RE: losing animals

["karlahuebner () compuserve ! com" <karlahuebner () compuserve ! com>]

I have been deeply touched by some of the comments on this thread, and
apply them retrospectively to animals I still miss years later. My main
experience with living with animals relates to rabbits, who have certain
traits in common with dogs, others in common with cats, and overall are
simply themselves--intelligent, playful, affectionate, and inquisitive. No,
mourning doesn't end in a month, and there are sometimes many regrets. I
still mourn one rabbit who died in 1972 and another (his son) who I now
realize I was premature in having euthanized in the early 80s. Of the two I
have now, one has become increasingly disabled as the result of an ear
infection, and I take the care we give him as something we do not just for
him, but as a memorial to those loved animals my family and I did not know
how to help. I worry that he might die while I'm living in Europe this
year, but I know that he's reveling in all the baths and brushing and
cuddling he gets from my parents, and that his (spayed) doe thinks he's
just the greatest.

Each animal is an individual, and each relationship is unique. I try to
send loving thoughts to mine each day, across the ocean. In fact, I
remember one time when I was sitting with the rabbits thinking about the
different ones I missed and hoping I'd be able to see them again.  One of
them had a rather difficult temperament, so I thought "And even Penelope."
You should have seen Calypso Spots--who was adopted after Penelope's
death--she gave me a look that said we had better be seeing Penelope when
we die!

The human bond with animals will always be of intense interest to me and
I'm glad that a software email list can give us a moment to share this
fundamental human trait with one another, even if in the context of grief.

Karla Huebner

Original Message:
-----------------
From: John Whittier-Ferguson johnaw@umich.edu
Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 11:05:39 -0600 (CST)
To: notabene@piper.hamline.edu
Subject: losing animals


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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