Anthropormorphism

noun ~ attribution of human characteristics or behavior to a god, animal or object.

Each and every dog has a unique personality complete with it's own set of idiosyncrasies. Spike with his paralyzing fear of the car, Nik terrified of flies, Data and his aversion to being dirty and the list goes on and on. We endeavor not to anthropomorphize the dogs but, it is always good for a laugh when we do exactly that.

Time and time again my dogs make me laugh largely because of what I imagine is going on in their heads.

At the Kingston Sheep Dog Trial one year, Data and I were having a pretty good go. We were halfway up the drive away and he had over flanked. I needed him to come back around in order to get the sheep moving again. I had him stopped and asked for a flank. He looked at me and I swear he said "Try again.". I asked for the flank again "Nope, try again woman". I screamed "DATA! COME BYE". Data responded with a tip of his head in the away to me direction saying "What about this way instead?". That tiny movement of his head caused the sheep to get moving again. When I asked him for an away to me and he took it, I immediately realized that I had repeatedly been giving him the wrong flank. Boy, did I feel like a fool.

Often sheep farms have electric fence to keep predators out and sheep in. Data is a bit of a dunce when it comes to electric fence. He has gotten zapped on more than one occasion. One day I was farm sitting and ignorantly grabbed on to some live electric fence. YeeeOWCH. My arm was numb for about 20 minutes. Data looked at me and laughed "I told you it hurts!".

Louise has a little terrier dog named Terra. Holy Terra. She is part Border Collie and part Border Terrier. She tried all day once to kill Nik. Not in the way you may think though. She would run into the marsh making sure Nik was following her and then deke out and run back up toward the house. Nik, being gullible, fell for her ruse time after time. He would go 'gallumping' into the marsh, "Which way did she go? Which way did she go?" kersplash! the reeds in the marsh would sway from one side to the other with his less than delicate approach to finding her. Terra would watch him come out, giggle the way a 10 year old girl does when she has succeeded in teasing a 10 year old little boy and run all the way back up to the house. Nik would see her and say "There she is!" and chase her, only to repeat the whole scene many times over. "Which way did she go?" kersplash, gallump, "There she is!", and Terra giggling over the absurdity of it all. Terra loves boy Border Collies, oh how she torments them.

The first time Louise met Spike she pegged him as gay right away. Spike epitomized the gay man stereotype. If he could have snapped his fingers he would have. He was so flamboyant. From the moment Louise 'outted' Spike, he spoke with a lisp. When he went to bite someone and get corrected for it, he'd smile and say "Oopth, he just made me nervouth." He would wander straight to the road. I would holler and scream for him to come back but he just appeared to lift his paw at me, "Talk to the paw girlfriend, I'm buthy". 'snap'.

Data, on occasion, will pass gas, he never EVER farts he is far too proper for that. He pretends it wasn't him, sitting there as if nothing happened, unless there is another dog in the room to blame it on. If there is another dog present, he'll toot , turn around and, in an admonishing voice, say, "Who did that? That's disgusting.", tsk the other dog and turn back around.

I suppose humanizing them endears them to us just that much more. As though we need to intensify the bond we already have with them. Working with them on a regular basis, not just training and competing but needing their expertise, creates a bond unlike any other I have experienced. They become our partners. They listen to us gripe about trivial things without judging, they comfort us when we are sad and scarcely complain about anything.

Perhaps Alasdair said it best in a 1999 interview with Time magazine:
"'Dogs give you their all,' says MacRae, sipping black coffee. 'They return any affection tenfold. They're not gonna say nothin' behind your back.' A grin creases the guru's windburned face. "On the whole, they're just nicer than folk.'"