Dog
Would you rather hang out with another person, or another dog? I expect most people to say, dog. And that's a little concerning. Alert: this one features Chekhov.
Weekly Three
HEAR: “Waiting For My Ruca” by Sublime features some sound snippets of lead singer Bradley Nowell’s dalmatian viciously barking (and him encouraging it). Like the whole album, it’s a classic.
READ: “Vanka” by Anton Chekhov is a short story about a nine-year-old boy separated from his family and treated worse than a dog by his masters. He pleads to his grandfather to deliver him from his sad state.
VIEW: Here’s a picture of Chekhov with one of his dogs, which appears to be a dachshund or a similar breed. At least one of the dogs in Vanka is probably a dachshund, described as having “a long body like a weasel’s.”
No. 36: Dog
To get a dog, or not to get a dog? The same may be said for a cat, which I have to say to avoid being compartmentalized into one of the two mythical types: dog-person or cat-person. Shockingly, what you’re dealing with here is a person who likes animals, but not as much as humans. Among the billions of dog-people and cat-people, my type (people-people) is increasingly rare. But we exist. At least, one of us does.
Dog’s are often called “man’s best friend,” but I’m wondering if it’s more accurate to say they’re “man’s preferred friend.” Wouldn’t nine-out-of-ten people rather spend the day with their dog than someone they’ve just met? Dogs are less vexing, they’ll say, and never awkward. They don’t come with all that depressing human baggage. With humans it’s always I want this and I want that and hopes and dreams and heartbreak and bla bla bla, never bark bark bark.
But while pet-people seem to find the complexity of their own species a drag, I find it a virtue; while they relish in their dog’s dependence on them, I’m inspired by humanity’s upright independence; while they drown their sorrows in teary puppy eyes, I’d rather spill the tea with someone who can empathize with my experience and judge me for more than the amount of milkbones I’m worth.
This isn’t to say pet-lovers have lost it — although some certainly have — or that I’m not a pet-lover myself. Pets are comforting companions, alive as we’re alive, happy in their simple way, gamboling along side us and teaching us big and little lessons on how we might live more present lives. And yet I find something a little disconcerting in our tendency to turn to pets before each other. We shower pets with boundless love while reserving that same love and compassion in our encounters with other people. Why?
There’s a story by Anton Chekhov about a nine-year-old boy, Vanka, a serf who’s treated worse than a dog. For a time, Vanka lived a happy life. He and his parents worked as house serfs in a grand mansion where they were treated lukewarmly by their masters. Vanka’s grandfather, a watchman, and his dogs Brownie and Wriggles, also worked at the mansion. Then, Vanka’s parents died.
The landowner, having no immediate need for the boy, apprenticed Vanka to a shoemaking friend in Moscow. The shoemaker always beat poor Vanka, pulling him into the courtyard by the hair and whipping him for offenses as minor as accidentally falling asleep while rocking the baby in its cradle. There was the time the shoemaker’s wife rubbed a dead fish in Vanka’s face because he cleaned it from the tail up instead of the head down. Then there was nothing to eat. Porridge in the morning and bread at night without exception. The shoemaker’s family kept the cabbage soup locked away for themselves. And Vanka had to sleep in the entryway. When the baby cried, he didn’t sleep at all.
At a store in town, Vanka spent what little he had on an envelop and a sheet of paper. The next day, when the shoemaker and his family were gone, Vanka laid out his crumpled paper on a bench and kneeled to write.
“Dear Granddaddy, Konstantin Markarych,” he started. “I wish you a merry Christmas and everything good from the Lord God. I have neither father nor mother, you alone are left me. For God’s sake, have pity on me, take me away from here, take me home to the village, it’s more than I can bear. I bow down at your feet and I will pray to God for you forever, take me away from here or I’ll die.”
