The only suspect fact about Tonia is that she doesn’t like petting animals. My guess is that she’s in a tiny minority; most humans like getting our fingers behind a dog’s ears and giving them a good scratch. I dimly recall hearing somewhere that a good animal scratching lowers our stress levels. Does this point to some primal bond between us and creatures? I think so.
Moreover, our fellow sixth day creatures, especially dogs, act as a bridge between us and the rest of creation. “We all at times feel somewhat painfully our human isolation from the sub-human world–the atrophy of instinct which our intelligence entails, our excessive self-consciousness, the innumerable complexities of our situation, our inability to live in the present. If only we could shuffle it all off! We must not–and incidentally we can’t–become beasts. But we can be with a beast…It has three legs in nature’s world and one in ours. It is a link, an ambassador… Man with dog closes a gap in the universe.” (C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves, “Storge”)
Each dog owner has his own bond with his dog. He’ll swear that despite their being (of course) “no speech/ nor are there words” between them, yet communication here is tighter than anywhere else in his experience. For instance: start roughhousing with the dog and he’s nipping, jumping, mock growling…all apparently out of control. But when he hears “alright, that’s all,” the dog immediately gages the amount of sincerity in the command and reacts accordingly. He can tell if you really want to quit. And if just a little part of you wants to keep playing, well, he’ll have discerned that, and the games go on.
You and your dog – two prongs of the same tuning fork.
So…indeed… what our communication with dogs lack in specificity – I can’t, for instance, relay to my dog my nostalgia for the past – it makes up for with thoroughness: your dog understands everything he possibly could understand about you. And through our friendship with dogs we open our hearts to the whole non-human creation, to the cosmos with which we – humans – have a pivotal yet perplexing relationship.
Perhaps this is another reason why our canine’s death strikes us so hard… we’ve lost a brother-creature-friend, and in that we’ve brushed up against the ancient, dismal facts of the groaning creation and our own culpability in it.
Yesterday Max lost his nine-year buddy, Feilding, who arrived to him fully trained, ready to respond to 30 different commands. He both literally and figuratively opened doors for Max, getting him through thresholds and into conversations with interested strangers. He carried items so that Max could concentrate on walking. Every day he accompanied him to work. Feilding was certainly Max’s closest non-human companion, was even in the running for overall best friend. A faithful service dog who loved Max. Hallelujah.
Though none of us have been as close to a dog as Max has to Feidling, most of us have experienced the death of a good canine companion. It’s quite painful. Sometimes the sorrow – though not as profound – is felt more sharply than the death of a human family member! So, our heart goes out to Max.
But taught by the Spirit, our grief expands beyond feeling bad just for Max’s sorrow and Feilding’s sudden sickness that led to his death. We look through our fellow human’s and fellow creature’s suffering into the groaning of the whole creation… and take stock. We don’t fully understand why or how it has come to this. The sharpness of LOSS takes our breath away. We are uncertain how to grieve wisely. We wonder why the full redemption waits. Our words of encouragement seem lame and even our best theological answers don’t fully satisfy. Speaking for myself, often, in the face of all kinds of sorrowful bewilderment, I can only get out an ABBA,FATHER.
Throughout our days, Providence gives us more and more reasons to set our hope fully on the grace that will be revealed when Jesus Christ appears again.
We love you as a brother, Max. And hurt for you and your family and ourselves and the world. Come, Lord Jesus.
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