FOUR-LEGGED CHANGE

Jon Katz,  Dog Year: Twelve Months, Four Dogs, and Me (New York: Villard, 2002) ("John Steinbeck once wrote that it was the nature of humans as they grew older to complain about change, especially change for the better. I have never really had that particular problem. Change loves me, defines and stalks me like a laser-guided smart bomb. It come at me in all forms, suddenly and with enormous impact, from making shifts in work to having and raising a kid to buying a cabin on a distant mountaintop. Sometimes, change comes on four legs." Id. at xxi. This four-legged-change happened to me, in the form of fifteen-month-old Australian Shepherd. I renamed her. Her name is Charlie. "In our culture, humans with a special knack for animals have always been thought queer, or worse." "Learning a dog's worldview, altering it (within bounds), accepting a dog's understanding as sometimes more reliable than a man's--these commonplace tools of dog training are a mild cultural treason. . . . The truly dangerous inhabit a reality most of us can scarcely imagine--every day they share the thoughts, habits, tics and aspirations of a genuinely alien mind." Id. at ix (quoting from Donald McCaig, Eminent Dogs, Dangerous Men). I would like to become one of those dangerous men, at least with respect to sharing "the thoughts, habits, tics and aspirations" of Charlie's "alien mind.").