I am a dog sitter. I downloaded the Rover app when I was stumped on writing a profile for a dating site. I have accumulated more than 10,000 “dog nights.” as the Rover people call it in their Happy New Year card. Dog nights can mean anywhere from three dogs on my bed at night or ten or ten on my bed and ten around my bed. We sleep pack. We eat pack. We spend days pack. Pack. Dog pack. While Cesar Milan and other realilty TV dog people make a lot of money off of people’s fear, discomfort, and anxiety around dogs, I have made a moderate amount of money becoming a dog. As a result, the dogs have nothing to be fear, be comfortable, or anxious about when they are with me. They are mirrors. They train me in being chill. It’s dog law to be chill, and if I’m not chill, they can’t be. You can see them in the is photo wondering what to do. I’m standing so they are standing. See the inquiry in their faces, “We’re with you. Where are we going?”
Other aspects of dog law include the sharing of food, the guarding of a pack member when they have to relieve themselves, staying together at all times, respecting boundaries, sharing of toys, co-regulation, being kind, creating play, watching out for the pack’s well-being, allowing differences, expressing needs, observing fluidity of leadership, aligning individual wants with the needs of the pack. I know we were raised to believe in the existence of an “alpha.” Only chickens abide by an alpha-model of leadership, and it’s the hen. I am not alpha. No dog is alpha. In dog world, there is only pack. Even “lone wolf” can be encouraged over time to surrender to belonging. All. Pack is All, and Pack is Joy.
Pack is intelligence free of abstract reasoning. Everything for dogs is right here, and right now. “Here” for dogs is different than it is for abstract thinkers. Our human sensitivity and intuition provide us with a sixth sense that strengthens the more we use it to create and connect. Our problem is we don’t trust what we can’t prove, and this only finds proof in its engagement. We also believe that time is solely linear, and this phenomenon counters that. Nonetheless, it shows we were right more often than not. When we start to work with it, it starts to work with us as well. Dogs don’t need to work with it. They embody it. They demonstrate knowledge and preparation for when their owners pick them up. They know even when I do not know, as when an owner arrives a day early. Dogs know. This instinct serves us still. During a crisis of confidence we humans have created a whole miniature model of this facet of survival as social media, which of course ultimately serves advertizers and not our survival. As Coca-Cola taught us in the 70s, there is a real thing.
When I am on the phone with my mom or daughter, and the one I am not on the phone with calls mid-conversation. I know when my mom is keeping some health concern from me because I feel the symptoms as anxiety. We have all experienced it and not talked about it. It’s outside the protected allowances of empiricism, but we know it and trust it anyway. We all have our own little sample of folk ways. They get diagnosed and pathologized in this culture. So be careful. We are still able to connect in unseen ways. We are still connected in ways that extend far past abstract and limited (and limiting) constructions of time, space, and belonging.
I started to notice early on in my dog-sitting career that I am happiest in a social situation with like-minded individuals. My introversion and intensity made me feel far afield of what others are into. I have close, intense friendships with people I have known for decades. These form my pack, with allowance for other packs to form. Those old faithfuls, though, hold this kind of dog magic. When I am sitting surrounded by dogs, I can sit for hours like I can with my Pack pack. I have sat still all day with such brief “breaks.” But when we are in pack, there are no “breaks,” only this wholeness with give for flux. When ten dogs are on my bed with me, I feel grounded, content, and supported. These are excellent conditions for sleep. When I have to get up to go to the bathroom or to eat, they all get up and move with me. I do the same for them.
Dogs are social without words. The social network of pack is etched in earth that has reconstituted as our organic matter. Our sensitivity, empathy, kindness, awareness, and urge to care is the language we share with dogs. Saying good-bye to our dogs destroys us because when we are with others in whom these traits reside, we bond along these in primordial ways. Sense-instinct is not one-way. Deep down in us, a place we access more intensely than we may cognitively recognize, our dogs’ sense-instinct of us and our sense-instinct of our dogs unite. When a dog we love dies, our grief is animal grief with none of the human edges. The only thing to do is howl.
Sense-instinct, when we are sensitive to it, develops even with dogs we are not bonded to. I sense dog needs in my sleep. I sense requests from dog “owners” hours or a day in advance of their text message. Sense-instinct isn’t strange. It helps us know. At times, it helps me know someone I love needs me. At other times, it tells me I need to check my Outlook calendar because I have a Zoom of importance in fifteen minutes—with someone or about something that is of great value to me. It isn’t for predicting the stock market or other abstract stuff unrelated to, in its many aspects, to love and community. This animal approach to being is one where our emotions have been distilled into what serves us best, sense-instinct. We who have loved and been loved by dogs know the difference. I have cared for a tiny 15-year-old Pomeranian who could no longer walk or eat. I carried her to visit with other pups and to pee and poop fed her with an eyedropper as her owner asked. The sweet elder pup could move like a starfish only faster, pumping her limbs to move across the floor. The hardest thing we ever do is make that call. I’m tearing up even thinking of that. We chimeras. We are not limited by our species or our skin when it comes to all we hold inside us and all we experience in our shared consciousness. Once we are aligned with it our loyalty to it drives our behavior and our lives.
What we humans call “pair-bonding” when talking of how much our dogs love us, we are perverting the essential nature of dogs. Seen through a dog lens, we are also dogs. We are also of the supra-temporal consciousness of Pack. Pack loyalty is to the pack. Human loyalty is often defined along exclusionary, limiting lines while dogs teach us love and loyalty encompasses all life. Dogs form magnificent, intense friendships that welcome all the others to partake in joy.
Dogs flow in and out of my house, new guests and return guests. Pack energy does not change, nor do pack rules. It takes an hour to co-regulate. New clients doubt this. Some, upon seeing how many dogs are here (I have had as many as 22, without incident) cancel because Fluffy “doesn’t like it.” Fluffy, if she stays, has a blast.
So, while tech-heads are all excited about AI and humans merging into one singularity like it’s a good thing, I’m over here observing and enjoying a much deeper singularity already. I feel everything. I “foresee” stuff all the time. I have entire stretches of time when the material stuff of life collaborates me in tiny ways I would miss if I wasn’t so amazed and ready to be amazed all the time. I have experiences that flow in revers of linear time. While I am told often that I can’t make everybody happy, I “long-game-it” so everybody at least feels seen and heard, a key component of being happy. I am ultra-sensitive and have always been told not to be, like it is something I can stop. Dogs are, too. I am devoted to everyone. I am dog, and in so being, I am Pack.
And as is in keeping with Pack Law, please: