A Dog’s Technology
Sylvia Shawcross
We are human beings. We are brilliant, superior adaptive creatures who have roamed about the planet for a good long time; eating, drinking and evolving to the point where we have become our dog’s technology.
You knew that, right?
Whereas we human beings push buttons to get things done, dogs have evolved exponentially. They are so clever now that they simply have to look at us (woefully inferior creatures that we are) with great brown liquid eyes and we’ll give them a piece of our toast.
They will wander idly into the kitchen and start rolling their water bowl about the floor and we will rush to fill it. You cannot mention any of the following words: walk, perambulation, stroll, outing, leash, play or poobleducks, in any normal conversation (on the phone or in person) when a dog is about or you will be immediately attacked with outrageous licks and overwrought canine enthusiasm. This activity will inevitably lead to you miserably crawling out into the dark wild windy driving rain with a leash and dog attached because that’s the way the dog wants it. And if that is the way the dog wants it, then that is what it will receive.
Dogs have that kind of power, for they are superior in every way to us.
We, utter human fools that we are, have just not realized how dreadfully evolved dogs are becoming. You bring them home in a little crate and spend weeks spreading papers about and coaxing them to sit and shake a paw. In such undignified little shows of talent, they will inevitably humor you… for a while… at least until they’re about six months old. Even as you take them to puppy school, they’re carefully watching all the tricks and techniques of how to train your human as they pretend to fetch their blankets and heel promptly.
It is usually during this time they begin a slow subtle indoctrination period where you, human being, are programmed appropriately for their needs. This is because they are talking to other dogs in the class when you think they’re just snorting and snuffling and whining. It’s code for dogspeak.
At first you could sleep in on the weekend, with the dog curled up snoring outrageously at your feet, but then the dog begins to want out…earlier and earlier. Soon you are up at 5:00 every morning claiming you’re a morning lark. But we know you’re not. It’s the dog. Eventually you rush home from work claiming you love being at home. But we know it’s because you need to feed the dog.
Sometimes you feed the dog and it just looks at you. It’s not hungry right now but maybe it will be later. It’s been planning for the future. They are indeed that cunning.
Then it will put its paw on your lap while you are trying to eat because it’s not just your food anymore. It’s the dog’s food and you just happened to have prepared it. Soon you find you’re watching Teletubbies because the dog likes it better than CNN. The dog of course gets the couch.
If you are owned by a highly intelligent dog and become well trained, the dog will go with you when you go shopping. The dog will usually claim the front seat. Eventually you find yourself shopping at pet stores more and more because you can bring the dog there. You will buy the dog things because that is what it has programmed you to do. You can’t help it. It’s the dog.
You thought picking up doggie doo on the railway track was a municipal by-law but it’s not. It’s the dog. It’s a conspiracy. Dogs want it this way. It makes them feel superior. We are the dog’s technology.
Stop the dog!
Sylvia Shawcross lives in Canada. Visit her substack.
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Why all this nonsense about humans being brilliant and superior? Humans are the only species that foul their own nest and kill for sport.
But not everyone or shits on their own living room carpet or kills for sport The same goes for the four legged type.
Yes Syl, dogs are quite good at training us, but as the late and lamented Douglas Adams in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy demonstrated, mice are the true masters of that art.
mice and their dolphin masters if I remember correctly…Brilliant
My neighbour has a dog that barks non-stop. They do nothing to stop it. They are either deaf or simply don’t care. It’s an old dog and surely cannot live much longer. I wait patiently for the day it dies and pray they don’t decide to get another to replace their little precious.
It’s the dog that is deaf, not the owners. If the animal is suffering the worst they could do is have the poor hound put out of it’s misery.
I once used one of those high pitched (ultra-sonic) ”remote” style training devices on the neighbors dogs. They never knew I was training their dogs not to bark at me, and it worked really well.
Great catch, I passed it on.
Dogs
Dogs and cats are human creations via breeding from natural species. They are encouraged by our masters because they idealize what they want in us – passivity. I do feel pity for these prisoners cooped up within dwellings all day. I also feel anger for a number of reasons – dogs can be dangerous. They are a threat to the few wild species that still struggle to co exist with us. They bark their effing heads off. I have lost count of the number of hours of sleep I have lost on account of this harsh and grating noise.
I have been hypothesising on alternative sustainable Hell’s on behalf of Beelzebub. Dogs that bark all day and night would certainly make the afterlife unbearable. Also sawn off exhausts, circling police helicopters, the utterly useless leaf blowers, most powered tools.
Hellish, but all available in the paradise that is the Western world.
Fun essay.
I enjoyed it too Sylvia. Can you write an article about cats and their slaves/owners? Thanks.
That would be a great comparison of master/servant styles. Cat are so sophisticated . Then there are horses and their horse people slaves
The last rescue Dog I had would lay in the middle of the road and stare at the oncoming traffic until picked him up and carted him indoors. I named him Dogma. He shared a bed with the two Persians I owned called CATalonia & MOGGYdishu. And folk around here say I don’t have a sense of humor. Screw em I say.
