What She Is Is Not

Yesterday I spoke of the neighbors' dog Gretta, and observed in discussing my larger point about her value as a listener that she has an expressive face. I think she does. She has a pretty big face anyway, and so in addition to her expressiveness she has the laudable quality of not being able to slip out of her collar the way my father's old dog Jack used to be able to do. The face, though, may be not as expressive as I think.

The human brain does a lot of things in order to make a senseless world seem sensible. It will always try to make what you see match up with what you hear, for example. It also takes something you don't understand well, such as a dog, and make it seem like something you do understand a little, like a person. Gretta is a good example. I don't truly know what's going on in her head, or what makes her do what she does. My brain tries to convince me otherwise.

Suppose that she's lying there on the sidewalk outside the apartment building panting on a warm day, as is sometimes the case. My rational mind tells me that nothing she's doing is indicative of what would be going on in the mind of a human doing the same thing, but the rest of my brain tells me that she's just happy as a clam because her lips are curled into what resembles a smile. I'm no veterinarian, but I'm pretty sure dogs don't smile.

That doesn't stop me, and I project feelings onto her constantly. I attribute a million uniquely human things to her every time we go out, and when I'm not around her I'm humanizing inanimate objects because it's easier to deal with the intransigence of a dishwashing machine if I make like it's a living, reasoning thing that I can communicate with. It really throws the difficulty of living into sharp relief when you think about the fact that you are compelled to do crazy things like that to cope.