From a Dog's Perspective

From a Dog’s Perspective.

Hello, I’m the writer and before I wrote this story I spoke to Sue. She told me she had started nursing in a local hospital. She loved her job, caring for patients and their families and friends and she said she would never return to the waitressing job she had done for a number of years. Sue had started her nursing training when she left school but she had left nursing when she moved to another area and accepted a job in a restaurant. Sue then started talking about her pet dog, Pepper. She enjoyed being with him and they often sat close together on the lounge sharing a quiet time together. It was evident that Sue loved seeing Pepper when she came home from work. She told me she had started feeling guilty that she had stopped taking Pepper for a walk when she changed jobs and he was not getting exercise or any social connections which were important. Sue had taken him for a walk to the local park and things had changed. Pepper had started barking at a father who was interacting with his children. This was not like the Pepper Sue thought she knew, and she had felt angry and disappointed.

Before I contacted the publisher I went to show Sue the story. She was very happy with it and she told me that it reflected the way she felt about her life, her career and the relationship she had had with her pet, Pepper who was sitting in the corner listening to us. Suddenly he started to growl and then bark at me. Sue shouted at him and I could see that their once positive relationship was deteriorating further. Then I realized that Pepper and Sue’s relationship was continuing to take a downward turn due to two different perspectives on what had happened during the walk. I decided to rewrite the story, sharing the two conflicting versions and it would be up to the reader to make their own decision as to who was right and who was wrong.

Pepper woke up one morning feeling very excited. Today he was going for a walk to the local park. Sue, his owner, had not taken him for a walk for a long time as she got busy at work and he was getting very bored staying at home every day. Sue came out of her bedroom and got ready to take Pepper for a walk. Pepper could see that she was very tired and he thought about the work she did which was stressful and challenging. She had recently left her job in a restaurant to return to nursing which involved shift work at a local hospital. Working on a night shift and trying to get some sleep in the day was difficult and too much day sleep meant being unable to sleep at night. Pepper wanted to tell Sue she should return to her job in the restaurant but he couldn’t do that.

Sue took Pepper to the park where children were already running around and playing on the slides and swings. One Dad was telling his children to slow down and Pepper felt he was being unkind to his children who deserved to be given some freedom as they learned to survive in a challenging world. Pepper started to bark at Dad and Sue told him to be quiet and pulled him away from the play area. Pepper knew that people would not agree with him as he lay down in his doggy bed when they got home. He also realized that Sue wasn’t happy with him and she couldn’t accept that barking was one way that he could express his thoughts and emotions as well as snuggling up to Sue on the lounge when he was feeling calm and loved.

I thought that mentioning the two perspectives and considering the ways that people and pets expressed their positive and negative feelings would resolve the issue but everyone has different perspectives which they often hold onto. The result was very disappointing when Sue took Pepper to the Dog Shelter after deciding she couldn’t live with an angry dog. She knew he would be well looked after and the workers would eventually find him another home. It wasn’t easy and later Sue wondered if she’d made the right decision.

My book was finally published and I had used Sue’s stories as part of the insight into a dog’s ability to interpret the world around it and it’s responses. As human beings we are not always comfortable when a stranger’s dog barks at us. Yet we can vent our anger at times and like a dog biting someone it can lead to one person physically attacking another person. I wondered how Pepper would react to my story and here is one possible result.

Pepper heard two workers at the shelter talking about my book. One was smiling and sharing some positive feedback while the other worker was shaking her head in disbelief. She spoke firmly to the other worker and shared her beliefs that dogs were not able to share their feelings in any way. Barking was a natural instinct and some dogs barked continually while others rarely barked. They didn’t know what was happening around them and the story was all fiction.

I’m sure if you have a dog and get to know it, you would realize that dogs have the capacity to reflect some human qualities. However, I believe everyone has a right to their own opinion. Dogs are a very valuable part of our world and carer dogs are taken into nursing homes as therapy for the residents who are sometimes struggling with feelings of loneliness and the inability to communicate with people around them. Pepper was adopted by a caring family and they started taking him into a Nursing Home where an elderly relative resided. He never barked and got close to the residents who loved patting him and benefiting from his caring nature. They looked forward every week to his visits.