I endeavor to be the man my dog thinks I am.
Posted on 08/28/2014 7:23:34 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The mind of an animal is a far richer, more complex thing than most people know — as a new TIME book reveals.
Let’s be honest, you’d probably rather die than wake up tomorrow morning and find out you’d turned into an animal. Dying, after all, is inevitable, and there’s even a certain dignity to it: Shakespeare did it, Einstein did it, Galileo and Washington and Twain all did it. And you, someone who was born a human and will live your life as a human, will end your life that way too.
But living that life as an animal — an insensate brute, incapable of reason, abstraction, perhaps even feeling? Unthinkable. Yes, yes, the animals don’t recognize the difference, and neither would you. If you’re a goat, you possess the knowledge of a goat, and that can’t be much. But there’s more to it than that.
Human beings have always had something of a bipolar relationship with the millions of other species with which we share the planet. We are fascinated by them, often dazzled by them. They can be magnificently beautiful, for one thing: the explosive color and frippery of a bird of paradise, the hallucinatory variety of the fish in a coral reef, the otherworldly markings and architecture of a giraffe. Even the plain or ugly animals — consider the naked, leathery grayness of the rhino or elephant — have a certain solidity and equipoise to them. And to see an animal at what appears to be play — the breaching dolphin, the swooping raptor — is to think that it might be fun to have a taste, a tiny taste, of their lives....
(Excerpt) Read more at time.com ...
I endeavor to be the man my dog thinks I am.
My dogs are thinking they are going out to pee in 5 minutes.....hehehe! They gotta wait ten.
Equipoise?
Yeah, right.
I’ve watched my dog work though things before acting more than a few times. Like watching where a rodent came from and cutting off its route of retreat.
I kept the blurry shots in this series, I was catching Yellow flies and trying to aim the camera simultaneously. This little Anole was my buddy for a couple of weeks one summer.
My dog thinks Bammy is a Liberty restrictor and would likely chew him out about it.....
The monkeys stand for honesty,
Giraffes are insincere,
And the elephants are kindly but
They’re dumb.
Orangutans are skeptical
Of changes in their cages,
And the zookeeper is very fond of rum.
Zebras are reactionaries,
Antelopes are missionaries,
Pigeons plot in secrecy,
And hamsters turn on frequently.
Some would get the point, though. The pups are smarter.
This is why I gave up hunting. I regretted the last whitetail deer I shot three years ago and have not picked up a rifle since.
"Forget about Obama. He's a bum. What you really need is a
president who can outsmart the commies and the muzzies."
Great pics! Cute lizard! I tried to make friends with a large alligator lizard when I was a kid and it didn’t work out very well. The kid next door saw that I had a lizard so I gave it to him. It didn’t work out very well. So we put the lizard in a cage with a racer snake. It didn’t work out very well....for the snake.
I learned to stay away from alligator lizards.
I had to send my Baby Kitten over Rainbow Bridge today. I’m sorry. I am just really run down. I don’t mean to ruin anyone’s parade.
Love you guy’s!
“This is why I gave up hunting. I regretted the last whitetail deer I shot three years ago and have not picked up a rifle since.”
The very same thing happened to me in the mid-60s. I saw a buck with his harem on the top of a rise grazing at sunrise. I looked at the peaceful scene and could not shoot. I have not been hunting since but have been fishing for food but not for sport.
Well, around here, it’s “I’m going to stare at and pester you unt you feed and water me. Then I don’t give a crap about you anymore until next time.”
Poop.
Play.
Scratch my back, head, and ears.
Sleep.
Repeat.
I am sorry for your loss.
Lost my lab mix last month, and this retired Marine ain’t ashamed to admit I cried like a kid. One of the Best friends I ever had.
Squirrel!
I read that an adult cat has about the same IQ as a human toddler. I find that very interesting, and pretty accurate.
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