Love

Is it crazy to use the word "love" about one's dog? I held Josie's head in my hands and looked at her, and actually told her I loved her -- that sounds really ridiculous to me. I think it's George Bernard Shaw who said something like "Animals receive more love from humans than they can possibly manage." Maybe so but, well, there it is, and I've confessed it now, to her and to the blogosphere.

In conversations with Br. Christopher the other day (see today's post about him) we talked about how although animals are certainly ensouled beings, we should not humanize them. To use theological language, theirs is not a "noetic" or reasoning soul. But it is a soul nonetheless, with feelings, instincts, passions (fear, anger, joy, contentment, playfulness), and no less than Basil the Great affirms this in his homilies on the Hexaemeron. So as far as love is concerned, it's by no means one that is shared between equals. But anyway (to use non-theological language), Josie's a totally sweet thing.

Josie is now around seven months old. Phases continue -- dependent partly on stomach health and other physical factors, and partly on just plain phases -- she can be exasperating or a delight, and the balance has decisively been on the latter.

She's still a pup: she's very excitable, and also she tires out pretty easily especially after new stimulus. Last week I took her to my office at seminary for the first time. She met lots of new folks, she sat there (fairly) patiently while I met with a student for nearly an hour, and walked back home with me. And crashed out under my desk for several hours from exhaustion.

Under my desk has become one of her safe havens. It always takes her a while to get her chewing ya-ya's out -- where she'll seek out and gnaw anything but the sanctioned bone I place under my desk -- and then she'll settle down there in one or another state of alertness or crashedness, periodically releasing an audible, contented yawn.