26/06/2023
THE STORY OF THE DOG
About 70,000 years ago anatomically modern humans began to disperse out of Africa into the Middle East and Eurasia. And for about 20-30,000 years not much happened. They were just an unremarkable member of a community of several species of hominids, all of whom had been around, and successful, much longer.
But around 40-50,000 years ago, they started making huge technological strides, breeding like rabbits, and in a relatively short amount of time had driven all their human competitors to extinction. While there are many theories about what changed, the most likely, is...
..dogs.
About 40,000 years ago, a pack of wolves, or perhaps just a lone pregnant female, came upon a camp of humans. The wolves had been aware of these strange hairless bipeds all their lives; they were slow, clumsy, and noisy, but their social structures and hunting patterns were rather similar to their own (if less effective). But this particular pack, perhaps drawn by the scents of cooking meat, or simply a lone wolf seeking companionship after being driven out of its pack, began hanging around the outskirts of the camp. Perhaps they scavenged off the humans’ garbage, but not necessarily. It’s quite possible they simply recognized kindred spirits. The humans, having sharp sticks, stone knives, and the ability to hurl rocks with accuracy at sp*eds approaching 100 mph, would have easily driven off the wolves that became too aggressive. But the friendly wolves likely would have been tolerated.
As time went on, the humans began paying attention to the wolves and learned as much about them as the wolves knew about the humans. They too would have recognized the similarity of the highly social, and hierarchical, bonds of the wolf pack to the human tribe. One day, the pack might have suddenly all taken off together. The humans, being the curious monkeys they were, would have followed to see what was up. They would have been led to an approaching herd of prey animals that they might not have been aware of for hours had they relied on their own, more limited, human senses. They would have watched the way the wolves hunted as a group, seen the similarities to their own hunts, but also learned tactics they might not have previously thought of. The next time this happened, the hairless apes would be ready. They would have their weapons and hunting tools with them when they followed the wolves and they would have hunted alongside them. The humans might have hung back as the wolves ran prey to exhaustion, then moved in for the kill. With their throwable spears against spent prey, many more animals would have been taken down. The wolves would have discovered that humans sometimes left the “best parts” of their kill behind. The humans and the wolves would quickly see the mutual benefit of hunting alongside each other, and eventually would have come to function as a team, even if neither side actually thought about it that way yet.
Back at camp, a similar dynamic may have been starting. If the alpha female wolf was close to giving birth, or had already done so, she would have stayed behind in the den rather than join the hunt. But her senses and instincts were no less sharp. She would have still provided the camp an early warning of other predators. The wolf pups would be raised around humans, and as they frolicked as only young puppies can, they would have ingratiated themselves into the camp. Each species would become increasingly comfortable in the presence of the other. Eventually, having wolves around the camp would have provided an added layer of defense for the mothers, children, and elderly, so that the hunters could range further afield in search of prey. The humans would similarly provide protection for the alpha and her pups. Another mutually beneficial relationship. The bonds would have compounded upon themselves and in a relatively short period of time, wolves and humans would have lived together in a natural symbiotic relationship. Whether this same pattern repeated itself countless times, or the idea spread via human camps trading with one another is probably unknowable. But the benefits of living with wolves would have become quickly apparent and spread throughout human society.
26,000 years ago, a human child and a wolf explored together deep into a cave in France. The child carried a flaming torch as they were far beyond the reach of sunlight. The young human most likely went to look at the immense paintings that adorned the cave walls that, by then, had already been there for thousands of years. The wolf wasn’t hunting the child. Neither of them was running. They were exploring together because they were friends. The child and the wolf walked side by side through a patch of soft clay, leaving footprints behind that eventually became permanently embedded in stone. When this cave was rediscovered 26,000 years later by three humans, it was named after one of them: Chauvet. The foot and paw prints are still there.
Inevitably, this symbiosis would have given the Homo Sapiens an advantage over their Neanderthal and Denisovan cousins. Without ever intending them any harm, our ancestors out-competed and outbred and eventually replaced the other human species in as little as 15,000 years. What allowed us to bond with the wolves while our fellow hominids couldn’t? Hard to say. One theory posits that it was our eyes. Humans are about the only species around today whose sclera (the whites of our eyes) are visible under normal circumstances. We don’t really know if that was true of the Neanderthals, et al. If not, it may have simply been easier for wolves to anticipate our actions based on seeing where our eyes were looking than our cousins. Or perhaps the visible sclera was a human evolutionary adaptation to cooperating with wolves. It wouldn’t be the last.
