Thursday, February 6, 2025
Your dog has it pretty good.
You feed him nutritious food tailored to his needs, and you’re generous with snacks. She has her own bed, but she prefers yours and you don’t mind. You open doors for him, play his favorite games, and you pick up his toys and his yard. Around your house, it’s absolutely a dog’s life but, philosophically speaking, asks Mark Rowlnds in “The Word of Dog,” which of you really has it better?
At a certain time of day, on certain days of the week, Mark Rowlands asks his German shepherd dog, Shadow, if he wants to ride along to fetch Rowlands’ son. This sends Shadow spinning happily, even though the ride is routine and always uneventful.
For years, he took Shadow on walks by the canals near their Miami home where Rowlands says Shadow took great delight in running, chasing and scattering iguanas and ducks. It was, he says, a Sisyphean task with no end but that seemed to be half the fun.
He often wonders why he can’t capture that kind of joy over something so simple, and he wonders about the meaning of it. It’s doubtful, Rowlands admits, that Shadow thinks similarly, but though Socrates (or maybe Plato) said that an unexamined life is not worth living, surely Shadow feels joy. Isn’t that the point of a life well-lived?
Immanuel Kant weighed in on self-reflection, which Rowlands says dogs practice, though obviously not as humans do. He disagrees with Sartre’s principles of freedom, vis à vis dogs, because a dog’s idea of freedom likely differs from ours. Philosopher Moritz Schlick said that the “meaning of life is play,” and dogs absolutely tick that box. Rowlands furthermore argues that dogs have morals, logic and a certain doggy rationality, and though Christian philosopher William Lane Craig suggested that dogs’ lives lack meaning because they don’t believe in God, Rowlands disagrees. If you hope to truly understand life, he says, adopt a dog.
Once or twice at random inside this book, author Mark Rowlands says the things he presents here are “hard,” and he’s absolutely correct. “The Word of Dog” is the kind of book that may make your brain hurt, but in a good way.
Though dog owners may think that there’s no need to question the meaning of their fur-kid’s existence, Rowlands puts fun inside the difficult through stories of his own dogs, their habits, and how philosophers might consider their behavior. Even writing about Shadow’s aggression, which may be controversial for some trainers, Rowlands entertains and teaches readers to think about the nature of comparison between species, and if it’s possible or even valid. In this, he makes a good dog advocate, through logical arguments, theoretical hypotheses and sensical observations that will make readers — especially strictly science-minded ones — hard-pressed to dissent.
Just bear in mind that this isn’t a book for everyone. It’s a thinking person’s book, and don’t rush your time with it. For the right kind of left-brained reader, “The Word of Dog” is pretty good.
