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Your dog doesn't love you --- get over it

Rabbi Yonason Goldson

By Rabbi Yonason Goldson

Published May 4, 2016

Pet-lovers beware --- your expression of affection may not be received that way

Okay, I’m guilty.

As a high school teacher, I strive to maintain a persona of impeccable professionalism every moment of every day. Almost.

On rare occasions, however, when I can no longer resist the impulse to really get under my students’ skin, I indulge a streak of sadism and utter those few words guaranteed to enrage even the most mild-mannered teenager.

Are you ready? This is what I say:

"Your dog doesn’t love you."

And I don’t stop there. Pausing a few seconds to allow the full measure of indignation to begin boiling over, I follow up with:

"And you don’t love your dog."

I have plenty of ammunition in my arsenal to defend my point. But in addition to the logic of my argument, I now have a current study that supports my claim.

According to NPR, professor emeritus Dr. Stanley Coren of the University of British Columbia, has evidence that your dog not only doesn’t like it when you hug him, but that he actually gets stressed out.

By analyzing a random sampling of 250 photos on Flickr of owners hugging their dogs, Dr. Coren discovered that 81.6% of the time the dogs display at least one of the classic canine stress signs, which include turning their heads away, slicking back their ears, partially closing their eyes (or opening them wide), yawning, licking their lips, or raising a paw.

Because dogs are naturally cursorial -- meaning that they like to roam -- they may feel trapped with their owner’s arms wrapped around them. So no matter how much you may enjoy hugging your dog, it’s likely that your dog does not share the feeling.

Which brings us back to what many will find an unpleasant truth. The relationship between man and dog is not one of love.

WHAT IS THIS THING CALLED LOVE?

The sad truth is, we really have no idea what love is. We have overused the word relentlessly, proclaiming our love for ice cream, our love for our car, our love for Scarlett Johansson and Leonardo DiCaprio, our love for the Yankees and, yes, our love for that little doggie in the window. If my emotional relationship with my wife, my children, my mother, and my country can be described in exactly the same terms as my relationship with pizza, is it any wonder that we’re hopelessly confused?

Indeed, the word relationship is itself a casualty of careless speech and sloppy thinking, a close cousin to the word friendship as a victim of the Facebook generation. Both are collateral damage from the corruption of intimacy -- physical, psychological, and emotional -- a value once treasured but now largely forgotten.

An intimate relationship, or a real friendship, is something the grows out of common commitment and common sacrifice. It develops over the slow course of time, built upon a foundation of trust that itself emerges by slowly lowering the psychological defenses we erect to protect ourselves from the myriad strangers and casual acquaintances who have little investment in our well-being.

The "relationship" between man and dog, however, is built upon an exchange of pleasure. Human beings delight in nothing so much as being the object of another’s undivided attention, which is what dogs give us. Dogs like to get their ears scratched, which is what we do for them. That is the full extent of the "relationship." There’s no common vision, no partnership in a higher purpose. There’s no sense of "I’m thinking what you’re thinking," unless you’re thinking of a biscuit or a belly-rub.

‘BUT HE LOVES ME’

Dogs-are-people-too advocates will doubtless rise up with one voice and point to countless anecdotes of dogs sacrificing their lives for their masters or mourning their masters’ deaths. But there are just as many anecdotes to the contrary, and skeptics have proposed any number of other motivations to explain doggie behavior.

The bottom line is that we really don’t know what dogs are thinking, and that’s precisely the point. If we really loved our dogs, would we risk stressing them out with hugs just because it makes us feel better?

None of this is meant to denigrate dogs. Just the opposite: the sages of the Talmud recognized the nature of the dog revealed in its very name. The Hebrew word kelev, meaning dog, can also be pronounced k’leiv, meaning like the heart, a testimony to the loyalty for which dogs are so well known. Indeed, when Scripture describes King Solomon as knowing the language of the animals, it is not identifying him as a Doctor Dolittle of the ancient world. Rather, it is depicting his ability to recognize the qualities possessed by different animals from which we can learn how to be more fully developed human beings.

The problem arises when we attribute human emotions to mere animals, thereby degrading such lofty concepts as human love to the mere exchange of pleasure and mutual gratification. When we forget the true meaning of love and friendship, then we are well on our way to become little better than animals ourselves.

But when we admire animals for the finer qualities they possess -- without confusing animals with people -- then we are better able to motivate ourselves to fulfill the unique potential provided us by our own humanity.

As symbols of loyalty and nobility, rather than objects of love, dogs can indeed awaken within us a deeper awareness of our higher selves.

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Rabbi Yonason Goldson, a talmudic scholar and former hitchhiker, circumnavigator, and newspaper columnist, lives with his wife in St. Louis, Missouri, where he teaches, writes, and lectures. His new book Proverbial Beauty: Secrets for Success and Happiness from the Wisdom of the Ages is available on Amazon.

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