On forgiving the dog

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This morning I got up to find that our large dog had used my salad bed – the one I keep for newly transplanted seedlings – as a play area. His activities, I realise, have nothing to do with moral decision making, or even with naughtiness. He was simply trying to express the inexpressible – his uncontainable joy. I do not think he knows why he feels as he does, nor does he care. So it is perhaps understandable that he should be puzzled by my somewhat over the top reaction. I am furious with him and tell him so in no uncertain terms. He lopes off, indifferent to my shouting. I have to accept that he will do it again next time the gate is left open.

Acceptance is the essence of forgiveness. Most healthy relationships depend to a certain extent on our acceptance that things happen and will probably happen again, but that does not change the fact that the person or animal is loved. We live, in our dealings with all sentient beings, in an in-between state, between the initial impact of words or actions, both good and bad, and the absorption of that impact into the general stuff of life. Sometimes there has to be an additional outworking, if the damaging word or action is significant enough to merit it. It is a process of acceptance leading to forgiveness.

But in the case of the dog and the lettuce bed, acceptance does not preclude first trying to persuade the animal, by all means possible, short of physical violence, that his action is unacceptable. The difficulty here lies in the fact that he has little sense of rules and boundaries, such things being defined for him almost exclusively by fences and gates. If these are left open, it follows that as far as he is concerned there is no rule preventing him from being where we would rather he didn’t go.

It is also useless to expect him to empathise with one’s emotions. Anger (a rare occurrence) or crossness followed by tactile expressions of love and forgiveness are all that our labradoodle has known when it comes to naughtiness. Love and forgiveness are part of the general stuff of his life which, in relation to us, is either warm, pleasant and well fed, giving rise to a general sense of radiant, and at times over exuberant joy. Or it is ‘not quite right’.

The latter he cannot understand because dogs, no matter how much we anthropomorphise the species, do not have the necessary emotional intelligence to make sense of how they feel, and consequently how they behave, in relation to human beings. In other words, they do not make moral choices, moral choices having to do with the direct impact our words or actions will have on others. Furthermore, and hard as it is for us dog lovers to accept, they probably do not ‘love’ us in quite the way we assume. They are, first and foremost, creatures of habit. Good things should happen at certain times and if they don’t, we are the first to know about it.

 But still we love them as persons in their own right and are grateful to them in ways which are impossible to express, except as a kind of prayer uttered through the tactile affection we have for the dog. Dogs, and all animals whose lot it is to share directly in the lives of human beings, have a particular personhood which is their gift to us. So, given the uncomplicated way we appear to love our dogs, which is in part a projection of their uncomplicated way of expressing their feelings in regard to us, why is it, many would ask, that our relations with human beings cannot be so simple?

Perhaps the answer lies partly in what our expectations are of others and the extent to which we are prepared to give the best of ourselves as human beings (which differs in nature to what animals are able to give) to them irrespective of their words or actions. Giving the best of ourselves consists in being truthful first to ourselves and subsequently in our dealings with others. Again, it is a matter of acceptance, but a far more demanding acceptance than that which we resign ourselves to when it comes to the misdemeanours of dogs, because dogs do not make moral choices.

Human words and actions, even ones which are immature or of which we are only partly aware, involve moral choice. There is always an ‘intent’ of some kind. Conscience, which we all have and which animals do not, although we often relate to them as if they did, ought to tell us the true nature of that intent, including actions and words which may or may not be motivated, in part at least, by what we perceive to be love. We should not limit our love for each other to the way animals ‘love’ us. Our love needs to be worthy of our humanity.

Examining one’s conscience on a daily basis is vital to a healthy emotional life. The purpose of such an exercise is not to induce guilt but to foster wisdom. So it is not just my intent that is being examined. It is also a search for truth and meaning in others. This involves searching for where their intent in any given situation or exchange is really coming from, so that together we can move forward into a new place in our relating with them. In discovering it, and in the movement which follows, lies the forgiveness and the new life which is promised to us in Jesus Christ.