Re: losing animals

[Susan Eilenberg <sre000 () gmail ! com>]

Mervyn, my email program managed to miss your post, so my sorrow for
you (which is a living sorrow for dogs I have known going back four
decades) is somewhat nonspecific.  The great virtue of dogs is their
capacity for happiness, and the coming to an end of a dog's life feels
like the end of happiness itself.  How could it be possible for it not
to be the worst kind of devastation?  Hearne (who, to her credit, has
a tendency to roll in the unspeakable as much as any dog) has it
right.  A wonderful quotation, John.

   Best,
   Susan Eilenberg (Sally's human)

On 11/23/05, John Whittier-Ferguson <johnaw@umich.edu> wrote:
> Hello all, but particuarly Mervyn,
> First, my deepest sympathies to you in your loss.  Our Airedale died a
> year ago, and though we have a fine new Airedale puppy, I still find
> myself thinking of her predecessor often . . .
>
> The best piece I know on the pain of losing an animal is by Vicki
> Hearne, from her book Animal Happiness.  The title is "Oyez a
> Beaumont."  Here's an excerpt from the opening:
>
> ``Der Tod ist gross,'' writes Rilke.  ``Death is huge.''  But various
> psychologists deny that it as huge as all that when it is an animal
> who is mourned.  I have read statistically studded reassurances that
> mourning for a cat lasts at most one month, for a dog three.  I have
> read that when an animal dies there are no regrets, no rehearsal of the
> wail ``If only I had ...,'' and also that the splendid thing about animals,
> what is said to make them so convenient to our hearts, like anti-depressants,
> is that when we mourn them we are only mourning a personal loss
> and not ``the loss of life and potential,'' according to
> _Between Pets and People_ by Professors Beck and Katcher, authorities on all
> of this at the University of Pennsylvania.
>
> This is way that psychological authorities talk - ``Eventually an animal
> can be replaced,'' they write in their books - but that is not how
> the experts talk.  I realize that psychologists and suchlike are generally
> understood to be experts, but I have met none who were experts in the
> various ways my good Gunner's work with scent developed, especially when
> he began scenting out the human heart.  Of course, I am just a dog
> trainer.  My thinking, such as it is, I learned from the animals, for
> whom happiness is usually a matter of getting the job done.  Clear
> that fence, fetch in those sheep, move those calves, win that race,
> find that guy, retrieve that bird.  The happiness of animals is also
> ideologically unsound, as often as not, or at least it is frequently
> wanting in propriety, as when your dog rolls in something awful on his
> afternoon walk or your cat turns off your answering machine.
>
> In over a quarter of a century of dog training I have never met an animal
> who turned out to be replaceable.  Dick Koehler says, ``Hell, even
> trees are irreplaceable, but we don't know it, and that is our loss.''  The
> loss the dog trainer has in mind is the loss of eternity, as for Wittgenstein
> put it, ``Denn lebt er ewig, der in der Gegenwart lebt.''  ``So he
> lives forever, who lives in the present,'' wrote the philosopher, and this
> is how the animals live, in the present, which is why the experts' difficult
> and apparently harsh advice, advice they occasionally take themselves, is:
> ``Another dog, same breed, as soon as possible.''  Not because another
> dog of the same breed will be the same, but because that way you can pick
> up somewhere near where you left off, say that you have it in you.
>
> Vicki Hearne, ``Oyez a Beaumont'' in _Animal Happiness_:
>
>
> --
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> John Whittier-Ferguson
> Associate Professor
> English Department
> University of Michigan
> 3156 Angell Hall
> Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1003
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
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