Argos Redux
Part 1: The Waiting Game
Why do we canonize canines as humanity’s “best friend forever”? Forget that hooey about unconditional love or the human-animal bond or even Lassie’s valiant barking whenever Timmy tumbles into another well. We rank dogs atop our domestic taxonomy simply because they hail us as gods come home.
Whether we depart for 15 weeks or 15 minutes, Fido’s fanatical fawning extols us as the Messiah resurrected anew. Such homecomings reassure canine companions of restored routine and dependable dinners while our self-esteem indulges the illusion that such greetings prove us significant and loved.
Scientists discount dogs’ (and other animals’) ability to tell time. They posit that dogs retain short-term memory of only hours or minutes. Unlike humans’ episodic memory that allows us to remember past events and related timelines, animals’ associative memory triggers by external stimuli such as smells, voices or situations, researchers suggest.[1] Behaviorists emphasize that animals, especially dogs, learn by conditioning, or reinforced behaviors. Dogs execute proper commands in much the same way a child learns to ride a bike — trial and error, success and reward — then the exercise becomes automatic.
Such scientists suggest that rather than grasping past and future events, all animal minds occupy the singular present moment, a Zen existence our own species might best emulate. Animals eat when hungry, eliminate when necessary, mate opportunistically, flight or flee appropriately, and greet our arrival not so much enthusiastically as advantageously for them.
However, any canine caregiver will attest that Fido is a bona fide timekeeper. The family dog perfectly attends to the daily household bustle. He acts as reliable morning alarm clock and herds children to bed at night. Each evening he parks at the window to curse that annoying jogger and to warn trespassing dogs not to poop on his lawn. Most of all, he’s the pack’s precise dinner bell (make that dinner bark).
Some researchers surmise that dogs really know when their persons head for home. Dr. Rupert Sheldrake, author of the book Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home: And Other Unexplained Powers of Animals, notes that at least 45 percent of Americans believe their dogs display such anticipatory behavior. Sheldrake lists several possible reasons for this assumption: Natural circadian rhythms may provide the internal mechanism that alerts our pets to workday’s end. Fido’s superior olfactory and auditory senses may allow dogs to hear familiar car or bus engines from great distances. Environmental cues, such as phone calls or a spouse’s preparations may provide subtle clues. Humans might overlook times when the dog fails to react excitedly. Or, as Sheldrake proposes, dogs and significant humans share a close bond as well as special psyche connections and communications.[2]
Sheldrake extensively studied one British dog named Jaytee who appeared to possess this clairvoyance. Jaytee seemed aware when his human Pam headed home even if she left work at irregular times or took random routes. Although he watched out the window several times a day, his scrutiny significantly increased before Pam even turned on her car’s ignition — as she was organizing her desk for the next day. Interestingly, Jaytee’s surveillance intensified when he was at her parents’ home rather than his own flat. Sheldrake surmises that Jaytee’s behavior alerts other family members of Pam’s pending arrival.[3]
Of course, less progressive researchers discount animal telepathy or interspecies communication or even animal cognition as proper scholarship. One Jaytee does not a satisfactory study sample make. Scientific veracity requires exacting quantitative statistics not qualitative (i.e. anthropomorphic) anecdotes about what humans actually observe. Ethologists, such as famed primatologist Dr. Jane Goodall, who study animals in their chaotic natural habitats rather than sterile man-made laboratories, must rely on such observations and, horror or horrors, often identify their subjects with personal names not austere numerals. As another empathetic ethologist Dr. Marc Bekoff once said, “The plural of anecdotes is data.” [4]
Cultural Canine
People who share lives with animals will attest that their nonhuman companions do connect and communicate with them. For centuries, humans bred dogs both for utility and affection, and canines adapted extremely well to living in a human world.[5] Some evolutionary biologists even contend that humans and dogs evolved a “joint culture.”[6] Dogs became expert at interpreting human communications, particularly gestures. Dogs understand many words (as the frequent need to spell in their vicinity verifies) and, in turn, we understand emotional cues in canine barks and signals. Some people swear their dogs have different greeting barks for different folks, and recent research implies that dogs invent original communications for specific requests or attention.[7]
Whether we live with Velcro dogs or couch potatoes, dogs who welcome us as their prodigal human or who act out their separation anxiety by demolishing said couch, we cherish these demonstrations of doggy devotion. “The more people I meet, the more I love my dog” an old adage avows. Our dogs’ attention enhances our egos, defines us as lovable, reaffirms our humanity even in social isolation. Our dogs hike with us, hunt for us, perform our tricks, obey our commands, chase our Frisbees, lick our stubbly faces and sniff our butts with sheer bliss. If we assume such interspecies attention and activity culminates in an unconditional two-way bond, we vastly deceive ourselves.
