The Thursday Review: On Dog Whispering and the Image of God

First published March 20, 2009 (Back when Trixie was only a year old)

Okay, bear with me on this one.

We got our family dog, Trixie, about a year ago. Though there was always a dog in our household growing up, I had forgotten I was a "dog person" until Trixie came along. In choosing the dog's name, I insisted it had to be something I could wander about our neighbourhood calling plaintively without feeling like a total idiot. This is my main childhood memory of "Bear," the family dog who bolted every time the front door opened even a fraction of an inch.

But Trixie has helped me re-discover my inner dog-person.

Besides the basics (sit, down, stay, come), the complete list of the 14-some-word vocabulary she's acquired under our care includes: "Drop" (spit out whatever you happen to be chewing and await further instructions), "go pee" (I'm in a hurry, so take a leak quick and get back in the house), "kennel" (we're going out and you're not coming, so lie down in your kennel and wait for us), "toy" (go find one of the many chew toys you have hidden around the house and we'll play catch).

What amazes me is how happily she responds to these commands-- almost like they were just waiting there inside her little dog heart for us to come along and breathe them into life.

But that's not all. Trixie is uncannily in tune with our habits. Mornings she watches to see if I put on my coat, and as soon as I do she goes and lies down in her kennel, knowing I'm off to work. Evenings she listens closely for me to sit on the couch and open a book, her cue to come lie down next to me.

Now here's the thing: in a relatively obscure passage tucked away in The Problem of Pain, C. S. Lewis makes some interesting, passing comments on the spirituality of our relationship to the animals. He argues that some animals (especially the naturally clever ones like horses or dogs) have a latent personality that is called out and enlarged as they come into contact with humans who relate to them lovingly and wisely. In such contact with animals, we discover part of our human calling, whispering to life an aspect of their creatureliness that would otherwise have lain dormant. He goes on to suggest that in drawing a creature (like Trixie) up into our life as humans, and so drawing out its full creatureliness, we get a limited picture of what Christ has done for us, drawing us up into the life of God, and so drawing out our full humanity.

Well, I'll defer completely to those who are more experienced with pets or theology on this one, but I wonder if there isn't something to this.

The creation account in Genesis shows the Creator speaking creative order out of chaos. Then he calls the adam, the human creature filled with his breath and made in his image, to carry on this chaos-subduing creative work. And one of the first tasks for the adam is to name the other creatures-- naming, of course, being an act of deep spiritual significance in the Old Testament.

So maybe Lewis was right. Maybe there is something deeply spiritual about our relationship with the other creatures of God's good earth.

I wonder what he would have said about cats.