Sometimes our human needs tend to make us perceive truths that do not necessarily correspond to reality.
My love for dogs, my fascination with their cognitive abilities, my desire sometimes to grant them social and emotional skills without knowing for sure if it is not just a projection rather than a reality, have at times led me to give a superhero cape to my dog Boby when I was a teenager.
He suffered from a heart murmur and a beak shaped osteophyte when he became a senior.
And yet, he still wanted to explore new places, to play, to learn new things.
He was a model of combativeness to me. When he seemed tired while walking, I would go to him so as to take him in my arms. He would then walk away. Little by little, I think I expected him to face all the dangers that his body put on his path, to develop a stamina that no marathon would exhaust.
I tended to overlook he was a small dog, an old one, suffering from dysfunctions. I tended to overlook he had his own personality and his own desires. I had made him a hero, who had asked for nothing. I had given him a cape, super powers, that he had never claimed.
Having an image of what we idealize for ourselves, reaching it or getting closer to it can lead to surpassing ourselves, to being better than ourselves. Giving a role to a dog, expecting him to correspond by his behavior to this image that this role requires, is to attribute to him a responsibility that is not his own.
Wanting to take him in my arms when he was weakening, was that for me to carry this hero? At the time, I simply interpreted his behaviors in relation to the ideal I had of him. However, it is also possible that being in my arms made him more physically uncomfortable, or because of the heat, or vulnerable to the environment.
Before drawing a conclusion, assessing all the possibilities to understand a dog's motivations does matter. By understanding them, and especially by accepting them, it is then possible to give him the help he really needs, to become his hero at that moment.
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