Pets just know

I spent the holidays at home, most of the time lying in bed with Gorby, my Toy Poodle, or when mood allowed, reading a few books.

Acquired Tastes by Peter Mayle and The Philosopher’s Dog: Friendships with Animals by Raimond Gaita were the books I had chosen to chew on.

Acquired Tastes was given to us by our editor Millet. Mayle gives his readers a taste of what the life of the people who have is like. The wit and the humor Mayle is known for runs all over the book.

The pet lover in me was immediately attracted to the chapter on "The Millionaire’s Mushroom" where Mayle describes how people who love truffles – French truffles, that is – are willing to dig deep into their pockets. Gorby sat and listened quietly as I read to him. Mayle says that people who hunt for the truffles prefer to use pigs because they are better at sniffing out the goods. But the problem comes when the pigs find the mushrooms because they, just like the many who live for the "golden mushrooms," love to savor the delectable goods. In recent years, Mayle adds that dogs have been trained to search for the truffles. Although dogs are not as good as the pigs when it comes to finding the best truffles, Mayle adds that, at least, the hunters don’t have to compete because the dogs only hunt for the truffles – they don’t eat them.

Interesting.

Acquired Tastes, available at National Book Store, is a great read. And even if Mayle states in the intro that the book is research work done over four years, it definitely doesn’t read like some boring research. And, whether one is among those who lives the life Mayle writes about or just imagines and wishes they could, this book is light reading but definitely highly enlightening.

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The Philosopher’s Dog by Raimond Gaita is the other book that kept Gorby and me occupied over the holidays. Raimond Gaita is a respected writer and a professor of moral philosophy.

Gaita, who grew up with dogs, asks the question – if we love a dog, why not a cow? And if we love a cow, how can we make food of it?

The philosopher in Gaita makes him look at the way other philosophers look at animal relations, too. Like, for example, J.W. Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello. Elizabeth believes that she understands how animals feel, and she compares the slaughter of beasts to the moral crimes of the Holocaust. In the process, she "appears to be at the edge of madness."

When Gaita’s childhood canine Orloff died, both he and his father cried – "the only time we cried together." Now he has Gypsy, who "feels her age in her spirit as well as her body."

As I read the book, I could not help but recall the many pets that were part of my own life. But it is only now – being a little older and hopefully wiser – that I have come to wonder whether animals are indeed able to think like we do. Although, if you come from a household like mine where everyone talks to Gorby, Greta and Boris like they were human beings – there is no time to wonder, we just know that they know what we know.

In his book, Gaita wonders whether dogs are capable of conceptual thinking. If they can anticipate feeding time, doesn’t this imply the concept of time in general? He wonders, for example, if Gypsy is old, does he know he will die? And if they don’t think or feel what we feel, what kind of companions would they be?

Anyone who has ever owned a pet knows that we make these animals part of our lives because they love us unconditionally. And not because they are good at herding other animals or because they guard our houses well.

The Philosopher’s Dog raises questions, answers some, and rambles from place to place, sometimes losing this reader in the many philosophical arguments. There is no doubt in my mind that students of philosophy would find this book a good read. But pet lovers might prefer to look elsewhere.

But what cannot be denied is that Gaita is also a pet lover like us. His heart longs to understand what our pet companions really think and feel when they lie next to us and stare into space. Or if when they look at us with loving eyes, we wonder if they really love us.

Maybe Gaita needs to know the philosophical answers to these questions. But for any pet lover our pet’s actions will always speak louder than any of Gaita’s philosophies.

In closing, the author cited his father’s deep compassion and appreciation for animals which we all could learn from. He wrote, "There are wonderful people, people whose compassion for animals is as deep as my father’s was, and whose finding it so interdependent with their understanding of what it means to kill an animal for food. Their example, however, does not, for me, show up my father. No one I have known has been more appreciative than he was of the generosity with which animals give themselves to us and grateful for the grace they bring to our lives."