FAITHFULNESS
Probably Scriver’s most popular and emotionally appealing bronze is the statue of “Shep”, the shepherd dog, whose master left on a train and never came back because he was dead. Shep did not understand that, so he waited patiently at the train station until he died of old age. After a while he was noticed by people who fed and tried to protect him, even pull him away to a new master, but he wouldn’t go. This was in Fort Benton, Montana.
The central “spine” structuring his behavior were two biological phenomena that mammals demonstrate in the interests of survival, though not all to the degree that dogs include them in their nature. Both qualities come from the necessity of protecting babies. Mammals that don’t have these impulses will not successfully continue their species.
One is attachment, which some people might call love and use as a portmanteau for a lot of other ideas, and the other is arousal, which is what heightens responses to danger, to sex, and to anything out of the ordinary. Since humans are mammals, they have both of these drives, but since they are human, they can overrule their own best impulses for reasons that seem logical to them or that result from deformations of their natural potential. A human would not wait at a railroad station until their death. A human could conceivably throw someone — or themselves — under the train.
Another feature of arousal is that the cause need not be real in the sense of concrete and accessible to the senses of the aroused person, but can be part of the “extended mind” based on empathy and shared in stories. Arousal is a physical state that affects the neurochemistry of the mind and is therefore vulnerable to addiction. We can see this when we look at an aroused person whose face is flushed, breathing fast, heartbeat also fast. Dogs watch human faces closely, hear tiny changes in the voice which is wired into the same system, and smell the neurochemical changes that carry emotion.
In humans, the philtrum, the dent between nose and upper lip, is capable of engorgement, swelling, as are the lips, called “labium oris,” the lips around the mouth which women have around around the other entrance to their bodies. Not until species have evolved to primates do we see animals with continuous upper lips, good for sucking and kissing. Research exists about lips but most of it is inconclusive.
Human shepherds of a “resourceful” disposition, advise not kissing any creature with three lips, like sheep. Dogs have three lips so they use their tongues to kiss, actually tasting those they love. Washing them with tongues, the way they would care for puppies. Attachment comes from mammal infancy, whatever it becomes later.
Putting jokes aside, attachment includes faithfulness, religious attachment to ideas, ties across the generations, solidarity among people from the same place (patriotism) or doing the same work (labor unions), and care for those who are vulnerable (compassion). Attachment happens with place (where we are happy) and times (when we were secure). In short, attachment is at the heart of relationship.
In humans it is interfered with by ownership, domination, control. In dogs, attachments can be conferred on other adult dogs, the way wolves form packs. Attachments can be formed across species and we call that “friendship” between a dog and a horse or even a dog and a cat. Attachment makes a circle of inclusion, a household that defines who will be protected.
Dogs never experience ownership of others, but only attachment. They do know control and domination, which are from experience later than pup-hood. People whose ability to attach has been damaged or whose real attachment has been painfully betrayed can be redeemed by the devotion of a dog. Dogs vary in their responses to their experiences and, presumably why they decide one action rather than another. We can only guess and project what is really going on, as in the testimony linked below.
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It’s impossible to know why the blue heeler called “Rogue” decided to leave Greta and attach to Clara. Maybe he thought Greta didn’t need him but Clara did. Maybe he didn’t like goats. Maybe he was at heart a “town dog” rather than a pastoralist herding dog. Maybe he had a run-in with one of those big white guard dogs who would fight wolves and thought he looked more wolfish than he ought to.
But the two women didn’t fight over him. Neither of them was the kind of person who “owns” things or others. They let others make their own choices. The indigenous boy was the same way. He saw Rogue as an equal and spoke to the dog, listened to him, petted him, and expected him to understand how things were.
Something dramatic could happen in the story so that Rogue has to fight or escape or rescue. Lots of stories are like that because they depend on the kind of arousal a dog is prepared for, that is, an arousal based on violence though defensive. But the simple recognition of human sadness can also be a kind of arousal, and sometimes Clara would let her piano be her expression of mourning for her dead husband. Then Rogue would come to lie under the sound board of the instrument and whine softly.
When Clara went up to the hayloft window to watch the sky at dawn or sundown, Rogue came along — even climbing the ladder — and sat leaning against her as the swallows went yelping through the sky, crying “meat, meat, meat” as they gulped flying insects. When they went silent, settled with their babies for the night, the bats came to curve through the night for the same reason. The bugs might change from one species to another, but there were always plenty of them. The two watchers — attached to each other — didn’t have grand and poetic thoughts about what they saw. They just absorbed it, felt it, shared it, and thus were part of it.
