WHAT'S IN A NAME? WHAT'S IN A DOG? (part two)

                                  

WHAT'S IN A NAME? WHAT'S IN A DOG? (part two)

In my last entry, I promised a quote from well-known psychologist and dog expert Stanley Coren, taken from his excellent book, The Consciousness of Dogs: Canine consciousness and capabilities.

But first, what is consciousness?

If you look in the Random House College Dictionary, you get this: “the state of being conscious; awareness. the thoughts and feelings, collectively, of an individual or of an aggregate of people. full activity of the mind and senses. awareness of something for what it is: consciousness of wrongdoing.”

“Awareness of something for what it is” strikes me as the key. To have consciousness, I have to know what I am, and what isn't me. You don’t have consciousness unless you can make this distinction. I've read that children are only partially conscious until sometime around the age of five. At that point, they have lost their sense of the world as an extension of themselves, and are now individuals. (you probably know adults who never actually reach "that point").

Asking most dog owners whether dogs have consciousness is a no-brainer. They answer with stories to illustrate how smart their dog is, how “good” or “naughty,” etc. Hearing such stories, those who  don't like dogs will react by rolling their eyes and sighing. They see dogs and no doubt all animals as pure instinct, acting on genetic programs that don’t include decisions or knowledge of the world.

So, for those who aren’t impressed by anecdotes about your dog’s consciousness, here’s a story from an expert:

Nearly a week had gone by without any noticeable sunshine. That particular afternoon, though, the clouds seemed to part, and a burst of afternoon sunshine shone through the window, forming a big golden patch on the hardwood floor. Completing my work, I was moving toward the kitchen to get a cup of coffee when I noticed my Cavalier King Charles spaniel Wiz standing in the circle of light. He looked up at the window and then down at the floor as if he were contemplating something, and then he deliberately turned and ran from the room. Within a matter of moments, however, he reappeared dragging a huge terry-cloth towel that he had stolen from the bathroom. He pulled the towel into the center of the patch of sun, looked at it, and then pushed at one lumpy section with both front paws. Having arranged the towel to his satisfaction, he then circled around and settled down for a nap on his newly created bed in the warm afternoon sun. If my young child had done this, I would have said that he felt the warmth of the sun and thought that it would be nice to take a nap in it. Then, remembering the towel in the bathroom, he went and retrieved it so that he could sunbathe more comfortably. All this requires consciousness, intelligence, and planning. Does my dog Wiz have it? It is easier for me simply to recognize that my dog’s behaviors in this situation were similar to behaviors that are accompanied by consciousness in a human faced with the same situation. In the absence of any evidence to the contrary, I will presume that I am dealing with consciousness and intelligent behavior in my dog as well.

There it is—“awareness of something for what it is.” In this case, sunshine as a source of pleasurable warmth, a way to make lying in the sun more satisfying, a place where the “equipment” for doing so is located, going there and getting this equipment, a return to the sunny locale, manipulation of the equipment to make it serve better—then the nap.

Tell your skeptical friend to put that in his pipe and smoke it. If Dr. Coren’s story confirms what you know to be true about your own dog, the odds are good you’ll enjoy Just Bill.
www.bwknister.com

WHAT'S IN A NAME? WHAT'S IN A DOG? (part one)

WHAT'S IN A NAME? WHAT'S IN A DOG? (part one)

In this instance, both name and dog are Just Bill, the title of my novel for adults about a rescued Lab. If you read the blog entry before this one, you’ve already heard from Bill. Because he’s a dog, it wouldn't occur to him to speak ill of anyone, or to hold a grudge. 

True, it would not occur to him to speak, period.  But if he could speak, Bill wouldn’t bring up certain painful facts. That’s left to me, to describe how a dog devoted to his master is given up. How this happens and what it leads to dramatize the book’s theme—that lives are better, and sometimes even saved through the relationship between a person and a dog. My own life is certainly better because I live with a dog, and I hope Just Bill makes the case for this partnership.

What’s in a dog? 

When I was preparing to publish Just Bill, I asked Dr. Stanley Coren for permission to quote a story from his landmark book, The Intelligence of Dogs. Here’s the letter I wrote to him:

Dear Dr. Coren:

This is two things:  a fan letter, and a request for a favor.

First, as one who admires dogs, let me thank you for having done so much for them.  Obviously, you have done a great deal for humans as well, by raising people’s awareness of canine consciousness.  But in so doing, you have improved—I’m sure of this-- the lives of countless pets, and many abandoned animals and shelter dogs. They gained good homes in the climate of improved awareness and understanding that THE INTELLIGENCE OF DOGS and your other writings have helped to foster.

Here’s the second shoe.  Until recently, I served as a tenured faculty member in the department of humanities at Lawrence Technological University in Southfield, Michigan. I am also a fiction writer, and have written a short novel for adults called JUST BILL. In this work of magical realism, I wanted to trace, through various trials and tribulations, the career of a dog rescued in his first year by a retiree.  

Human and dog characters alternate in the narrative, and the story's conclusion is full of hope and renewal.  It is unapologetically a story of sentiment, but by no means sentimental.  Throughout the writing, I have done my best to capture what I understand to be reality as experienced by dogs.  

No passage from The Intelligence of Dogs has served me better in my own work than the story of your “Cavalier King Charles spaniel Wiz standing in the circle of light” on your kitchen floor.  For me, this anecdote makes a perfect case for speaking of dog consciousness.  It captures the essence of what my story hopes to dramatize, without resorting to the cartoon anthropomorphism that so often figures in dog stories.

For this reason, I am convinced that the meaning and intent of JUST BILL can’t be better introduced than by your story about Wiz.  Appearing at the beginning, before the story proper, it will prepare readers for what is to follow. The length of the quoted passage—291 words—far exceeds the “fair use” clause for copyrighted work, so I am hoping you will grant me permission to use the passage.

Dr. Coren granted me permission. But instead of using his story at the beginning, my publisher and I decided to use it on the back cover. From a publishing perspective, this turned out to be a big mistake. Intrigued by the jacket photo, people wanted to read a description on the back, not a story from a different book. That's the main reason for this new edition.

In the next post (Wednesday), I’ll provide Dr. Coren's story. It doesn’t have directly to do with Just Bill, but it does express the point of view at the heart of my short novel.

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