Animals

I am sometimes critical of pets and the relationships that people have with their pets. I have reminded my parents a number of times when at home that their dogs are not people, even thought I'm just as guilty as they are of gushing over "puppies" and all that jazz. I guess I've thought for a long time that animals are not people, that the two are distinctly separate, and you shouldn't treat animals like they are people. Part of the thinking here is probably legitimate. For example, one of the reasons I think people love pets so much is that pets are convenient vehicles for projection. How often have I declared what my dog is thinking? Do I know what it's thinking? No. Do I speak dog? No. But the dog can't answer back, can't hold a complicated relationship with me, and I am free to say that the dog is feeling whatever I want it to feel. "You love me," I tell the dog, ignoring the fact that I have no idea if dogs feel love the way human beings do. But it's so much simpler than dealing with those damn humans.

A few days ago, I took a seat in the hoop barn, where we house our sheep, for now. Our sheep are compulsively nervous (partly because they don't get handled enough), and I am not a big fan of theirs. So it was unusual for me to sit with them. But I did. And there was a runt lamb who'd been rejected by her mother and was being bottle fed. A very cute, skinny runt. After she was bottle fed, the livestock volunteer handed her off to me, to hold and keep warm. So I did, for a long time, while curious lambs and ewes came up to me, cautiously, and sniffed and nibbled. Just me, and all these creatures. And it was profound. Watching these sheep, feeling the breath of the little runt against my arms, looking at another lamb straight in the eyes, two living beings witnessing one another for the first time. And what can I say? I felt love. Not projection, but actual love, and connection between me and these animals.

Sitting in the barn, I realized that I've been a little arrogant. Who am I to say what animals are capable of, or incapable of? Who am I to draw rigid lines between human beings and the rest of the earth's species? I don't even understand how people function and relate most of the time, so how can I be so confident, saying that people shouldn't love dogs the way they love people? Thinking that true communication can't happen between "us" and "them". I felt quiet understanding with those sheep, felt two creatures contemplate one another, and I felt love there, not to mention a wonderful kind of simplicity.

The hitch is that I might, hypothetically, be eating these animals soon enough, which is why getting close to farm animals is a slippery slope.