Dog Versus Birds..and...

A Gerbil in the Mix

Most people love dogs. Sometimes more than their own people. I guess dogs can serve as surrogate children without tantrums, teenage angst, or the need to pay for college tuition. I see people dress up their dogs in winter jackets to keep them warm. Don’t dogs have fur? Others give them pricey gourmet food. Don’t dogs wolf down their food like their ancestors? I’ve never seen a dog savoring its food except on funny dog videos where the videographer makes them talk in English..

I fully understand at a deep level that dogs can be great companions that snuggle up with their owners while they watch TV or in bed, lope along and help them on hunting trips, and play with them on the beach. I understand it. Dogs also help police and fire fighters protect people, let along their owners from break-ins and worse. Yes.

I saw a wonderful documentary called “The Pick of the Litter,” about training of service dogs. I “bonded” to one puppy and rooted for her to graduate. She did. Bravo! The feature movies “Call of the Wild,” “Togo,”and “Lassie” will forever be in my memory. Great stories and true about the love of dogs for humans and vice versa.

Having said this, I also find that dogs also adore anyone holding a piece of food as if Jesus himself walked into the room. See the dog in the clip below, considered the best dog tease ever.

Spouses and our children don’t do that. We don’t expect unconditional adoration love from people because, well, it would be one weird power dynamic. Like a concubine with her emperor. For survival.

I’ve know people melt when they see their dog’s big liquid brown eyes staring up, their tails wagging, effectively saying;

“Master, oh master, I love you, I love you, I love you. I love you.”

And then,

“You've got to pay the cheese tax. Every time you're cooking, when the cheese comes out, this puppy comes a looking.” 

Mike Tyson knew about the food bit and dogs. His pit bulls loved him unconditionally despite their being chewed up when he fought them. The dogs should have ganged up on Iron Mike and had him for breakfast. The biggest cheese tax of them all.

Iron Mike fortunately was an anomaly. Literally all dog owners I’ve known haven’t abused their animals and love them to bits. But my understanding is they could abuse their dogs and they would still love them unconditionally once the bowl of kibbles shows up again. Here’s an example, but with no abuse.

Loki, a big black lab owned by my former work partner, climbed onto my lap and licked my face every day after I once gave him some succulent marrow bones.

“Where’s the marrow bone? Where’s the marrow bone? Come on Don, gimme the marrow bone.” 

Lap, lap, kap in my face.

I liked that dog well enough, but have an eighty pound dog climbing into my lap looking for food got to be a bit much for me. What a different life I would have had if my wife would have done the same, day after day, after I gave her the engagement ring when I was young—forever jump into my lab and kiss me all over every time I came home from the university. Cool.

No. Not cool. It would have been weird, that kind of love. To me anyway. A 1950’s perverted male fantasy,

My consulting partner traveled to live in the South Pacific for a couple of years and Loki went to his son for care.After a couple of months, my friend returned briefly for work, and reported that Loki, who he had owned for more than a decade, turned his back on him. Why? His son now provided the cheese tax. How quickly dog loyalties can change.

I’m lucky one of my male colleagues or friends didn’t take my wife as a friend out to dinner when I went into the field. I might never have seen her again, based on dog behavior, of course. 

Yes, my readers, I know about lost dogs who climb over mountains to find their masters and not because of food. Heartwarming and true. The master-dog bond can be very strong. I know of dogs that saved their masters in fires and protected children from attacks. I completely understand it.

I do enjoy dogs that have been properly trained to behave. They sit. They don’t immediately jump on me or bark at me when they see me. They listen to and obey their owners. They play when I want them to play, but won’t stand in front of me constantly dropping a ball or climb into my lap without my encouragement demanding attention. Let alone beg for food. For example, Bette and I have friends who owned massive German Shepards, and I mean massive. Incredibly well- trained dogs. They obeyed instantly and I could wrestle with them on the floor and did with pleasure The dogs playfully would “mouth” my arms in fun while both they and I fully knew they could snap them in half instantly if they wanted to. But they were trained and loved to wrestle with me. I felt no fear at all.

Another friend recently bought a terrier, also well-trained. The dog doesn’t bark manically at everyone strange, didn’t chew up anything in my home, and was a good house guest for several days.

Some dog owners don’t take the time to train their pets this way, or perhaps feel it makes their animal too subservient. My answer? Dogs are pets. They live in packs and they need to know who is the alpha male. The owner should be the alpha, not their pet.

Cat are the second favorite pet animal. I won’t talk about cats because I am terribly allergic to them. But they show conditional affection, as opposed to unconditional adoration. Kind of aloof when they want to be. But snuggly too and playful, based on my dad’s cats, except for the one that tripped him up to break his hip and so on…

What about birds instead?

When I was in high school, my parents won a pegged-leg parakeet, Fliggie.

“Arrrrgghhhh.”

The little bird had brains, produced teeny solid poopies, and I didn’t have to walk it twice a day or play with it like a toddler.

Fliggie became a good companion. The minute I returned home from high school, she’d open her cage door, fly to my shoulder and gently peck my ear in affection. I, in turn, would kiss her feathered tummy and scratch her neck with my baby finger.

Fliggie would jump on my right hand when I played my guitar and then pluck strings too. When I played chess, Fliggie would knock over the pieces I captured. Sometimes she’d fly straight at my face, land on my glasses, and sit upright like a sentinel. Then without notice, she’d abruptly dive behind a lense to fly back to her cage. I’d feel her soft belly feathers stroke my blinking eye as she left.

My dad invited a rabbinical candidate to our synagogue for breakfast when I was away at college. The clergyman had my physique and glasses. Fliggie opened her cage door in delight and flew on his glasses. He screamed, and she, startled, dove behind his glass lenses back to the cage. Traumatized, the rabbi withdrew his application for the job.

Then there was my parakeet Kasha, so bright I hardly trained him at all. He’d travel with me to my office in my pocket when the weather was cold, and sit on the steering wheel of my car watching the world go by when warm. I’d get out of the vehicle with Kasha on my shoulder, unclipped, and walk across the campus quadrangle to my office. Coeds would see me and come over.

“Is that really a bird on your shoulder?”

“Yes, it is.”  

I’d point to the girl and Kasha would glide to her shoulder to her delight. Kasha the bird was the ultimate chick magnet (Play on words—get it?)

When I lectured, he’d first sit on my shoulder in the auditorium, and later fly around above the students’ heads like a drone and the kids loved it. And always return to my shoulder after his exercise finished.

One of my Phd students, Li Jin, got married in my home. Kasha loved hiding within her lustrous black long hair and “insisted” on being in the wedding party. We have pictures of Kasha’s little green head sticking out from the neck of Li’s glorious Chinese red gown, and then later, from behind an equally glorious white gown.

Kasha shared dinner with us. At our family sabbath feasts, he’d hang with my father and take food from his mouth like a proper bird. He loved to eat chicken. That was a weird, cannibalism of a kind.

In conclusion, I grant, accept, and have no problem that most folks love dogs. That is fine.

But give me a parakeet any day instead. They are smart, offer love, and provide emotional support.

And I don’t have to pick up poo and dispose of it. I just flick it off with my little finger and let the vacuum cleaner do the rest. So there!

Below I play “Bye Bye Blackbird.”