Cats too! Mine just finished liking my bowl of yogurt — while I was still eating it! But, hey, I don’t mind sharing…
Have you ever considered that keeping pets is cruelty to animals? Of course not. Because you keep pets. And you are you.
I’m not trying to keep mine, man, they just won’t leave.
You, Joe Smith, are, as they say, “A day late and a dollar short!” No, make that about six thousand years late.
Because humans chose to domesticate wolves for their benefit, there are now millions of dogs which simply cannot exist in the wild any longer.
We therefore are obligated to care for them. (And they bloody well know it.)
wow an evolutionary debit. What a great , and scary, idea
Old and lost argument. PETA fell out of the news a long time ago for good reason or, should I say, the lack of reason. Had a rare ribeye steak for dinner last night. Saved the trimmings for my border collie. In return, she barks whenever someone pulls up the driveway. And she has a dog smile on her face every day.
We dogs simply appreciate a little bit of structure, that’s all, if you please. A framework of sorts, within which to operate.
Bowl of water at 9am. Bone at 3pm. Walk at 5pm (give or take 10 minutes or so). Is that too much to ask?
And yes, when that infernal bell is eventually rung, yes … a little morsel of food if you please. No tricks. No Pavlovian experiments. We’re simple creatures after all. Take away structure completely and where does that leave our concepts of reality …
So no wonder we take occasionally take revenge on the pavements of this world. You ‘humans’ can pick up the pieces at your leisure
Goldfrapp – Number 1
Great video.
“a highly intelligent dog”
An oxymoron surely. Dogs are clumsy, constantly pleading for your attention, walking backwards in front of you (“Play with me Daddy! Look at me!”), they actually roll in shit deliberately (“Ooh look at that turd! Let me at it!”), but the worst thing about them is ….
WOOF! WOOF! WOOF! WOOF!WOOF! WOOF!WOOF! WOOF!WOOF! WOOF!WOOF! WOOF!…………………………….
Is there any uglier natural sound?
A dog will bark when a leaf falls. A dog will bark when a clock ticks. A dog will bark because it can. If one dog starts barking in a certain neighbourhood, all the dogs will bark. The other dogs are barking because the first dog barks. The first dog hasn’t the faintest idea why it’s barking.
Every one of these bloody annoying characteristics is negated in cats who are for me the true peak of evolution.
1 point to refute your argument in toto: time and again, dogs have proved to be the most loyal and honorable friend of man’s; one that will literally sacrifice limb and life to come to the rescue of its owner no matter the environs that they find themselves immersed in, i.e., a war scenario; a drowning victim scenario; an armed-robbery scenario; etc.; etc.. With all due respect, what other species – including the human variety – has this innate capacity for self-sacrifice, loyalty and dedication; that has been exhibited by the canine in all of the aforesaid environs – and many others besides?!? – I’d have to conjecture very few – if any! That is all!! RGB-Y3 out!!!
Dogs are amazing.
A gathering of clucking chooks at a hen’s party sound worser, any day.
The barking is bad – the worst part of which is that thanks to their wonderful noses, dogs can tell when another dog is within a quarter mile of them.
They also know when someone they hadn’t seen in years pulls into their driveway. What they lack in intelligence (and that’s much), they make up for in clairvoyance.
Eat your heart out Madame Blavatsky!
Yeah I thought that would be an unpopular one. I have two dogs. They’re cute but a fucking pain.
The only ugly part of a dog is a bad owner that does not spend the time to train it. Blame the owner. Not the dog.
Training us when to take them out is only half the strategy. They also train us when not to take them out.
And they train us when they’re ready for rawhide bones and such by chewing on everything wooden in the house – including baseboards.
People who don’t know better despair of cats clawing all the furniture. At least cats don’t eat the furniture.
Aw, ain’t it sweet? Mega-billionaires like Bloomberg care about our loneliness!
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-07-15/it-s-time-we-design-a-15-minute-city-for-friendship
It might be a little more convincing if the likes of him hadn’t spent decades fostering social atomisation any way they could….
Thanks Syl. You’re loads of fun and a great way to start my day.
I was up at 5 this morning because my dog was crying. She was fine. She just fancied an early breakfast. Then, she wanted an early walk. Now she’s sleeping on my bed. She has me very well trained.
At least you were convinced that it was the dog
If dogs are so clever, why do they still shit on the pavement?
Just to prove they can do what they want, where they want.
FREEDOM!
and where exactly would you ‘chop a log’ if your environs failed to proffer you an appropriate means/medium for said act?!? (hint-hint: see dogs; cows; birds; DTES of Vancouver, Ternderloin District of San Francisco, viz. skid row districts of … everywhere; etc.; etc..) Just curious; and that is all! RGB-Y3 out!!
