Bless The Beasts

Last night while my wife and I were relaxing, I watched the spotted twins romp. The ever-sleeping Dixee paid them no heed, continuing to slumber in her little bed by my wife’s chair, undisturbed in her deafness and warm in her sweater.

It’s never a sure bet as to which dog will start the donnybrook. When Jinx does it, he usually sits above Bluebelle and growls at her, a rising wail that concludes with three or four sharp barks. While he’s barking at his sister, he’s looking around at us to see if we’re watching. Then he moves to Bluebelle and starts gnawing on a leg or snapping at her tail, which never fails to draw her fire.

When the girlie dog initiates the action, she usually just saunters into the room and flings herself at Jinx, knocking him sideways and rolling him across the floor. Slightly smaller than her brother, Bluebelle is a much more aggressive fighter. She bares her teeth in a savage mask that resembles feeding time at the wolf compound in a zoo. When she’s in a particularly bellicose mood, she will trap Jinx with her forelegs and start gnawing on his muzzle, which usually causes him to yelp in pain and alarm. That’s when we have to step in.

Sometimes when the dogs are particularly boisterous and Dixee joins in with her shrill, piercing bark, and we feel like rodeo cowboys in a special needs horse arena, my wife and I look at each other and confess that we wish all three of the dogs would just disappear, and that we could have our house back, and that we could sleep in without worrying about letting them outside to do their business.

But then one or two or all of them will do something that makes us feel guilty for those honest whispered moments about what we wish would happen. Dixee will fall asleep under the Christmas tree, a snoring cylindrical package, content in her warm nearness to us. Or Bluebelle will come up and place her chin in Mrs. Orr’s hands and gaze up at her with the most trusting, loving expression in those hazel eyes. Or Jinx will hop up onto the couch next to me and lean into me and sigh and put his head on my shoulder, eyes closed tightly, in a gesture so human it’s unnerving. And in those moments, we forget our words of regret about owning dogs, and we simply enjoy the pure, unfeigned love radiating from them.

Throughout my whole life, I’ve grown accustomed to people making snide remarks about the love I show my pets and the connection I feel to them. I remember an acquaintance who years ago heard me talking about our little (now deceased) dog, and he glowered, “That’s why I forbid my children to ever refer to our pets as ‘members of our family’.” Knowing this fellow’s family and the shattered and scattered trainwreck that they later became, I often think of his remark and I have come to understand that this was yet another way he pretended to be a pioneer hardass tough guy who was too busy blazing trails in the world to suffer animal-lovers gladly. For me, I’m willing to endure the cracks and the insults and the raised eyebrows, because I love animals and feel a bond with most of them.

People who know me are aware that I am not some goober who feeds his dog from his fork, or who carries my dog around so as to spare his widdle wegs, or pretends that she’s a service dog who helps me with some dubious trauma in my psychological core. I simply love animals, and I especially love dogs. I have owned many cats in my life, and while I appreciate their quirks and qualities, I see dogs as far superior animals, especially in the area of companionship. I am not some deranged Grizzly Man type who scorns his fellow humans and ascribes unrealistic nobility to beasts simply because I like them.

Even before all the churches compromised themselves and showed their true motivations by kowtowing to the Covid nonsense, I had already begun to look to my intuitive sense about certain things in my personal faith. One of the tenets I’ve used with great success in the past two years is asking myself whether or not a particular teaching makes sense. Not in the sense that a child will say, “Your rules don’t make sense! They’re not fair!”, but rather as in “If God is sensible and rational and loving, would He tell me this if He were standing here in front of me?”

And when well-meaning Christians tell me that animals have no souls, that they are merely tools for us to use while we’re here, and that they are annihilated when they die, I ask myself, “Does that make sense? Does God create these magnificent creatures just to turn them into fertilizer when they’ve fulfilled their purpose on earth? And the answer my spirit gives me is “No, that doesn’t make sense, and it doesn’t seem consistent with what I know of God.” Yes, I know, I know…people will tell me that the human heart is desperately wicked and that I shouldn’t lean on my own understanding and that Paul talked about the differences between men and beasts and there is a way that seems right to a man but the end thereof is death. But in addition to my intuitive sense and my honest observations about life in this world, I also recall that the author of the Apocalypse (Revelation) writes that EVERY type of living creature interacts with God and with the heavenly host, etc.

Is the mayfly, with its miniscule body and tiny lifespan, some sort of useless add-on to earthly life? How about a magnificent Arabian horse, or a German shepherd? No, sorry, I do not accept this. When I look at dogs, especially the ones who live with me and seem to sometimes be able to read my mind or at least my emotions, I see creatures that have purpose and meaning, not tools to be used and discarded.

So when my dogs sit with eyes half-closed and watch the twinkling Yuletide lights or gather at the foot of the bed when my wife is sitting there and weeping over the news of her brother’s death or drag me away from a dangerous situation in the woods, I make the deliberate choice to believe they are my friends and my companions in this mysterious life, and that they will have a life beyond this one. They do not sin, neither do they stray from their nature and instincts. Yes, there are bad animals, violent or damaged creatures who must be destroyed for the good of all the other living creatures around them. But this does not negate their importance.

If I’ve ever been given gifts from God in my sojourn here, those gifts are my wife, my family, and the many animals I’ve known and appreciated during my time. And they include not just dogs, but also the daddy longlegs and the frogs and the hummingbirds and the possums and the honeybees and the spiders and the songbirds and the snakes and the gnats and the chipmunks. I will risk being dismissed as a sentimental, soft-headed fool rather than knowingly turn up my nose at these living things.

I have always loved the legend I heard when I was a boy, the legend that says that the animals in the stable at Bethlehem knelt and talked on the night the Christ child was born. This is an enormous part of the beauty and comfort of the Christmas season for me, and it will be until I depart this life. I love all the beasts, even the ones that can sting and bite and kill me. They are, to me, friends. Friends with a definite place in my life.

~ S.K. Orr