It has been painful watching the T.V. news. Disregarding the sensationalized or superficially reported stories, many well researched reports can be very depressing commentaries on the state of human nature.
But now we hear daily of atrocities humans are subjecting others to. The primary victims are girls and women who are mistreated by their families, husbands, government officials and brutal savages whose life’s goal is destruction for domination. Recent articles about mistreatment of women in Muslim countries cite mutilation, humiliation, rape, murder and every possible kind of desecration. But there is so much more. There are terrorists blowing themselves up trying to take as many innocent lives with them. There are business people who cheat their customers, husbands who lie to and cheat on their wives, criminals who violate our laws of decency, the abuse of animals in bullfights, in the jungle, at sea and in overcrowded chicken coops. We wage wars that kill and maim and write laws that are cruel and inhumane. Even our religions betray us with shallow theologies and divisiveness leading to intolerance and violence.
Our human nature must be tamed, but how? Creating cultures and civilizations with laws and philosophies that foster good will have been our way of taming our nature, but even they have failed us leading to greater conflict. What can we create that can bring out our good qualities and make the disruptive ones seem out of place? What have we created for this purpose as well as for many others?
There is one that I can think of. It took thousands of years, at least 15,000 by some counts, but Man has worked hand in hand with nature to produce a remedy to free our better selves. We created the modern dog.
It turns out that it doesn’t take long to turn a fox, wolf or coyote into a dog. By mating the most docile member of a litter with another, these species become doglike in three generations. Remember, for them one generation can be just a few years. By breeding just for temperament, the offspring change their fur color, their size, shape and their nature. They become domesticated.
But how does taming their wild nature help humans tame theirs?
From their beginning we have needed dogs to help us in our daily lives. When humans were still hunters and gatherers, dogs helped us find our prey and sometimes helped us capture or retrieve them. They helped us when we started raising our own food by herding our livestock and protecting our lives and property. Today, dogs are used to find bombs, identify disease, help the blind walk and bring comfort to the elderly and disabled. But most of all, dogs give us love, unconditional love.
Dogs are not judgmental. They don’t respond to people based on physical appearance, financial status, political point of view or social status. Their unconditional love resonates deep within us to ignite the unconditional love that is at the heart of our very nature and temporarily suspends our fear, which is also at our core.
Scientists have now found a physiological expression for this apparent canine gift. They have found that when humans pet their dogs it increases the level of oxytocin in both. Oxytocin is the same chemical that is produced when a mother nurses her baby and feels a bonding. The oxytocin is the bonding glue. Oxytocin levels are also elevated during intimate human interaction leading to its orgasmic conclusion. Oxytocin in our system makes us open and trusting while the testosterone in us is a counterbalance making us also somewhat leery and aggressive. People with high levels of the former and low ones of the latter tend to be very trusting, easy targets for conmen and charlatans.
But dogs are not intent on tricking us. They want their basic necessities met - enough food, water and opportunities to eliminate waste products - and beyond them, the only goal is love and joy.
There are now more than 100 million dogs. There are some 150,000 dogs in San Francisco, more than the number of the city’s children. Dogs come in more varieties than do any other species and range in size more than any other. A mature dog can weigh anywhere from barely two pounds to over 200. So in the same species a dog can be 100 times the size of another. Can you imagine if some adult humans were 100 times the size of other adults?
Dogs are the rare living creatures that were created by Man. We started more than 15,000 years ago the process of making dogs to serve our individual needs. There are hunting dogs that point to the prey and retrieve them when they are killed or who look for animals or people to capture. There are herding dogs who take care of our livestock be they sheep or cattle. There are dogs that hunt rodents like gophers, mice and rats. There even is a dog, the Kings Charles Cavalier spaniel, created to sit on the king’s lap and attract the fleas away from the royal. There are dogs that offer protection, those who are small enough to be carried everywhere, those who can help the blind find their way and even those who bark the whole time their master is gone. There are dogs that can find bombs, drugs or even disease.
Some anthropologists believe that Man could not have survived without dogs.
But their gift goes much deeper than function. Dogs make humans better. They make us kinder, more compassionate, more considerate, more secure, less lonely, more loved and needed and more open to others dogs and their companions. Dogs break up many of our artificial cultural barriers. They make us better people by taming our nature with unconditional love and affection.
But there is one thing wrong with dogs: they get old, suffer and die. Dogs, like all finite things, have a beginning and an end. The beginning is the cause for great joy. The end is cause for unbearable sorrow. It is the death of the innocent. The constant reminder of the cruelty of nature’s entropy.
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