If My Dogs Could Talk…
By: Mark Farrar
Tags: Noise, Talking Animals, Conversation, Dogs, Solitude

Many people say they wish their pets could talk, but how true is this really?

I mean, I understand where this is coming from, to a degree.

For example, just a couple of days ago, one of my three dogs was bitten by a non-venomous gopher snake, and he’s clearly not himself, and I’m assuming there is significant pain involved as the bite is on his cheek, which has resulted in his eye being more or less closed up.

So it would be great if he could tell me how he feels and what’s wrong, and, assuming he knew, what I need to do to help him feel better.

And there are times when it would be useful to know why they are barking at something I can neither see nor hear nor feel.

And when I say “Good morning” to them, because yes, I do talk to my dogs, as do most people, I suspect, it would be nice to hear them reply, especially after my wife died in late 2018, meaning I’m without conversation for 97% of my life now, given that I live alone and never go out.

But would I seriously want them to be able to talk all the time?

Would it be like having three toddlers in the house, constantly asking questions and demanding things? (On this note, at least I practise free-feeding, so they can always eat whenever they want.)

Would the constant chatter drive me insane (or farther along that particular road)?

And what about the three of them talking to each other?

Yes, it would be fascinating, for a while at least, to know what my dogs are thinking about, but all day, every day?

I think not.

Obviously, I love my dogs and I appreciate their company, but one of the things that attracted my late wife to this location was the seclusion and privacy.

She moved here from Los Angeles a long time ago, two years before I moved to the USA and we were married, and that was clearly a huge change in situation — a huge city, surrounded by thousands and thousands of strangers and constant noise, to an isolated property in the middle of rural America.

We never went out (well, not since 2007), we didn’t have friends around to visit, and we didn’t even call people up on the telephone to talk to them.

We talked between ourselves, of course — general chit-chat, but not so much of that, business “meetings”, and other stuff (often dinner menus as she had an ever-increasing number of dietary restrictions), but there were many days when several hours might pass by without either of us saying a word, usually because we were working.

It was an unusual lifestyle that doesn’t suit everybody — just being with your partner 24 x 7 is something I know would drive many people crazy. (It’s also something more and more people are probably discovering thanks to the coronavirus scare and the resulting lock-down policies.)

But it worked for us.

And now that I’m alone, I still value my privacy, because I am, for the most part, an extreme introvert.

I have always enjoyed my own company, am well able to entertain myself, and don’t really know what being bored is like, because I can and do go for long meanders inside my own mind and have conversations with myself (well, between the many personalities that are hidden somewhere up there — a theme covered in my all-time favourite book, The Dice Man, by Luke Rhinehart).

But back to dogs talking.

It would be nice to break the silence sometimes, but if I were being honest, I would, in most cases, want that to be when I choose to talk to them, and not to be assaulted by constant chatter — because that’s one of the aspects of being in company that I have long disliked.

Wherever you go, whether it’s at work or out and about in town or at the restaurant, there is that constant random noise, a mix of conversations I can’t fully make out anyway and background noise, including music that is being played far too loudly.

So, if animals came with an off/off switch, so you could decide when they could talk to you or not, then I’d be sort of onboard with the idea.

But only sort of— because that would completely violate their own rights.

I mean, who am I to decide when they may and may not talk?

At the moment, they choose to bark when they want, and while I can urge them to be quiet, I have no guarantee they understand what I’m saying and I know, from experience, that they usually choose to ignore me anyway.

Perhaps if I knew what they were agitated by, and why, I might come to see that their noisy reaction is in fact justified — but I don’t.

I know people talk about “buying” pets, but that smacks of some sort of slavery, or treating animals like possessions.

They are living creatures, as we are, so I prefer to think of them as friends sharing my home.

Of course, this might just be me trying to make myself feel better about giving these animals what I hope is a good home for them.

And you do, of course, hear stories of rescued animals changing their entire demeanour when they are finally given a home. It is, as many people say, as though they genuinely know their lives might just have been spared (e.g. if they had been in a kill shelter).

Alternatively, this may simply be yet another case of anthropomorphizing.

All of our dogs, for the past 15 or more years, have been rescues, and if I were to adopt any more pets after these three are no longer with me (which is unlikely, even if that meant I would be totally alone), then I would return to my local rescue and find some there, because that is the right thing to do when you realize millions of cats and dogs are murdered each year because they cannot be placed in homes. (Yes, I know they officially call it euthanasia, but it’s not — it’s killing, plain and simple, the discarding of a life for no good moral reason.)

Another question would be, if they could talk, does that mean they would also be able to understand what I say? If not, then it wouldn’t really be a conversation at all, and of limited value.

For the foreseeable future, then, I’m happy to live with my doggies, never really knowing what’s on their mind, or what they’re barking at, or whether they even like living with me.

I obviously assume they are, but will I ever know for certain? Probably not.