Over the next 30,000 years, our symbiotic relationship with wolves would have gradually shaped each species. The idea that humans controlled this through selective breeding is preposterous. These early homo sapiens had no technology that could have kept wolves from breeding. No rope or cage they could have constructed would have contained a determined wolf. Even today, wolf enclosures must have metal fences ten feet high and extending six feet underground, with padlocked gates to keep the wolves in. But gradually, there would have been minor changes in the physiology of each species. The wolves might have become slightly smaller, and their problem-solving skills would have deteriorated, as they relied on humans for that thinking stuff that we were so good at. In turn, humans’ night vision and hearing would have degraded as we relied on our canine companions for that. But the added meat in our diets would have provided the energy we needed to evolve larger brains, too.
Only once humans began to develop agriculture and live in large permanent settlements, 8-10,000 years ago could we have had any intentional impact on the evolution of these wolves. They were now clearly separate from the descendants of those more aggressive wolves we drove away from our camps. Those animals would have learned to (mostly) fear us and keep their distance, and their shape remained largely unchanged down through the eons. But we would have seen the differences in the wolves that lived with us, and this likely is where the first ideas for domesticating other animals came from. Once we had herds of domestic animals, we would have raised our wolves amongst them and eventually some of them would have learned to protect the herds, just as they protected us. Other, smaller ones would have been more effective at hunting rats and mice that might try to eat our stored grains and vegetables. Simply because the smaller wolves would have lived within the settlements and the larger wolves would have lived out in the fields with the shepherds and goats and sheep, they would have interbred less and thus smaller and larger wolves, which we now called dogs, would have emerged.
Gradually, the physical differentiation between dogs with different jobs and homes would have increased, but it would have been slow and gradual. Not until the past few hundred years did the wide and sometimes bizarre differences that we see amongst dogs today develop. Dogs taught us to hunt, helped us grow big brains and survive when others like us went extinct; they helped us develop agriculture, build cities, fight wars, explore and eventually spread to every corner of the world. Anywhere that humans live, dogs live too. It is not coincidence that the very first earthling to venture into the void of outer space was, in fact, a dog. Our interspecies relationship is unique in nature. It is practically mystical. For better and for worse, we are inextricably bound to our four-footed brethren. In my darkest hours, when I despair for humanity, it is often comforting to think that we are what dogs made us.
And so, on June 12th, 2008, 40,000 years of co-evolution and controlled breeding eventually, almost inevitably, led to the birth of the Best Dog Ever. He was a goofy, clumsy, drooling absolutely adorable ball of fluff, of a “breed” that modern Homo Sapiens had come to call Golden Retrievers. Eight weeks after his birth he was playing with his siblings when one of the big-brained, half blind and deaf, hairless apes, a tall stranger, came into their enclosure. His siblings all nipped at the stranger to see what he tasted like. Alone among them, this Best Of All Possible Dogs refrained from biting and politely sniffed instead.
And so I chose him, and named him Ripley (after the fearsome alien hunter, believe it or not), and brought him home to live with me. A few months earlier, the relationship with my lifemate of twenty-two years had, seemingly inexplicably, ended. I was lost and alone and in the throes of despair. My therapist had suggested an “Emotional Support Animal”, which is what a dog becomes when a therapist writes a letter to a landlord saying that’s what it is. But all dogs are emotional support animals. They have supported us for as long as we’ve been human and they’ve been dogs.
We got off to a bumpy start. I had an appropriately sized travel kennel which had been purchased when we’d needed to ship our first cat, the gone but never forgotten Navarre, across country. But in the rush to get out the door, I’d forgotten it. And so baby Ripley rode home in a plastic bucket that the breeder was willing to let me have. I’d never had a dog before and while I read the instructions from the big-brained hairless apes who’d come before me, I really had no idea what I was doing, and poor Ripley certainly had no idea why he shouldn’t p*e on the carpet. But eventually we worked that out (and I replaced that carpet with hardwood floors), and we became best friends. I probably made that harder for him than it should have been, given the emotional extremes that I ping-ponged through in those difficult, painful early years of single life. But through rage, tears, paralytical depression, self-medication, and occasional near-psychosis, he somehow remained supernaturally happy to be with me. Of course, he was supernaturally happy simply to be alive. Anything he did, he did with gusto. Chasing a ball, chewing a toy, eating a meal, sniffing a breeze - each and everything he did was the Best Thing Ever! I can’t say I’ll ever find the level of joy in anything that he seemed to experience in everything, but slowly, over the years, he did rub off on me a little. And when I looked into his eyes, I saw the boundless, unconditional love that I’d thought was gone from my life. And after a while, the depths of despair weren’t quite so deep; the rages weren’t quite so wild; and the tears weren’t quite so plentiful. It’s hard to live in a ball of pain when a golden retriever brings you a tennis ball.
