Canine joy
Mrs. Happy and I currently rent a house in New York. It has some advantages over owning, but many disadvantages as well. Perhaps the most painful disadvantage is that we're not allowed to have a dog. One of the first things we do when we move into a house of our own some time in the future will be to invite a dog (probably a boxer) to live with us. I bring this up not because it has anything to do with marriage, but because I just got my computer fixed and I'm feeling lazy enough to recycle quotes from some books that I've read as well as a short essay I once wrote.
Jollyblogger recently posted a quote by G.K. Chesterton that I had never read, but that makes me want to read more from Chesterton:
But there is something deeper in the matter than all that, only the hour is late, and both the dog and I are too drowsy to interpret it. He lies in front of me curled up before the fire, as so many dogs must have lain before so many fires. I sit on one side of that hearth, as so many men must have sat by so many hearths. Somehow this creature has completed my manhood; somehow, I cannot explain why, a man ought to have a dog. A man ought to have six legs; those other four legs are part of him. Our alliance is older than any of the passing and priggish explanations that are offered of either of us; before evolution was, we were. You can find it written in a book that I am a mere survival of a squabble of anthropoid apes; and perhaps I am. I am sure I have no objection. But my dog knows I am a man, and you will not find the meaning of that word written in any book as clearly as it is written in his soul.
I don't know if Dean Koontz is a Christian, but he is without a doubt spiritual. And he loves dogs. Here's a quote from his novel One Door Away From Heaven:
Every world has dogs or their equivalent, creatures that thrive on companionship, creatures that are of a high order of intelligence although not of the highest, and that therefore are simple enough in their wants and needs to remain innocent. The combination of the innocence and their intelligence allows them to serve as a bridge between what is transient and what is eternal, between the finite and the infinite.
...
For those who despair that their lives are without meaning and without purpose, for those who dwell in a loneliness so terrible that it has withered their hearts, for those who hate because they have no recognition of the destiny they share with all humanity, for those who would squander their lives in self-pity and in self-destruction because they have lost the saving wisdom with which they were born, for all these and many more, hope waits in the dreams of a dog, where the sacred nature of life may be clearly experienced without the all but blinding filter of human need, desire, greed, envy, and endless fear. And here, in dream woods and fields, along the shores of dream seas, with a profound awareness of the playful Presence [of the Creator] abiding in all things, Curtis is able to prove to Leilani what she has thus far only dared to hope is true: that although her mother never loved her, there is One who always has.
From an essay by Will Rogers in 1934:
I have often thought my friend O.O. McIntyre gave more space in his column to his little dog than I do to the United States Senate. But it does show that he knows human nature better than I do. He knows that everybody at heart loves a dog, while I have to try and make converts to the Senate.
In London, five years ago, old Lord Dewar, a great humorist and character, and the biggest whiskey maker in the world, gave [my] children a little white dog, a Sealyham, saying: "If this dog knew how well bred he was, he wouldn't speak to any of us."
We have petted him, complained on him, called him a nuisance, but when we buried him yesterday, we couldn't think of a wrong thing he'd ever done. His bravery was his undoing. He lost to a rattlesnake, but his face was towards it.
From an essay by me in 2001:
I love dogs because they are without a doubt the most lovable creatures inhabiting this world. Puppies live every day as though it were their first, rushing around, playing at every hint of provocation, rejoicing in their lives as if they remember how it was not to live. As they grow, so does their love. Older dogs are mellower than puppies, not out of fatigue or boredom but rather maturity. An older dog understands the deeper value of life, especially the life of a loved one. An older dog has a better understanding of the complexity of human emotions than many humans do. The very presence of a dog can drain negative feelings out of anyone, and their service to mankind has been well documented in literature, TV, film, and oral tradition. Every single dog that I've had for more than two weeks left an indelible imprint on my life.
I think that people who don't like dogs fall into two broad categories: people who like cats better, and people who don't like animals at all. I can only pity people who don't like animals. They deprive themselves of the unspeakable joy of communing with other of God's creatures. Of people who prefer cats over dogs, I hold the opinion that <deleting some nasty comments about cats and the people who like them more than dogs—I've mellowed a little in the last three years - Curt>.
Any other animal, with the possible exception of the horse, requires little in the way of maintenance, affection, time, and love. And any other animal, again excepting the horse and maybe the dolphin, provides nothing like what a dog does in the way of loyalty, companionship, and unabashed fun. <deleting a few more nasty comments> People who love dogs understand that the rewards of relationship are far greater than the conveniences of coexistence.
I think E.B. White also had some wonderful things to say about dogs, and I know James Thurber did, as well as Fred First, but I've already exceeded—for the first time, I think—my self-imposed limit of 1,000 words per post. I'll have to save those for another time.
