It’s me, Jimmy, The Blogging Dog. The people here at bobcrespo.com keep bugging me for more blogs, but lately I’ve been too busy doing dog stuff to write to you. I even told the scientists that are all over me like flies on scat to give me a break for a couple of weeks. It’s what you humans call a vacation. I just needed a break from the routine, that’s all, charging up the old batteries, as you folk say.
Maybe you’re wondering just what the heck a dog would take a vacation from, but let me remind you that I’m a working dog. Ever since my owner discovered that I could read and write the human language called English when I was a puppy, I have been called The Canine Einstein, a genius of the first order, they say, at last as far as dogs go. That only makes me about as smart as your average Cable TV host, no great shakes, really. To other dogs I’m Steven Hawkings. To humans I’m the snarky wiseass from The Soup.
But what my gift has brought into my life is an endless line of scientists studying me in every way imaginable. Since dog throats and vocal cords can’t do human languages and there’s no hope of teaching you my language, we communicate on computer, and I’m the fastest two-pawed typist you’ve ever seen. They built a special computer keyboard for me as I grew to be a pretty sizable mutt.
I don’t get many days off from getting tested and measured and probed with sensors of every sort. Then there’s all the reports I have to write, like this one, to people interested in a canine view of humanity. It’s not like I’m the canine Proust or Hemingway or anyone with some great insight into humanity, but I suppose it is pretty unique hearing about yourself from another species’ point of view.
Just don’t don’t get all weepy if Jimmy, The Blogging Dog, doesn’t worship at the altar of mankind and think you’re the greatest thing since Alpo. To dogs, you’re just another mammal. The dominant species on earth right now, sure, the boss of all bosses in Mother Nature, but to rest of the world you’re carnivorous mammals that form packs and stake out territories, a lot like dogs in their natural state.
Of course we dogs are more than 10,000 years removed from our natural state. Back in the day we were rivals to humans for the choicest hunting grounds. Before too long it became very apparent that humans shot first and asked question later, so some smart dogs formed a partnership with people. Dogs are very junior partners these days, owned, tagged and carefully bred, unable to even mark their territory with scat before some human scoops it into a plastic bag. That’s annoying, by the way. But at least dogs survived.
Judging from the scarcity of saber-toothed tigers, short-face bears, woolly mammoths, giant caribou, dire wolves and Neanderthal people, my early canine ancestors made the right call. For these 10,000 years, humans have never known what a dog thinks of all these developments. Until now, that is. And the result for me has been a lot of hard work. I don’t mind, though, since it is my hope that I can get at least some people to treat dogs better.
Make no mistake, by treating dogs better I mean letting them go. Literally. After 10,000 years we are still by nature carnivorous pack-hunting mammals,and nothing can change that. Most of the human-run animal rights groups think they’re doing great things for us by cutting our nuts off. Thanks but no thanks. I’m grateful that didn’t happen to me, especially since part of my job is to mate with the best looking bitches on the planet. It’s a good perk. Very good.
They tried to go the artificial insemination route with me, but I’m plenty smart enough to insist on the real thing. Call me Old Obedience School if you like, but being The Canine Einstein allows me to pull rank every so often. They might be smarter than me, but there’s only one Jimmy, The Blogging Dog, while there’s an abundance of earnest young scientists. Which is why I insisted in a two-week vacation.
No, I didn’t go to Bermuda or the Rocky Mountains and engage in extreme sports. I am a dog, after all. I just hung around the house and ran around the yard, sniffing, barking, leaving my scent all over the place and letting everyone know that this yard is under the watchful eye of Jimmy, The Blogging Dog. Other dogs came by and we sniffed each others’ butts, licked one another and caught up on what’s been going on lately.
Yes, dogs do talk, but our language includes sights, sounds, gestures and smells, most of which human senses cannot detect. Not that we’re talking about anything world-shaking, just who had puppies and when they were taken away from them, whose owner beats then and is cruel to them, and which bitches in the neighborhood were coming onto heat. Dog stuff.
We rarely discuss anything human beings do amongst themselves since we understand so very little about people. Plus, you do so many crazy things that it takes a real doozy of a hare-brained stunt to be noticed by dogs. The vast majority of human activity is inexplicable to us, and really not all that fascinating to dogs as you’d like to think it is, to be honest. I can’t be anything but honest, you see, since dogs have never grasped that whole lying thing. Our keen senses tell us in a split second who is or isn’t lying, so there’s no point, really.
So, I took a short vacation from a world where it is all about you, all the time. I hung out with other dogs and we did dog stuff, talked about dog things and swapped stories and oral history. See, that’s another things that dogs have, an inborn species memory that connects us with a thousand ancestors, since even before we became a captive race of beings. My dog friends and I hung out for days, forming our own mini-pack in the yard, howling at the moon and beings as much dog as we could possibly be. I feel a whole lot better now. Until next time, humans, this is Jimmy, The Blogging Dog.