Even the dogs under the table

Reflections theological and dog-matic on being a canine carer.

We got a dog a few months ago and ended up with another more recently. These aren't our first dogs but it has been a number of years since our first dog died. We did have another rescued dog and then another but in each case we passed the dog onto other owners because we weren't sure that we were living a lifestyle at that point that really favoured dog ownership, and, frankly I was getting fed up with being the only person in the family who regularly walked them. Not to mention that coming from a particularly fastidious background, I wasn't comfortable with the occasional dirt and general unhygiene of dogs. So We didn't get another for some time and we did so recently because a couple of members of our family both wanted one and seemed to be willing to do what was necessary to make sure it was cared for.

So, Alfie entered our life, and despite my skepticism, has become a valued member of the household. And So also began a watching of the television series 'The Dog Whisperer' where Cesar Millan offers his help to American families with dog problems. We watch not because Alfie is a problem, but because Cesar's approach to dog keeping is to "train owners" to understand their dogs and their responsibilities as pack leaders. It's a humane (that seems a curiously anthropocentric word, but 'canine' won't do either) approach, and not really like the Barbara Woodhouse no-nonsense behaviourism from the 1980's which seems to simply condition certain responses with little accommodation to the animal save that it can't be reasoned with. We like that fact that it's an approach that tries to work with the grain of dog psychology and to understand it to do so.

So why am I telling you all this in something purporting to be theological reflection?
In short, it's because I'm learning things as I take my part in the care of our dogs with insights from Cesar Millan. I even got to the point where, having previously scoffed at Matthew Fox claiming his dog was his spiritual director, I suspected that I know something of what he meant.

I'd like to start with one of the most important insights in the keeping of dogs, already alluded to above: dogs don't understand us. Actually, that's not quite true: dogs don't understand people like people understand people. Dogs tend to understand us from the standpoint of canine pack mentality. I guess we are viewed (should I say smelled?) as honorary dogs. The most important corollary of this, and several times Cesar Millan has had to point this out to owners whose dogs seem to be problematic: when we talk to dogs, on the whole they don't understand us. Even more importantly human social psychology doesn't apply to dogs. A frequent mistake with dogs is to think that they are sulking or punishing us or pleased with things we do for them when, in fact, that's all our projection. On the whole they don't remember incidents for long, they don't attribute blame in the same way as we do, they don't even forgive; they just forget. They live much more in the moment informed more by long-term emotional associations and habits than specific incidents for their dispositions towards us.

There are two things I find myself reflecting on dogmatically in response to this insight. One is to do with church and culture, the other to do with God and us. When dog carers adopt a dog into their family, it is easy and natural to anthropomorphise the dog: to treat it as a variety of human: to speak to it (usually as a child) as if it is language-capable (it isn't, incidentally: associating certain human verbal behaviours with certain responses or activities is operant conditioning and a long way from language-use, trust me; I'm a linguist). We even treat them as if they are able to appreciate human social structures and concepts like 'niceness' or politeness based on reading dog behaviours through our social and emotional world. And that anthropomorphising is what, time and again leads Cesar Millan's clients astray so that the only way back is through understanding some fundamental things about dog psychology and reworking human behaviours to suit.

Dogs can only really read our behaviour through the grid of their own genetic dispositions to pack psychology. So it is up to us to empty ourselves of human assumptions and to try to understand the world from a canine perspective so that we can understand what our own behaviours communicate to dogs and act accordingly.

Similarly, with Christians and the church in human culture. People who do not share church with us and who have not been busily re-forming their lives around the gospel read our behaviour and language through the grid of their own frame of reference. Our choice is either to get them up to speed or to seek to communicate in ways that they can begin to grasp. The first option only seems to work where there is a particular set of incentives to motivate others to learn to speak and act 'Christian', such as under post-Constantinian Roman governance and under Christendom. The second is generally to be preferred, not least because it relates to the second of our 'dogmatic reflections'; it reflects how God relates to us. Because, of course, God is even more different in some very significant and important ways to us than we are to dogs. Now that's not to say that some analogies can't be made (just as there are contact points between us and dogs), merely that we will need to be aware that one of the analogies between God's relating to us and our relating to dogs is that in each case one party has more responsibility and ability to adapt to the limitations of the other. God adapts somewhat to us in revelation and ultimately in sharing our lot incarnationally. God adapts to us so that we may begin to find our joy and peace in God in turn. We adapt to our dogs' abilities and typical perceptions of the world in order to help them live happily and productively among us and we with them.

Our dog reminds me, constantly, as I take him for walks and seek to help him to behave appropriately in our house and with our friends and family, that we have to understand and learn to work with the grain of human cultures in order to communicate the gospel and to help people be formed by it.