This is not another hub about ‘animals.’ This is a hub about you, another so-called animal, a creature that once, like all other cooed-over or badly neglected beings on this planet, could not speak, could not understand spoken or written language, and whose every instinct played on and off something as simple and yet verbose as feelings.

One encounter I share is the one that finally sparked this waylaid writing. It concerns the subtle but impacted misfortune of a small, simple dog with two complicated and overbearing names: one is his newfangled, exotic breed name, Coton de Tuliar; the other is his breeder’s name, Casablanca’s Austin. From birth, this poor animal didn’t have a chance at a realistic identity, yet the unsurprising part of wildlife’s assimilation into or out of a human-relegated world. He was treated well, albeit with the supreme delicacy only afforded an overpriced show-dog, ‘house-broken’ indoors and watered through a hamster bottle to keep his white fur award-winningly immaculate. He is, you see, a relatively new and rare breed of uncommon but recognizable descent, specifically designed for such elite pre-occupation. (If you catch a hint of sardonic inflexion, I should state for the enlightenment of decent and responsible breeders everywhere that I do not consider selective or purposive breeding philosophically or socially terminal. However, it remains a touchy subject that warrants address later on.)

I am writing this because things are hardly ever as cut-and-dry as we would like them to be…or else they are that way all the time, simple not preserved in our most personally viable terms. And I am saying that if you want to understand something, you are going to have to change, not try to change it. The former comes first, then the latter, to state an obvious redundancy. That principle here asserted is universally applicable; call it alchemy, if you wish, or a name less vulnerable to suspicion. I don’t care how you label it, just so long as you don’t put it in a box first.

To digress for a moment, categorization can be helpful, yes, whether derived from stellar imagery or placed in temporal symbiosis of characters. But it is only a very crude or otherwise elementary form of identification, highly unforgiving and based solely on extremely limited observation, or intelligence. I am defining intelligence here as ‘observation’ as a means of inhibiting its psychological dysfunction…that is, its ‘ego.’ Intellect, I do believe, is only self-gratifying and rudimentarily fortified, like categorization, becoming an impediment the moment it oversteps intention. The will, a truer form of basic intelligence, intends. The self extends. It is truly that easy to comprehend. Determinant intellect can undermine this extension by actively interfering; for instance, when the personal mind interjects some pronounced device to satiate its desire to understand the will, such as when a ‘brain fart’ occurs. A brain fart is perhaps the startling disruption of a thought bursting indiscriminately; irony, or the egotistical intellect, would see to it that the bubble pops as rudely as instantaneously. I know because not only am I well-versed in flatulence, but such a mental crease just blew itself all over this paragraph, making it exceedingly difficult to continue with my initial abandon.

But I’ll go with the derailment. My hands are freezing; there is no heat in my house. Isobel, my own dog, wants me to get off my cot and do something. I have to assume this would be to let her outside, since at the time of this persuasion I admit I have little gift for gathering her intentions audibly (or telepathically). We are truly the bourgeoisie of communications, I’m afraid, but it was last night’s desperate plea to hear ‘them’ talking that sparked the dream-ball to get this book rolling. In summary of street-cred: I am a dreamer.

Please do take this literally. I take many delights in analyzing symbols with reference to ongoing events…with more the gall of an atheist than a millenarian freak. I am not writing to impose any system upon you, except the systematic dejection of systemic humanoid animal hierarchies, which are perpetually illogical and dangerously acute to begin with. Thousands of authors, ancient to undiscovered, have encompassed this premise effectively and often even magically, some fictionally and others by dictating their own nature.

In any event, the point about me, or anyone, is that we arrive at conclusions solely based on experience, in whatever pure form or indirect word-of-mouth that may be. A good possible motto for psychological expansionism: Don’t knock it till you try it, and don’t bother to try if you’re not willing to knock. Every body’s got their own faculty of research; sleep is one place I can get really absorbed in my work. You've probably got your own version of that.

All that being said, and in keeping with the sleight idea of identification, I intend to get back to little Austin, a wonderful, savvy and intelligent miniature canine whom I dearly adore but alas, cannot offer a home. Think of Austin not as a pet, but as your favorite nephew. His parents are older, busier, and more financially ambitious people with a penchant for ornaments and memorabilia; it’s not that they’re bad folks, they just don’t have a deep inclination for kids to begin with, much less the headstrong and loving sort that refuse to cooperate with silly and clearly defined household laws. Austin is a spontaneous, somewhat hyperactive kid with a desperate need for approval and some real territory of his own. Like any lavished yet uncomfortable child-potential, he craves like-minded companionship, never really enjoying or able to appreciate the luxuriant lifestyle afforded him as an only-child. His extended family, like you and your kids, is a healthy temptation; he would like nothing more than to live down his regal names and be his own warm-hearted, fun-loving, cliff-jumping person. He thinks your kids are better off with a small house and a brood of companions, as opposed to his being a tiny, white singular thing in a big empty mansion. Every time the family visits, he’s just sure you’re all staying forever; his ‘behavior’ improves, he stops running away and dastardly claiming whatever lands on the floor as his own. But he knows when you’re leaving, and that’s when the silent-type screaming begins. The ‘good kid’ gets obnoxious, reverts to random, insidious acts that show favoritism and a cry to belong. You wish painfully each time that you could bring him along, knowing they are geared for visitors while you daycare full-time.