As he wrote, Vanka pictured his grandfather making the rounds of the property with Brownie and Wriggles trailing behind. He remembered how his grandfather would fool with the cooks, pinching their arms and legs then offering them a pinch of snuff. The dogs got snuff, too. Brownie took it with a sneeze. Wriggles, “too polite to sneeze,” only wagged his tail attentively. For Christmas, Vanka’s grandfather would go into the woods to chop down a Christmas tree, and the dogs would follow and chase rabbits in the snow.
“Do come, dear Granddaddy,” Vanka went on. “For Christ’s sake, I beg you, take me away from here. Have pity on me, an unhappy orphan, here everyone beats me, and I am terribly hungry, and I am so blue, I can’t tell you how, I keep crying. Dear Grandaddy, do come.”
He slept that night lulled by sweet hopes, dreaming of a hot stove, his grandfather sitting on it reading the letter aloud to the cooks, Wriggles laying close by wagging his tail.
If only Vanka’s savage masters would have treated him as well as most treat a dog, they would have lifted him from his sorrow (and done a lot to improve their own sorry existence). And how many Vankas are out there now? How many Vankas have there been? How many more Vankas will there be? Can we not manage to treat people better than dogs?
In loving dog owners I often wonder: Do they extend the same kind of love to people, all people, or is that love exclusive to their pet? If so, why does a comparatively unintelligent animal earn more tenderness than a lucid-feeling person? Anyone who has been lonely, hungry, abused, abandoned, or even sad without relief to the point of being worse off than a dog has a little Vanka in them. And anytime there’s a Vanka, there’s person who could apply the same love they give their pet to the worthy purpose of soothing the pain of a human being in need. In Vanka’s story, this plea takes the shape of a boy’s letter to his grandfather. But all who have been seemingly barred from human compassion have a similar plea, “Brother! I’m in pain. Do you have any love to spare? It hurts, and I don’t know how to make it go away, but I could use some company right about now. Can you help?”
Pets give us the perfect opportunity to examine our humanity. Do we treat people at least as good as we treat our animals? And if not, why not? There’s enough love to go around, but too often it doesn’t make it full circle, probably for fear our compassion will be badly received or unreciprocated. To quote from Adaptation, the Nic Cage movie I watched this week, “You are what you love, not what loves you.” Most people live by the opposite: they love only what loves them.
This unfortunate thinking wreaks havoc in the real-world, like when a dog walker stops her fresh-groomed Cavachon on the sidewalk for a cool bowl of water where, only a few feet away, a dehydrated homeless man withers away in filth. Usually, these scenes go unnoticed, but even when the juxtaposition is made clear, not much happens: Paradoxically, the pet owner retreats further into the comfort of dogtopia, and the non-pet owner passerby who witnessed the scene and is now discouraged by the cold senselessness of the world goes and adopts their own four-legged cuddle buddy. Even the homeless man does it. If his brothers and sisters wont love him, a dog will. And he can love a dog.
At this point I’m almost positively read as anti-dog — meaning that very soon I’ll meet my end at the hands of an angry mob — but this couldn’t be further from the truth. To share part of life with a loyal animal is nothing short of miraculous. The memory of the day my parents surprised me and my siblings with our first and only dog, Nellie — who, by some inexplicable act of God, still roams the Earth today, bless her little heart — is one of the most vivid and cherished of my life.
Then to get a dog, or not to get a dog? This is very real question my girlfriend and I are asking ourselves. Actually, it’s mostly me. For her, it’s an easy yes. For me, as you can see, it’s more complicated — but it’s still a yes. Pets are a sure way to discover what it feels like to care about something passionately. They help us realize our immense capacity for love, much in the same way, I imagine, mothers do when they give birth to their first child and say, I never knew I could love something this much. Having realized through pets how infinite our love can be, can’t we find a way to aim our compassion toward complete unknowns, giving them the choice to take it or leave it?
That no person deserves to be treated worse than a dog is obvious. What’s less obvious is that every person deserves to be loved more than our favorite pet, and yet it’s true. ♦
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