i'm an animal, you're an animal, too

“Did you lose a dog? A little black one, near the entrance to the trail?”
“Um, yes?” We respond uncertainly, eager for information about the dog we have in fact lost, but wary of the accusatory tone that lies just beneath the friendly concern.

“Lose” is not, however, the most appropriate verb. We began the hike with two dogs, but Lupe, being Lupe, ran off shortly after we’d started. We called for her, but when she didn’t show up, we continued hiking, not knowing whether she was ahead of or behind us. We thanked the couple, also dog owners, and walked away sheepishly. It is surely a nearly universal sentiment among pet owners that at such moments it seems that yours is the only animal so poorly socialized, so egregiously disloyal as to flaunt in public behavior that could only stem from inadequate care. Bad dog; bad, bad owner.

By all objective standards, Lupe and Marcos lead privileged lives. They are well-fed, well-loved, and well-traveled. There is no doubt, though, that Lupe would in some ways be better suited to another lifestyle. As the cliché goes, dogs love unconditionally, but when does our loyalty to them become selfish? As we hiked without Lupe, I told myself that if she were running with a pack of dogs and got separated, the consequences would be on her. Dogs discipline each other, keep order within the pack, and life outside the pack therefore keeps its own order, too. But Lupe isn’t wild. She’s a domesticated animal, one with whose care we are charged. By choice.

Dogs thus offer perspective on our uneasy relationship to nature. They live in our homes; increasingly, they frequent restaurants and go on vacation with us. They calm psychological distress and lower stress levels, at least when they’re on good behavior. Dogs remain animals, however, governed by their breed and temperament at least as much as by what we manage to teach them. Dogs blur the boundaries by which we distinguish “nature” from “society,” the biological and instinctual from the artifice of human interaction. Although absolutist ideas about how human society should interact with nature make for pithy bumper stickers—“meat is murder,” “eat beef”—they conceal the thornier issues regarding our place in the natural world. The way we treat domesticated animals can be unimaginably inhumane, but abruptly ending our relationship with them would likewise be unethical. Dogs, cats, cows, chickens, and pigs have struck an evolutionary bargain with us, which, as Michael Pollan argues in The Omnivore’s Dilemma, has often been to their benefit. Thousands of years of genetic fiddling and co-adaptation with certain species place upon us a responsibility for their care. Yet even as we shirk the implications of this cultural co-dependency—abandoning farm animals to the cruelties of industrial agriculture, or conversely, to an existence in which we are no longer their caretakers—we increasingly humanize our dogs and cats. It is no longer viable, in most circles, to think of humans as masters of the natural world, but the implications of this shift haven’t yet been worked out, even among those who accept evolution, for example, or the need for sustainable agriculture. The arguments of vegans notwithstanding, when it comes down to it, how much more ethical is it to force human behavioral patterns upon a pampered dog than it is to raise and slaughter an animal for food? Maybe we can’t help but think of ourselves as “special animals,” but we’re not so special that we can remove ourselves from an ecosystem without consequences. Although sometimes, dammit, it would be nice if the dog just came when she were called.