Imlisanen Jamir
No one ever tells you that when your dog is dying, it feels like a human is dying. Yesterday, I had to put mine down. At first, one tries to subdue the sorrow. But so many other dog owners have said things like, "It felt like a family member had died."
However, instead of mourning — or maybe this was my mourning — I read papers about humans' relationship with dogs.
What I found was that we really are two species with an odd, symbiotic connection. There is apparently a reason why it feels like a human has died. Dogs have helped us become who we are today.
The relationship began as early as 33,000 years ago. Scholars think we probably hunted together, because wolves were a lot like humans — they are both social creatures, working in packs to accomplish tasks.
Some scholars even suggest that our alliance with dogs helped us survive, while the Neanderthals did not. When our ancestors migrated to areas of the planet where we had to compete with large carnivores and Neanderthals for big game, scholars believe that humans came out on top because we partnered with wolves.
It is believed that the wolves apparently chased the large animals until they were tired out, and humans used sharp weapons to go in for the final kill. Then they split the meat, or so it is believed. In short, this partnership helped create the modern dog — and the modern human. This is how dogs went from partner to worker to friend.
It was just about 500 years ago that humans began using the word "pet" to describe a dependent, non working animal. Even then though, this wasn’t used to refer to dogs, but rather cattle and the ilk.
But the relationship clearly took a deeper turn over the years. These were very recently working animals, but now half of all pet owners feel their pet is as much a part of the family as any other person in their household.
In order to understand our current relationships with dogs, we have to understand our relationships with other humans. There is this thing called the "attachment theory," which postulates that humans have a biological tendency to form attachments for survival reasons. At first this is usually with mothers, but later it can be with friends and romantic partners.
Now scholars are seeing this type of attachment with pets, specifically dogs. The symbiotic relationship has evolved; we don't hunt together anymore, but we still help each other survive. And this is why we owe them more.
There was research a few years ago at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia which trained dogs to stay still inside an MRI machine. Through the scans, researchers found that humans and dogs have very similar structure and function in a part of the brain called the ‘caudate nucleus.’ This is a part that helps us anticipate things we enjoy, like let's say our favourite foods or our friends. From this, the study suggested that "dogs have a level of sentience comparable to that of a human child."
Perhaps that is why when I sat next to him, and I touched his frail frame, I teared up. Because just like every other time life crumbled at the edges, he was there — reliable, loving, humble, a friend.
Why it felt like a human died is perhaps because, in so many ways, dogs are like us. They spend much of their life caring, and letting us care for them. Their life arc is our life arc, from hardship to bliss. I didn’t know how to say goodbye. But in the moment, there was only one thing I actually wanted to say to my big, old, always happy Pullock: Thank you.
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