A friend of mine had the misfortune of having his pet cat Mr. Digger killed by a car this weekend. He is very upset and missing it. But so is his dog.
The day after the accident, the dog went around the house whining and looking for the cat. It went outside and saw Tony preparing to bury the cat and when he saw it lying on a bench, the dog went over and started nudging it, as if to wake it up. Then it sat down and started crying again.
We tend to think, of course, that animals don’t feel as deeply as we do or form relationships that matter much, especially with members of other species. But that has really been called into question over the past few years and researchers are even studying the phenomenon of non-human creatures caring for each other, regardless of species, in times of need.
A startling video recently showed a dog rushing onto a freeway and pulling, with his paws, another dog which had been hit by a car, off to the shoulder of the road. The dog survived because his buddy had put his life on the line for him.
Our little dog Toby has decided that he is the defender of the nine gerbils that live in two glass tanks in our home. If our two cats go to the tanks to have a look at what’s going on with their potential snacks as they run around, Toby goes on the attack and chases them away.
An article I read years ago pointed to an even odder relationship. A farmer had a horse that spent a lot of time under a particular shade tree up by the barn, a tree that attracted a lot of birds. Eventually, he became aware than one specific bird was doing a lot of squawking when the horse was near and the horse seemed to whinny back.
Every winter, the bird would fly south and when it returned in spring, horse and bird would reunite under the tree for a day before moving on with their lives.
One year, while the bird was down south, the horse died. The farmer buried it in a field and just to remember where it was, counted the fence posts from the barn back to the spot where the horse was interred. It was 22 posts away.
In the spring, when the bird returned, the farmer thought he heard a lot of chirping going on. He went out to see that a bird was sitting on a fence post back behind the barn. He counted them. It was sitting on the 22nd post.
After a day, the bird flew back to his favourite tree and spent its time there. And from then on till it didn’t come back anymore, every spring when the bird returned to the farm it would first go sit on the 22nd post and visit with its friend the horse for a while before going back to the tree.
A touching video can probably still be found on YouTube of a female dog going over and thanking the exhausted firefighter that just saved her puppies from a burning house. And another shows the back seat of a car filled with animals rescued from Hurricane Katrina and though the animals were strangers and of different species, they start caring for each other.
One summer I drove a pop truck and killed a beautiful german shepherd farm dog that ran out in front of me. I got out and went to the farmer who dragged the animal off the road. His kids were all crying and he commanded them to stop. When I apologized, he spoke sternly to me: “It was just a dog,” he said.
Is there such a thing as “just a dog?” I don’t know.
Ask Mr. Digger’s friend.
©2011 Jim Hagarty