“Why dont we do it in the road ?” – John Lennon (White LP)
Their walkers are too dense to be trained. I have watched while a neighbor led her dog on the sidewalk, never once letting the dog get onto the grass. But I’m sure what she was watching on her cell phone was far more interesting than where her dog was going or what he was doing.
And what do humans leave ‘on the pavement’?
Bodies, blood, bombs and war.
Americans rarely see sunlight you’ll have to model A Pavement.
Because they give a shit about everything and everybody. Useless eaters, bloodsuckers, they are socialists.
Yes they’re drop a limb off at the Police Station …eventually after battling with restaurateur axe wheeling chefs pots pans bottle washers restroom slop bucket blood stain mops.not forgetting PILL-AGE Johnny Rotten….
Last Chance Hotel…kicked battery bruised missing an eye and molar..fuck its.
You Got What You Wanted… and last is first Always….O’Connor r.i.p.
I Don’t Want What I Haven’t Got…go fuck yourself…☺
They perceive them as a backside alley if your puppy’ s family home has a back garden. The blighter appears naturally not wanting to make a mess around it’s family. Apart from things like that its dependence is where Home is.
Again, bad owners.
When you gotta go, you gotta go. It’s always the owners fault. Owners who don’t know how to train and keep a dog. Owners in cities with insufficient green space for their dogs.
I used to turn up late at Reuters, having exercised my beloved basset and retreiver in Kensington Palace Gardens.
This is the best time of my life, I’m not going to shorten it, I told myself at the time (1990s). I got shit at work, but 20-30 years later and impoverished, I can tell you I was right.
I now rescue cats. Not at all the same creature. Sometimes as stupid as chickens. But a creature lying in the street, short of water and breath, calls me.
My beloved dogs are long gone, as is that London life, wife and house. It was not a sacrifice but torn from me. There is no regret – the sense of loss has been cauterised.
There is a stupider and more needy population to beckon to salvation.
https://moneycircus.substack.com/p/3-crises-asymptomatic-global-warming
Believe me, cats only pretend to be stupid and indifferent to their surroundings. They have eyes not only in the back of their heads but on each paw.
They know perfectly well what they’re doing when they “carelessly” kick half the litter out of the litter box: they’re disguising the eyes in their paws.
Yeah they are an amazing animal. Have you seen the videos of a big bear or big wolf approaching a lazy sunbathing house cat?
The cat doesnt even bother to move, only raise one paw in the air showing the 5 claws and the battle is over.
Sorry MC, I’m with old Lovecraft on this one:
“The dog appeals to cheap and facile emotions; the cat to the deepest founts of imagination and cosmic perception in the human mind. It is no accident that the contemplative Egyptians, together with such later poetic spirits as Poe, Gautier, Baudelaire, and Swinburne, were all sincere worshippers of the supple grimalkin.”
https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/essays/cd.aspx
Sounds like our house.
Thanks Syl.
The Cuckolding of London.
You-Lez. Twenty years ago people would have noted the parallel. Celebrity comedians would have cracked jokes on prime time television. ULEZ is no happenstance.
Bureaucrats spend hours devising acronyms, and paying $100,000s to well-connnected marketing agencies.
ULEZ is the bullet in the balls for Londoners. And nobody SEZ anything,
The titans of alt media all went through the same gelding schools, where they got nipped in the bud.
London mayor Sadiq Khan, whose name means loyal but to a British ear sounds clipped or snipped. A judge just upheld his definition of You-Lez as a public health “crisis.”
You Lez coincides with the Trantifa attack on women of all proclivities. Just as TERF, trans exclusionary radical feminist, recalls turf on which we wipe our feet, or sod.
I water my garden. I grow primarily tomatoes and cucumbers – which I suppose makes me toxically masculine.
Something is going down, “there’s something happening here, What it is ain’t exactly clear.”
Dunno. Someone gets born in London. Grows up with allergies. Could their experience of life have been better with a breath of fresh air at an early age? Maybe
But then it is paradoxical that those pushing for ULEZ (expansion) are the selfsame people who were quite happy to rebreathe their own waste gases a year or so ago (via Covid masks).
Consistency isn’t always a politician’s forte
Nothing like a dog.
And the smaller the package, the more powerful their energy.
Just look what babies, puppies & kittens can do to our behavior.
Woof woof 🐾.
Not sure if dogs are as smart as you make them out to be. But one thing is certain – Fido will get my vote in the next election.
Amazingly, in my experience, dogs understand the word: ‘NO!’
They can beseech you to let them eat your dinner, but if you say ‘NO!’, they respect your decision.
Strange that.
And they will respect those commands coming from anyone. No. Stay. Bad Dog. Universal dog commands.
Thanks for the cheerful start of the weekend! Let’s not spoil the fun by Googling for “dog vaccine”.
Oh Dog, hallowed be your name! Give us each day our daily bread and forgive us our sins!