What's It All About?

A recycled post from this blog, circa 2005


What is it about dogs?

There is no simple answer to such a simple question. Instead there are as many answers as there are people.

For most a dog is simply a happy greeter at the door that never asks too many questions. For this alone people spend enormous sums on food and veterinary care, forgiving stains on rugs and holes in gardens, hair on the couch and strange smells in the den.

For other people dogs are other things.

Some show ring enthusiasts love the competition, while others value the friendships that develop at ringside.

Agility and fly ball competitors love the speed of their sport, the cleverness of their dogs, and the challenge of cross-species communication and instruction.

For those of us with hunting dogs, the joy is going into field and forest with a companion that offers an entirely new way of looking at the world. For many of us it is a return to childhood, when we saw nature at a smaller level as we turned over rocks looking for fishing worms, or caught frogs and turtles by the pond, or climbed trees to steal a peak at a nest of doves.

Dogs give us us an excuse to venture back into thickets again, to jump from rock to rock down a stream, and to poke about in fields.

The process of hunting forces those of us that rush too fast through life to slow down and pay attention to detail. If we are going to get any good, we have to learn about wildlife and the land. We have to give the dog experience and gain some ourselves.

As dog and owner progress, they begin to work as a team and a kind of trust develops. The dog is seeing the world through the human's eyes, and the human is seeing the world through the dog's eyes. Both are looking at the world through a new set of glasses.

Nothing brings joy to an honest working dog so much as the work. I have only to pick up a shovel and put it into the truck to get my terriers bouncing off the driveway in anticipation. The genetic code explodes in them like a watch spring released from tension. The dogs know what shovels are about, and they can think of nothing but work until they are nearly too tired to stand at the end of the day.

I confess I do not understand people that buy well-built hunting dogs and then do not allow them to hunt. In my mind, owning a well-built working terrier and not working it is like owning a rare bottle of wine just to read the label. People do such things, but I do not understand it.

Each to their own, of course. Different strokes for different folks. God bless them all.

That said, if all a person wants is a house pet or a show dog, may I recommend a Shitzu or Pekingese, a West Highland White or even a Fox Terrier?

Leave the hunting dogs for the people willing to hunt them, and leave the good wines for the people willing to pop the cork.
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