Eventually, as I started to rejoin the human experience, we began to share adventures. First at the local dog park, where he helped me make some new friends (even as he shunned any canine companionship for the single-minded pursuit of the fuzzy green orb of goodness). Then later, on endless hikes through Southern California’s endless canyons. He helped me lose 40 lbs in 4 months that I desperately needed, and never complained while I failed to realize that this increased activity meant he should be eating more. I needed to lose those 40 lbs. He didn’t need to lose the 8. But that too, I eventually figured out. We waded through rivers, swam in oceans, lakes, and pools. We climbed rocks and stairs and, once, even a playground ladder and then slid down a slide. We shared baths, and beds, and meals. He even went to work with me. Amidst my brief brush with celebrity, he even appeared in a movie with me. He even helped mend broken bridges with the ex. She couldn’t help but love him too.
On one of our earlier hikes, he decided to take a side trail that went up more steeply than the fire road I was following. He ended up atop a fifty foot high cliff, looking down at me. This was probably the farthest apart we’d ever been, and he started whining, and then yelping in distress. I stopped and looked up at him. Clearly, he didn’t want to continue on the trail he was on and get further away from me. And all my pointing and gesturing for him to just go back the way he’d came to rejoin the trail I was on, was too counterintuitive for him, since it would require him to go further away from me in order to get closer. And so it looked like he was going to try to climb straight down the cliff. This was when I got really scared, because it was clearly too steep and he was going to break his neck. He seemed to realize this too, and just became paralyzed with indecision, unable to come toward me, unwilling to move in either direction away. Finally I had to walk back up the hill to where the two paths had diverged and finally he could move towards me to rejoin me. That lesson stuck with him and if he ever started to wander off on his own, as soon as he realized I wasn’t going to follow, he’d come rushing back to my side.
His favorite foods were peanut butter and cream cheese. Though he liked to eat dirt too, great big clumps of it, so perhaps Skippy and Philadelphia shouldn’t take too much pride in his preferences. Despite absolutely loving every human being he met, he somehow knew that his job was to protect me, and so he would always station himself between me and the front door when I would sleep. He would bark ferociously at anyone who had the temerity to walk past our apartment, though prospective burglars (and neighbors) might have been gratified to know his tail was wagging furiously all the while. Undoubtedly his barking really meant “Hey! Come play with me!” He never met a stuffed toy he couldn’t destroy within an hour. Christmas mornings would soon look as if it had snowed indoors, thanks to the stuffing strewn about.
His energy was boundless. We’d hit the dog park when I got home from work everyday, and he’d play fetch continuously for as long as I could throw the ball. An hour of continuous chase and retrieve and he’d still be raring for more and be unwilling to head home. On Saturday mornings, we’d start with an hour’s worth of fetch, and then go on long walks down to the beach, along the boardwalk, and then back through town. Miles of walking after an hour of running, and still he’d be ready for more.
For the first five years of his life he pulled on the leash mercilessly, despite my trying every technique the experts suggested. It wasn’t so much that he was disobedient, he was simply so full of life that wherever we were going, he wanted to go as quickly as possible. Finally, around age five or six he started to calm down a little, and learned to walk at a pace at least a bit closer to my own.
This was the time that our bond deepened even further. Though he still had crazy puppy energy, he was finally mature and calm enough to pay full attention to me, and to understand that our relationship was a two-way street. Our adventures continued but, even off leash, it was less about me chasing after him and more about us being together. Perhaps not coincidentally, it was around this time that his cat brother went to live with his mom, and so I no longer had to divide my attention and affection between two animals with very different needs. He became less the rambunctious toddler that I had to keep from accidentally killing himself, and finally, truly became my best friend. No matter how bad a day might be, he could always make it better simply by looking at me with those big soulful eyes, or butting his head against my hand for the treasured ear scrunches. He was better behaved off-leash and our hikes became more enjoyable, and more varied. We hiked with human friends with their dogs, and we hiked alone. One time, just as I thought how well-behaved he’d become, a jack rabbit hopped onto the trail in front of us. Ripley took off after it faster than I’d ever seen him move. He’d never seen a rabbit before, and all the calling and cajoling and whistling wouldn’t bring him back. I ran after him and eventually, around several bends, found him trotting back to me, the rabbit long gone, and a perfectly innocent expression on his face. It’s hard to be mad at a face like that.
