thursdays, so I had to walk home with both dogs.” She lives about a mile from the dog park and Cody isn’t easy to walk on a leash.
But Estis and the two dogs finally got home and everyone settled in the kitchen – Estis and her two daughters and the two dogs. Her daughters were painting and working on something and no one was paying much attention to the dogs. Suddenly, Red begins to howl from another part of the house, a wild, frantic howling, and Estis and her daughters raced to the back of the house.
At the end of the hall, there’s a bathroom where they had put their caged parakeets while Cody was visiting, and the door was no longer closed. Cody had somehow managed to open the bathroom door and the door to the cage, and had grabbed one of the parakeets.
“He was totally wild, Trish, and raced up the hall with blue parakeet feathers plastered all over his muzzle, and his eyes were…just wild, I’ve never seen his eyes like that. My daughters were screaming, Red was still howling and cowering in a corner, and I raced after Cody, trying to catch him.”
Estis finally offered Cody a treat and as he opened his mouth, the dead parakeet fell to the floor. At this point, her daughters were freaking out, Red’s howls filled the air, and Cody raced up and down the hallway, “totally out of control.”
Estis got everyone calmed down and eventually put Cody out on the porch while she cleaned up the mess. Karin’s daughter was home, so Estis called her and asked her to pick up Cody.
I was frankly astonished by this story. At the dog park, Cody is unusually gentle with other dogs, even when they’re playing and roughhousing. He races into the park every afternoon to greet his buddies – humans and canines alike – and his joy so obvious that it’s a treat just to watch him. Then he trots off, pursuing scents, chasing squirrels, playing king of the mountain on the mound of dirt at the far end of the park. Rob and I have often called him Cody the Trickster because he can be so mischievous. Estis’s story prompted me to think about the emotional lives of dogs, which is certainly as real as the emotional lives of humans.
Cody actually belongs to Karin’s son, but when he was in college he became Karin’s dog. She is his main person. Whenever she leaves the park to get something out of her car, Cody paces along the fence, watching her, waiting anxiously for her to return. She left town to meet her husband in upstate New York because her brother-in-law is dying. There has been a lot of tension in the household this summer and Cody, like most animal companions, has probably sensed it. So when his human drove off in the car with Estis’s husband that Thursday morning, bound for the airport, and then Cody ended up at Estis’s house, the bottom probably fell out of his world.
As Cody and Red panted in the shade this afternoon, I ran my fingers through Cody’s thick, soft fur and he dropped his head back, looking up at me with eyes that are such an exquisite turquoise it’s as if you’re peering into an undiscovered sea. He ran his tongue over my hand, then my cheek as if to say, I know you what you and Estis were talking about. But I’m not a bad dog, really I’m not.
Red nudged Cody’s back with his snout. Hey Dude, I’m here, pay attention to me. And they curled up in the hot shade, best friends forever.
MomWithWings, when LadyGirl began to have terrible seizures, MaCat would perch on the arm of a nearby chair and watch intently. When the seizure stopped, she would jump down and walk over to her canine friend, gently lick her face and head, and then lay down between her legs. She KNEW she was losing her best friend, and she wasn’t the same during the two weeks she lived after LadyGirl died. Creatures have extremely strong emotional attachments, even between different breeds of animals.
Please excuse my typos today. Damned tremors!!!!! 🙁
momWithWings, my first Yellow Lab, LadyGirl, was best friends with our black female cat who was a freal stray and adopted us. She was never payed, and had several litters of babies, for which we always managed to find homes. But whenever she went out, she left LadyGirl in charge of her kittens, and LadyGirl was a spectacular kitten-sitter! At age 9, lady Girl had to be put to rest. Within two weeks, MaCat died of unknown causes. She obviously wanted to be with her canine pal. It was wretched, losing them both, yet we knew they were having fun together in SummerLand where the animals go to wait for us! I have a sense that Storm is probably LadyGirl reincarnated. Lady had a strange, extremely long stiff white eye brow hair on her left eye. I’ve never seen one like it. It seemed almost like a weird “antenna”. Storm has that exact same stiff white long hair over the same eye, and her personality is in many ways similar to LadyGirl’s.
Dogs definitely respond to what is going on in the house. However, my cousin raises siberian husky dogs and I remember when I visited him one time he told me not to leave my 4 year old daughter (at the time) alone with his dog Mig. He didn’t trust Mig not to attack my little girl. I have no idea why he thought that might happen, but I took his advice.
