Dog Days
Two dogs live with us. Kelty and Jake. Kelty is a golden retriever, and thus she is one of America’s most adored and ubiquitous dogs. Do we value in golden retrievers their subservience and reliability? Or are we compelled to own one because it is symbol of white middle-class affluence? A house, 2.7 kids, one golden retriever. Here I distinguish between ideology and reality. Can we relate to objects and people in ways that do not serve power? Do I like Kelty for Kelty? Or do I use her to affirm my relative status? Kelty is well-aware that when it comes to her, I’m a Gramscian.
We believe that differences between animals of the same species are not as vast as the differences between humans. This is false. Sure, aliveness endows humans with unique qualities. The timbre of your husband’s voice when he discovers the UPS guy inside of you. Or the way you clasp the wheel as a semi plows into your windshield. But dogs’ uniqueness dogs us. We cannot subsume their qualities into Kantian personhood, the “I” that chooses the good. Even flies have distinct personalities. They are too small for us to see. Or we are too large.
Kelty and Jake could not be more distinct. Pet Kelty and you touch her soft fur, yellow like butter. When she jumps into the lake and rushes out, she smells meaty and rancid, like Oscar Meyer ham left out overnight. She is calm, patient, and understanding, but thrills at spontaneous play. She deposits a rubber ball in my lap and noses it, as if to say, “Please. Just a few throws. Then I’ll leave you to your book.” I look down. My crotch is wet with dog saliva. I rub her belly and her black gums stretch into a smile. This brings as much joy to me as it does to her, I think. But what desire am I fulfilling? I do not long to see myself in another species. I desire for intimacy with her life, her heart-beat. I come alive.
Jake is a German shepherd. His body is longer and leaner than Kelty’s, his snout pointier. His fur is brown-black, the color of coffee ice-cream and chocolate chips. It is coarse and dirty. No one trained him. No one walks him. From beneath the dinner-table, his stink wafts over the steak we masticate in bloody chunks. He makes eye contact with me, hustling for a piece. “No beggin’, Jake! No beggin’!” my uncle says. (His Kentucky drawl precludes gerunds). “Black Labs Matter!” uncle Leon says, and I shoot him a look of disgust: none of our dogs are black labs. Jake limps around. He crushed his foot when he jumped from my uncle’s SUV. Now we fasten a sock to this mangled extremity. Jake is anxious, a sissy-boy. If he had the capacity for speech, he might worry about burglars breaking into our house and strangling us. He’s paranoid and dumb, the canine version of the NYPD. He’s likely racist, but I haven’t raised this issue with him. He knows what I think.
Jake and Kelty lead different lives. They are owned by two different people. Kelty is my aunt’s, Jake my uncle’s. Neither share the dogs’ training, walking, cleaning (or lack thereof). Thus, Jake and Kelty live parallel lives, step-siblings who pass silently in the hallway and meet only at dinner. What does it mean to own another living thing? Most of us do not dispute that parents must guard their child’s well-being — their education, clothes, food, medicine, and what we might call “character development”: thanking strangers for Halloween candy and keeping an “inside voice.” Culture is the vehicle for parental duty. A mom from the Navajo Reservation parents in a way that might offend a mom on the Upper East Side, and vice versa. Navajo Mom might give her child medicine that deviates from what Bourgeois Mom thinks is kosher and effective. And vice versa. Regardless, neither parent owns their child, which would imply that the respective children lack wills of their own. No parent who has ever brought their child to get a flu shot could think this.
But think about your animals. The accent mark shifts from responsibility to ownership. Yes, my aunt takes care of Kelty’s kibble, leash, and vet care. But my aunt does not think that Kelty is autonomous like her daughter, who demands to go clubbing, drink vodka shots, and live on the West Coast. Kelty can only voice her demands as inscrutable howls. In other words, she lacks a political life. Imagine if she could write and speak. She could say, “Fuck your kibble, bitch. Make me some foie gras.” She could get a job, earn money, own property, pay taxes. Be a citizen. This sounds ridiculous. But we don’t realize that when it comes to our animals, we’re all Aristotelians. Kelty lacks speech, so she lacks autonomy. We once applied this statement to other humans. Beasts of burden, human but not. We have a word for this; it’s what built America. What would it mean to release all life from ownership?
Jake and Kelty know nothing about human misery. Or maybe they do. What do I know? They sleep on the wooden floor. Summer sun heats their fur. Perhaps Kelty dreams of a car speeding at her. That’s why she whimpers and shakes her legs. Maybe Jake dreams of the time when his broken body could bound free across fields. And when he emerges from the lake, I know that he feels and dreams this mysterious life all his own, all alone. And if he could speak, he would tell me the world. As would the sparrow. As would the cat. As would a beetle on a wet blade of grass.