He had a brief cameo as a military dog in Sharknado 3. As the end of the day was closing in and his scenes were done, he found the only mud hole on the entire film ranch and walked right into the middle of it. Knowing what a mess his muddy paws would make in the car, I urgently called him back to me. Instead of coming, he just lay down right in the middle of puddle. It seems strange that I remember that fondly now...
As his 8th birthday approached, we trained on escalators and elevators, in crowded malls and stores and squeezed into tight places, all so eventually he would be the perfect passenger when we flew in an airliner together for the first time. We were fortunate to have the entire row to ourselves on that first flight to New York. He didn’t care for the hustle and bustle of the Big Apple, to my chagrin. Perhaps it was because of his lifelong fear of helicopters and the fact we were staying just a few blocks from the Wall St. Heliport. But I had ample opportunity to be proud of him on the return trip six weeks later. First, the mean TSA agent at JFK insisted we go through the metal detector separately (they’d had no problem with me leading him through at LAX). So he had to sit and stay, off leash, as I walked through, then walk through on his own when it was his turn. All this amidst crowds of stressed travelers. But he performed flawlessly. Then our return flight was fully booked. As we boarded the plane, I overheard one of the flight attendants say “Well that’s going to be a problem” as she saw him. But he slid under my seat and slept the whole flight home. As we deplaned I heard a passenger behind us exclaim “I didn’t even know there was a dog on board!” I’d like to think Ripley joined me in smirking at the flight attendant as we deplaned.
It was only a few months later that I noticed he was drinking more than usual and took him to the vet. Somehow I’d missed the golf ball-sized tumor that was hiding right under his collar. But through endless exams, surgery, and months of chemotherapy, he never lost his supernaturally sunny disposition. He would literally drag me into the vet’s office for his chemo treatments, so excited was he to have new people lavish affection on him.
He slowed down a little after that. And even more after a second tumor was removed from his armpit three years later. As twelve began to give way to thirteen, arthritis became an ever-increasing problem, and daily medication became necessary. Stairs, which once he’d flown up and down with his paws barely touching, became an arduous climb. But not once, not ever, did his immense love of life, of Homo Sapiens, and of his Dad, diminish. Halfway through his 13th year I awoke to him whimpering in the middle of the night. Thinking he just wanted to come into the bedroom but his aching joints weren’t cooperating, I got out of bed and helped him to his feet. But to my horror he fell over. And again. He was panting and in obvious distress. His eyes bounced back and forth in their sockets. I feared he’d had a stroke, and carried him to my bed, and held him, and prepared to say goodbye. A few hours later, as soon as they opened, I rushed him to the vet. To my relief, tests would reveal that it wasn’t a stroke, but something called “Old Dog Vestibular Disease”, which affects their inner ear and nervous system and causes balance and coordination issues. In a few weeks he was recovered, but then relapsed a few months later. For the last half of his 13th year he could walk okay on level ground, but would often stumble on uneven surfaces, and had to be carried up and down the stairs (we live in a 2nd floor walk up) three times a day.
Against all odds, he arrived at his 14th birthday a bit worse for wear, but still supernaturally happy and friendly to every hairless ape he met. Several of his homo sapien friends attended a party for him at a local dog park. He couldn’t chase a tennis ball more than a yard or two, but he was clearly ecstatic that all these people were paying attention to him with pats and rubs and treats. It was the Best Day Ever!
But none of this whole long story can explain the love. The love that made me dote on this ridiculous, slobbering, creature who cost me thousands upon thousands of dollars, got jealous of every woman in my life except Debbie, and made it literally impossible to keep my home clean. 40,000 years of co-evolution can’t explain why I would exacerbate my bad back carrying him up and down the stairs in his old age, or why people who’ve never even met Ripley donated money to help his battles with cancer. Nothing can logically explain the way my heart would melt every time I looked into his eyes, or watched him run towards me with his ears flapping in the wind. Nothing but love. We hairless apes like to think we’re the only animals that feel love, or that the depth of our emotions is somehow greater than those of the creatures we share this world with. I don’t know if that’s true as far as all the other species go. But it’s patently ridiculous when it comes to the friendly house wolves. We didn’t invent love. They did. The first human to look into puppy eyes was already looking at the purest love there is. All we did was try to return it in our own meager, imperfect way. When it comes to true love, dogs have us beat hands down.
Ripley died yesterday at the age of 15.
He was a VERY good boy.
