Thursday, June 28, 2012
Still Tugging at our heartstrings
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| FOR THE LOVE OF DOG: Tug asleep on his bed. He shared our home and lives from June 28, 2002 to Oct. 20, 2011.
He would have turned 14 years old today.
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He passed away this past October at the ripe old age – for a Labrador retriever – of 13 ¼ years old. It’s been eight months now and I still find myself missing him. The pain is no longer as acute as it was during the fall and winter and the house doesn’t feel quite as empty as it did in the immediate aftermath of his death. In fact there are some days now that go by without me missing him at all.
In a way, it’s been nice to be dog-free and not have to worry about someone having to run home to let him out or feed him and I know my wife appreciates not being woken up well before her alarm goes off by the wet nose or bark of a hungry dog trying to mooch an early breakfast out of her. (Tug learned early that I wasn’t a morning person and that trying to wake me was nigh impossible.)
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| FIRST AND LAST PHOTOS At left is the first picture we ever saw of Tug. It was his "pet of the week" photo in my newspaper's pet adoption column. At right is the final picture of him taken on Oct. 20, 2011, the morning of the day we had him put to sleep. | |
Always lots of food.
In his last six-to-eight months of life, when even getting up off the floor seemed almost as difficult as climbing the stairs he used to bound up in a leap or two, his only goal in life seemed to be to make us happy. I am convinced now that he solidered on as long as he did because he thought he somehow owed us for rescuing him from the dog pound after the people who had no idea how to care for one dog, let alone two, and couldn’t see how wonderful and smart he was turned him over to the Bucks County SPCA because he was “too difficult.” In the end it was my wife and I who owed him for making us better people. I can’t imagine what my life would have been like over the past decade without my “pal” by my side.
Psychologists have expounded plenty about the nature of the bond between dogs and humans and why we miss them so much when they are gone.
“It appears that dogs have evolved specialized skills for reading human social and communicative behavior,” says Brian Hare, a Harvard shrink explaining the current thinking. He adds that they use this ability to figure out our moods knowing that if they do something that makes us happy they’ll be rewarded with food or attention. We see this behavior as signs our dogs love us while psychologists, like John Archer, from the University of Central Lancashire, sees it as dogs “manipulating human responses,” and becoming “the equivalent of social parasites.”
I think that’s a bit harsh.
Because if Mr. Archer ever had a dog like Tug, he would know dog’s aren’t “social parasites.”
Dogs are social creatures and crave companionship, much the way we do. Yes they learn how to manipulate their people, but then again, so do human children. And after seeing the way some children act these days, I’ve been glad I was just a dog-dad.
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| CLEAN AND HAPPY: Tug sporting a new tie he got after his last bath. |
I also realized that he didn’t have the higher reasoning powers of humans but I firmly believe that dogs understand the concept of love and loyalty. I mean how else do you explain the dog who wouldn’t leave the casket of his fallen Navy SEAL master or the black Lab who refused to leave the side of a canine friend who had been struck and killed by a passing car.
Psychologists would probably just attribute that to “pack instinct,” a vestige of a behavior left over from their wolf ancestors. Call me sentimental, but I think it is more than that just a “trick of evolution.” After all, when you come right down to it, a pack isn’t much different from a family. The same group dynamics apply.
I think that perhaps dogs were made man’s best friend as some sort of divine plan; a way of teaching us to be better people. How to be unselfish, how to be a good friend, a good listener and good confidant. Over the past nine and a quarter years that he graced our home, Tug taught us all those things and more. He taught us that no matter how bad your past was, it is now that really matters. He didn’t let his awful first few years stop from enjoying the time he spent with us. He was simply content to live in the moment taking pleasure in everyday things that we’d probably overlook. I used say his philosophy was “Every so often you need to stop and pee on the roses.”
I am sure that sometime in the future my wife and I will adopt another dog who needs a good home and fall in love with him. We’ll probably learn new things about ourselves from that dog too. But until that day comes, I will continue to remember all Tug’s loveable antics and take to heart the lessons he taught us.
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