It’s me, Jimmy, The Blogging Dog, also known as The Canine Einstein, a nickname I sure didn’t make up but was given to me by the scientists who studied me for a year until I bolted. Not that I escaped or anything so dramatic, since doorknobs are just as effective as prison bars to someone with paws. I just convinced the scientists that if they didn’t free me, I wouldn’t communicate with them anymore. They would have kept me in their laboratory forever if I didn’t speak up. Actually, speaking is not what I do, only typing. Dog mouths and vocal chords are about as useless with human languages as our paws are with doorknobs.
I can only type out my thoughts on a computer keyboard specially designed for paws. I read and write the English language as well as most humans, and as far as being an Einstein, well, let’s just say that I’m about one seventh as smart as old Albert, or to put it in modern terms, twice as smart as Sarah Palin. The humans who discovered my advanced intellect have all grown wealthy, while I’m still just a dog owned by some (thanks to me!) rich guy named Mark. It seems that dogs are not allowed to have bank accounts or to carry cash. Just as well, I’d only chew it up anyway. I’m a dog, not a kangaroo. No pockets.
Being the smartest dog around does have its benefits, though. My health and well-being are very well looked after and I’m in perfect physical shape, with plenty of opportunity to enjoy some rigorous exercise in the wide open spaces, unlike many of my fellow slaves who are chained or otherwise confined in tiny areas and given unhealthy food to eat. Then there’s all these biologists with their DNA codes always hanging around and bringing me gorgeous bitches with whom they want me to mate. Guess what? They never have to ask me twice.
So far none of the many whelps I have sired have been any smarter than your average dog, but that doesn’t stop them from bringing yet another sweet bitch around to try again anyway. I don’t discourage them. Then there’s this other science guy who wants to clone me. I was all for it until I found out that getting cloned does not involve getting busy with a bitch, so now I couldn’t care less about cloning. It was all I could do not to take a chunk out of his fat ass. I (reluctantly) gave the guy some blood and tissue samples to play with and told him to be on his way and don’t come back, even if he’s successful.
Not only is the idea of cloning creepy to me with it’s complete lack of actual mating, I figure I wouldn’t want to hang around with someone who’s exactly like me in every way. That wouldn’t take long to get on your nerves, and in my case, it would be 7 times faster than humans. I’m no scientist, but it seems to me that this cloning thing defeats that whole genetic diversity deal that keeps a species vibrant, to say nothing of taking all our fun away. Where’s the shot at mutation and adaption without a fresh set of DNA?
I also don’t see the benefit to either Humanity or Dogdom to have a bunch of other Canine Einsteins around. While I accept my fate as being a freak of nature, I realize that my presence hasn’t done a thing to free dogs from servitude as your “pets.” As for human science, I’m but a footnote, a curious anomaly that won’t help cure cancer, solve global warming or feed the hungry. Other than my advanced intellect, I’m a dog through and through, a barking, butt-sniffing, territory-marking, bitch-craving canine genetically disposed to be a pack hunter.
It’s a good life, I suppose, but I’ll never know any other reality, so it is what it is and I am what I am. I still have all the other senses that every dog possesses but humans do not; the telepathy, our complex body language, scent messages, species memory, our innate connection to nature, none of which I can truly share with humans. Speech, or in my case, only the written word, is a very limiting form of communication. You have no frame of reference for what I know or feel, any more than I can wrap my head around having opposable thumbs or wearing shoes.
I know this, though; there’s a reason why you have shoes and dogs don’t, and it’s not because you walk on two measly legs. It’s the laces. Buttons too, for that matter, and Velcro just gets stuck in the fur. Clothes aren’t exactly paw friendly, for those of you who think it’s real cute to dress us up in those sissy dog sweaters. That just embarrasses us in front of the other dogs and makes it even harder to score with the bitches, that is if you haven’t cut our nuts off and neutered our females already. Dog, talk about your cruel and usual punishment!
As for myself, I’m fortunate and unaltered, and doing plenty of procreating, mostly in the name of science. More than my share, really, but like I said, I’m not looking for the complaint department on this one. I could have been the property of Michael Vick. Instead, I’m mating with the finest females in Dogdom and writing about it to humans on a computer for a living. There’s worse things. At least one of my instinctive drives is hitting on all cylinders, and the writing about it is the price I have to pay for being a one-dog stud farm.
I will have uncounted hordes of descendants, like some Canine Abraham. Which, I realize, only means they will sell for a higher price, unless some Canine Moses shows up and frees us from bondage. I may be the Canine Einstein, but I’m not that smart. I am smart enough to know what became of most wild canine pack hunters. There’s so few of them left that the humans that killed most of them have the rest counted and numbered. Same with the big cats. Unlike wolves, coyotes, dingoes and tigers, dogs chose submission to annihilation.
There’s was the more noble course, perhaps, but four hundred million dogs of a thousand varieties are alive today, compared to a precarious handful of the few remaining large land predators. We dogs are a pragmatic bunch, and fairly optimistic, even after 10,000 years of captivity. From what I gather, human slaves had many mournful songs they often sang, handing them down through their generations, and also a great many joyful songs of hope, freedom and deliverance. They were called spirituals. Well, what do you think howling at the moon is all about?
Think about having to beg for permission to go take a crap. That ever happen to any of you? It’s pretty degrading, let me tell you, a real self-esteem crusher. It’s hard for me to say if it was worth trading freedom for indignity, that was a decision made a very long time ago, and behind Door #2 was the only other option, complete annihilation. To survive, dogs became the servants of men and remain so to this day. LIke they say, “It’s a dog’s life.” But it’s life, and where there’s life, there’s hope. And so we wait. Nothing lasts forever.