The Wisdom of Pets, As Told By Humans

RSS Block
Select a Blog Page to create an RSS feed link. Learn more

Those of us wrestling with insomnia, irregularity or existential angst might first turn to ZzzQuil, laxatives or anti-depressants for quick relief. But there is a wellspring from which one can drink that may permanently unravel tension and unstop those plugged pipes of the body and spirit.

Here are but a few pearls shared by celebrities, scribes and heads of state who’ve harvested enduring wisdom from their lives shared with companion animals.

  • The works of French poet, journalist and best-selling novelist, Anatole France, was rife with irony and skepticism. But, when it came to the transformative power of pets, he was definitive and unequivocal: “Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened.”

  • English iconoclast, Samuel Butler, was the author of one of the longest running books in print. First published in 1872, Erewhon chronicles the discovery and exploration of a fictional utopia that turns out not to be. Ultimately, Butler believed that pets reveal our ideal self: “The greatest pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself, too.”

  • Near the turn of the 20th century, one critic excoriated pianist-turned-novelist, Marie Corelli, for giving “commonplace sentimentalities and prejudices . . . a glamorous setting.” Of her uncommon life, however, it was Corelli who had the last laugh: “I never married because there was no need. I have three pets at home which answer the same purpose as a husband. I have a dog which growls every morning, a parrot which swears all afternoon, and a cat that comes home late at night.”

  • Master of the suspense thriller, Dean Koontz is also the author of A Big Little Life: A Memoir of a Joyful Dog. Koontz cuts to the core of the human-canine bond with exquisite tenderness: “No matter how close we are to another person, few human relationships are as free from strife, disagreement, and frustration as is the relationship you have with a good dog. Few human beings give of themselves to another as a dog gives of itself. I also suspect that we cherish dogs because their unblemished souls make us wish - consciously or unconsciously - that we were as innocent as they are, and make us yearn for a place where innocence is universal and where the meanness, the betrayals, and the cruelties of this world are unknown.”

  • Whenever poet and novelist Charles Bukowski had to summon the gumption to write about America’s poor and the drudgery of work, he turned to his feline family: “When I am feeling low all I have to do is watch my cats and my courage returns.”

  • U.S. President, Abraham Lincoln, not only exemplified courage in his attempts to hold a tattered country together, he questioned humanity’s divine dominion over companion animals: “I care not for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.”

  • Few people have captured the pet grieving process as succinctly as actress and comedian Amy Sedaris:  “Sometimes losing a pet is more painful than losing a human because, in the case of the pet, you were not pretending to love it.”

  • A staff surgeon at the Angell Animal Medical Center in Boston, veterinarian Nick Trout best sums up what pets teach us: “Perhaps the greatest gift an animal has to offer is a permanent reminder of who we really are.”

Ancient philosophers also have plumbed the depths of our four-legged friends:

In Book II of Plato’s Republic (376b), Socrates asks, “Is not the noble youth very like a well-bred dog in respect of guarding and watching?” Furthermore, Socrates argues that the dog is very much like a philosopher because “he distinguishes the face of a friend and of an enemy only by the criterion of knowing and not knowing.”

Indeed.