Cody is a siberian….
Dogs attacking kids “out of the blue” seems to be rather common, even the family pet killing a child it knew for years.You see news stories quite often about this sort of thing and the response is usually “this is the first time the dog has ever done something like this”.
I think a lot of animals have emotions like humans,and like humans they can do some terrible things “out of the blue”.
How many times do you hear the words “he appeared to be such a nice man,we’ve known him for years and he was always kind and loving”,right after he was arrested for shooting up the neighbourhood or some similar crime.
Humans are probably the most savage and cruelest species walking the earth…and yet the most caring as well.
The paradox of savage outbursts in behavior seems to extend to all living species humans included.
It’s a jungle still,even if most today are concrete ones.
I guess we just have to realize that there is more good behavior in the world than bad,but to stay on our toes.
Good points , daz!
I agree completely that dogs have emotions and they also understand us.
I remember each time my son went off to university he would lie on the floor next to our border collie Toby and explain to him that he would be away for however many weeks it was, but that he’d definitely be back. It used to make us smile but our son insisted that Toby understood – and he was right. When Darren was coming home we’d tell Toby and he’d wag his tail and get excited.
Border collies are a unique breed. The other day at the park there were only 4 dogs there – Noah and 3 border collies.
I’ve said it many times….I KNOW dogs can think and reason and feel, sometimes much more deeply than humans. I suppose many folks think I’m out of my mind, but my Black Lab youngster has almost literally saved my life in a way that I’m not comfortable sharing on a blog, as it involves my being chronically ill with a progressive, incurable disease. What I WILL say is that Storm has managed to do what no human was able to do, and that has been to pull me out of a hell hole of depression and give me the courage and the stamina and the joy and the reasons to keep on keeping on. I lounge around the house in flowery tropical caftans, because they are so light and cool and comfortble. When I change into street clothes, Storm knows immediately that I’ll be going somewhere, and she falls into an emotional funk, jumping up on our bed and curling up into a tight ball against my pillows with a heart-breaking expression in her eyes. I can’t take her with me to the hair salon or the grocery store, and it’s far too hot to leave her in the vehicle, so I must occasionally leave her at home. Her very large wire kennel/pen is right next to my side of the bed, and she enjoys her “house”. But when she knows I’ll be leaving and that she will be required to go into her “house”, she does everything possible to avoid it. My husband has to pick her up….and she intentionally lets her body go into a limp, heavy dead weight….and put her into it. I almost weep whenever I must leave her because her anguish shows in her entire demeanor. This isn’t my imagination. She is with me 24-7, always within a couple of feet of me even when she’s playing outside. She considers me her responsibility, but also her human soulmate. The story about Cody is such an eloquent description of the unbreakable umbilical between a canine and his or her person. So sad about the tiny parakeet, and one wonders why a joyful, usually happy and affectionate dog would choose to kill a bird. Perhaps to demonstrate his frustration and sorrow over Karin’s absence….but also perhaps because he had an intuitive awareness that there is an impending death in the family and he feels the grief in his own house. Storm is quite vocal. Not a barker, but she has a distinct language that I have come to understand in its various sounds and body language. Any person who believes dogs don’t “think”, and that they are less “feeling” than humans , hasn’t shared a close bond with a canine. I’ll never, ever forget the shattering experience, told here long ago, in which I had the privilege and extreme sadness to participate, between my Hospice patient and his full-bloodied wolf in the final moments of my patient’s life. Thank you for this post, guys. It’s a reminder that we are connected to other living creatures and that they, as we, have Souls.
Fascinating stuff here, math.
People forget that they are animals, not humans.
Also, I know for a fact that so many people do not understand how emotional our pets are. They feel pain, sadness, loss, grief and fear. They may not show it but if you pay attention you see it.
I’m always surprised at how owners will apologize for their pets behavior at the vet, they are nervous and or scared!
I watched my pets grieve each others deaths.
I watched my cat care for my ailing dog to help me and him out.
I’ve seen my black cat be mad at my daughter when she hasn’t seen her for awhile.
Who knows what made that dog attack the bird, stress maybe? Fear?
I am glad that they seemed to have some understanding of the tragic events.
Animals are very complex yet not.
I get nervous and scared at the doctor’s and I don’t apologize for it.