[Spexxvet]

Originally Posted by classicman

What sources do you have to back up your opinion? Truly, I do not think it can be "proven" either way, but I believe they do.

Jon Katz , noted dog author, feels differently.

"Over 15,000 years of domestication, [dogs] learned to trick us into thinking that they love us so we'll feed and care for them," he said.

Or, as he puts it in his new book, dogs are "adept social parasites."
...
Katz has written numerous books and articles on dogs, and he bases his conclusions on research conducted by unsentimental scientists trying to unlock the mysteries of animal behavior.

Then three words on Page 68 of "Soul of a Dog," brought me up short. Katz is discussing Lenore, a Labrador retriever and one of three dogs he keeps on his farm, and notes, "Lenore loves me."

"Busted!" I wrote in the margin.

"I use that term several times in the book," Katz admitted during lunch. "And what I mean is that my dogs love me in the ways that dogs love. There's no question that their instincts cause them to form and show powerful attachments."

He added, "What people were reading in your column was the suggestion that dogs are indifferent to their owners, which obviously isn't the case. But at the same time, dogs don't recognize people as unique individuals. It's just a romantic idea that a dog is a self-aware creature that makes a conscious choice to love a person because it appreciates his special qualities."

This leads, naturally, into the question of how much of the love humans feel for each other is based on instinct and need as opposed to objective, rational assessments. And to the implicit question in the title of the book and many of the anecdotes and mediations within -- do dogs have "souls"?

"My answer is that no, dogs don't have souls," Katz said. "At least not in the way that humans have souls. But they have souls of their own that we define by their impact on us."

They have an essence, in other words. A spirit, one that inspires and comforts and, occasionally amazes. We cheapen and distort that essence when we pretend it's just like our own.

Perhaps an otherwise divided nation can agree on Katz's simple plea: "Let dogs be dogs."