But he’s not your kid, and if he were human, he might be ruined without his folks ever understanding why. After all, they’re doing everything they believe they can, and our kind just doesn’t readily give its kids away for the better. We pin that despicable, irresponsible choice on sexual litter-maids, pets, unwed crack-whores, and countless other ‘guilty’ or helpless entities who can’t seem to do any worse.

Off the soapbox, the point is that this kid doesn’t know where he belongs, who in hell he really belongs to…and this savory little detail would be that special thing that makes life worth its living. For anyone…mammalian-esque, we suspect.

Austin’s full name, on paper, still includes the branding name of his previous owner, the woman who bred him, much as we oft bear the weight of our alleged genealogy. Believe as you may, names do create psychological entrenchment; at the most basic level, they, not we, construct our identities, similar to genetic encoding or environmental manipulation. Names are used, however innocently, to imprint certain special characteristics, a practice akin to the ‘radical’ belief that the observer in a science unduly effects or affects the outcome of any local or even distal experiment. Denial is a most inappropriate and illogical stance; evidence of internal or displaced bias is rampant and rudely applicable.

Certain things, however, hold their truth like a million tons of water, captivating a ‘substance’ indefinite by its form and perfunctory in its arrangement…something seemingly, intellectually inept and yet elementally formidably capable. These things do not deny, they defy and thereby affirm what is really going on. This dynamic incites the imperative of approval; rejecting it on inherently obsolete principle doesn’t work. If the dog needs to piss, he is going to piss; if he needs you to love him, he is going to piss on your clothes until you can’t, simply because you already don’t. Say all you like how much you love him, or how much you could if he’d stop trying to get your attention. He doesn’t know who he belongs to, and thus is asserting his intent for acceptance all over the crap he knows you find more important.

Males seem to enunciate this clearly, whether given their chemistry or our social perception. I know that in Austin’s case, he is not terrified because he is small; he is scared because he seeks a greater sense of security…a place or a person to belong to. He came from a well-attended brood to a distracted, randomly single-pet household, from a pack of people exactly like him to a surrogate family of no one who directly understands him. Most persons, including dogs, should forever be adopted in pairs and from similar origins; hence the human ideal of segregation to begin with. But rash segregation is self-defeating, since it is the remarkable identification of each self that ideally should dictate those outcomes, pairings, or yield. To yield is to let, not to designate a preference of traversing variables. Selective breeding and rearing is conceptually sound, yet still a licentious profession. Quite simply, the procedure is increasingly in intellect’s incapable hands, unbalanced by intuitive delegation.

I do well to love Austin in his parents’ situation, but he would not flourish well in mine, either. This dog needs his papers shredded; he’s had a clear taste of the real ‘good life’—the one by which innocence knows how to get dirty. He will never be a show dog, nor would I suspect that he’d want to. He doesn’t care two ticks for how white his fur is, and he much prefers swimming and diving headlong off a pier to getting a bath every time he sets four feet outside. The problem is not that his folks want his paws to be pristine, nor even that bedspreads take precedence; it is simply that Austin wants to feel at home, and home is not a passing of hands.

Between doggie daycare, intermittent siblinghood, a host of anxious or free-wheeling excursions and a lack of deeply responsive ownership, Austin has been miserably lonely for at least fifty percent of his life…and hopeful at best. He is not a ‘stupid little’ dog, essentially not really nervous or high-strung, though like anyone flighty from tension and misunderstanding. He does not do well away from an owner or positive role-model-dog, either assuming more insecure attributes in keeping with others’ behavior or becoming lethargic or wandering off. He adapts well as a mimic; in a household of yellers, he becomes a constant yapper as a means of self-inclusion. My own dog, for comparison, does a similar thing by gaining weight, regardless of maintained activity levels, when she is attached to those less inclined to exercise mind or body, or both.

Psychological, or emotional, evolution is a primitive science, perhaps the most primordial in cases we may comprehend. A sense of belonging, the inherent intent or acceptance of ownership, is absolutely tantamount to the current survivalist system here. Wherever or whatever ‘here’ means, it is imperative to rational, animal judgment that we are encompassed to a healthy, but not stifling degree. This achievement should not prove so difficult, and it may not be, as internal methods continue to divulge. The process can only improve with the right kind of attention...that which precludes expectation and concedes supposedly ‘unintended’ results. This is not a matter of fate or faith, except the unclear implication that some mysterious Eden is not merely an ideal.