Why Would Any Dog Choose to Live with Humans?
By Leslie Garrett
There’s a sort of universally accepted mythology around how dogs came to share our homes and it goes something like this:
Wolves learned that by hanging around humans and acting slightly less bloodthirsty they might be offered a morsel or two of whatever the humans were eating. Sort of the canine equivalent of The Four-Hour Work Week. Over time, the theory goes, evolution and selective breeding worked to produce canines that prefer the sound of kibble clinking into a bowl than the rustle of something edible in the bushes.
Over time, more specific traits were bred into and out of these wolfish-dogs to create the vast variety of breeds we now have and to ensure that these creatures could perform useful tasks for us—catch rats, retrieve ducks, and embrace our occasionally deafening flatulence.
And we all lived happily ever after.
Which is generally how the story ends. And most of it is true…ish.
Yet those of us who’ve lived with dogs know our attachment extends far beyond simply the tasks they perform. And we hope that we mean more to them than simply a free lunch.
Adam Gopnik, the New Yorker columnist whose formerly dog-free life was hijacked by his daughter’s Havanese Butterscotch, recently offered up various perspectives on the human-dog bond, forming a consensus that both dog and human are running equally effective “scams” on each other—the dogs act loyal and loving in order to be fed; we feed them in order to feel loved and earn their loyalty.
Not surprisingly, my informal poll of a few dozen dog lovers revealed that “loyalty” and “unconditional love” were, almost without fail, the reasons given for why we love our dogs.
Less clear, however, given our human peculiarities and capacity for casual cruelty over the centuries, is why the dog loves us.
Of course we can point to the down-filled beds, the rhinestone collars, the toys, the treats. But those accoutrements are clearly for the benefit of the owners as any observer of a newly shorn poodle or dog in rain boots can attest.
We do provide the all-important food. Given, however, what we demand in exchange—adoration, obedience and a general consensus of us as God-like—it’s apparent, as Milton Friedman famously said, “there’s no such thing as a free lunch.” Most family dogs earn every morsel. And then some.
Julie Klam, writer of “dogoirs” “You Had Me at Woof” and the most recent “Love at First Bark”, thinks it’s the uncomplicated nature of the human-dog bond that makes it so strong. “Dogs don’t have politics,” she says. “You don’t have to put a dog through college.” And, she adds, they’re not vengeful. “They’re very forgiving.”
Indeed, “forgiving” also rated high among valued canine traits with my dog-loving friends. All this forgiving, however, implies that we have things we need forgiving for. Dogs, as Klam points out, generally don’t. She muses that perhaps that’s why dogs’ lives are so much shorter. “They don’t have to walk as long a karmic path,” she suggests.
As Andy Rooney has said, “The average dog is a nicer person than the average person.” What’s more, it’s a standard achieved without self-help books, life coaches or religion. Turns out that what we love most about our dogs is their humanity. Something we find decidedly lacking in many humans.
Aldous Huxley reportedly offered this deathbed advice to the young people of the world: “Try to be a little kinder.” Can you imagine telling that to a dog?
Kind is all a dog knows how to be.
Stanley Coren, a psychologist and author of Why We Love the Dogs We Do, sums up the bond as “companionship.”
“We are a species that does not like to be alone,” he says. “Dogs are what we’ve created them to be. We have bred dogs to revel in our presence.”
But is that all? Not according to Julie Klam. “Chemistry,” is what she calls it. For Coren it’s magic: “The magic…is that dogs want to be with us.”
And magic of course includes mystery.