For a dog shows love not by affirmation but with deferment. Since domestication, the dog has been forced to play the waiting game with its humans. Whether at the door, window, crate, kennel or chain, a dog constantly waits for our return. Waits to do our bidding. Waits for life’s necessities — food, water, shelter, exercise and the so-often-neglected potty run. Waits for a butt rub, ear scratch, tummy tickle, a pat on the head. Waits for one iota of our attention, for us to throw him a bone, literally or figuratively. That the dog, time conscious or not, spends most of its life marking time for our call, underscores a devotion that no human would tolerate in a intraspecies beloved.
The Waiting Game Mythos
Throughout history, some of the most poignant stories of the canine-human bond involve dogs who enact the waiting game for humans who will never return.
Greyfriar's Bobby
Disney broke our hearts with the slightly enhanced movie about Greyfriar’s Bobby, the true story of a tiny Skye Terrier, Bobby who spent 14 years — the rest of his life — guarding his cherished master’s grave.
Japan had its version of Bobby in the Akita Hachiko who knew when his human, a college professor, was to come home each night aboard the train.
Hachiko
One unfortunate day, the professor died on campus, but Hachiko continued to meet that train expectantly, only to be disappointed each time until his own death nine years later. A statue of Hachiko by his waiting spot at the train station remains a popular Japnese tourist attraction.
American sheepdog Shep rolls the stories of Bobby and Hachiko into one. Shep and his human herded sheep in Montana until the shepherd died in 1936. Shep devotedly accompanied his friend’s coffin to the train station only to be rebuffed from boarding. Shep stayed at the station to greet every train that stopped in case a resurrected master returned. Ironically, in 1942, the loyal dog was killed by a locomotive.
A bond, affinity, even love may have united Bobby, Hachiko and Shep with their caregivers in life and beyond death. Yet we do not honor this camaraderie alone when we erect statues to their faithfulness. Rather, their abandonment makes them legendary.
No other dog in fable or fact symbolizes canine-kind’s lifelong waiting game as Argos — the steadfast dog in Homer’s epic The Odyssey — who waited 7,300 consecutive days for his lost master’s return, and for whom we dedicate our blog.
References:
1: Roberts, William A. “Are Animals Stuck in Time?” Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 128(3), May 2002. pp. 473-489.
2: Sheldrake, Rupert and Smart, Pamela, “A Dog That Seems To Know When His Owner is Coming Home: Videotaped Experiments and Observations” Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 14, 2000, pp. 233-255.
3: Sheldrake Ibid
4: Bekoff, Marc, Animal Passions and Beastly Virtues: Reflections on Redecorating Nature (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006) 24-27.
5: Rivers, Audrey Schwartz, “Creative Canine: Original Intentional Canine-to-Human Communication” Chronicle of the Dog, Association of Pet Dog Trainers, Nov/Dec. 2008, pp. 25-31
6: Csányi, Vilmos, If Dogs Could Talk (New York: North Point Press, 2000)
7: Rivers, Ibid
Photo Credits:
1: Argos’ Memories logo dog: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14080/14080-h/images/290b.jpg
2: Dog at Window: http://pets.webmd.com/dogs/slideshow-behaviorial-problems-in-dogs
3: Greyfriar’s Bobby: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Greyfriars_Bobby.jpg
4: Hachiko: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hachikō
NEXT:
Argos Redux Part 2: “Threshold Dog”
Return to The Complete Argos Redux contents page
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