Can you love animals too much?
I got a good series of discussions going on Facebook this morning when I posed the question: “Can You Love Your Dog Too Much?” There was an interesting range of responses. Many people said it was impossible to love a dog or any animal too much. Others wrote (I hear this a lot) that they worry about people who don’t love animals more than people who love animals too much. Some said sure, it was possible to love pets more than is healthy or appropriate. One writer suggested that I was responsible for advancing the notion in my writing that I love animals too much (tell that to the many people who were horrified by my putting Orson to death after he bit three people. There are whole mailing websites devoted to the idea that I am an animal-killer and hater.)
But it’s a fair question to pose. What do I think about animals, and how much do I love them? I was thinking about that this afternoon. And I want to be direct, as I try to be, even though we can’t always know all of our motives and emotions.
I love people more than animals. What I feel for Maria and for my daughter is vastly different than anything I feel for my dogs or other animals. I had a lot of animals here for awhile – cows, goats, sheep, chickens, etc. But that wasn’t animal love. It was immaturity and irresponsibility to some extent. Loving animals means (to me) having animals you know, spend time with, understand. I don’t want to run a petting zoo or rescue clinic.It took me a long time to figure that out, and I am sure I confused people about it.
The idea that you can never love a dog too much seems absurd to me. You can love anything too much – money, food, even a child. Of course you can love a dog too much. Millions of people do. They over-medicate and overfeed them, treat them as children and fail to train them, overlook dangerous or aggressive behaviors, acquire them for the wrong or poorly thought out reasons. Loving a dog too much is a kind of social abuse. A lot of dogs pay for it with their lives.
I love my dogs a lot. I understand that my feeling for animals flows from the earliest emotions of my own life. I see them as wondrous animals, and I do not see them as human or child-like. I am in awe of Rose. I am crazy about Lenore. She makes me smile all day, and Maria laughs all the time at how smitten I am over her loving ways.
But I don’t know if I love them too much. I don’t think so. I do not believe they think or talk in human ways. I understand that they come and go, and that a life with animals means loss and death. Some days my heart is filled with love for my dogs, and sometimes I wish there weren’t any, so I could focus more on my writing and photography, and not clean up messes, dog hair, and run to the vets. I put them outside a lot. When they are in the house, I don’t want to see or hear them. I don’t believe in unconditional love on either end. I want to be a good and responsible dog owner, and I want them to be well-behaved and respectful of my work and other human beings and dogs.
I think it’s a very healthy question – do we love our dogs too much? I don’t know if any individual person can answer truly for him or herself, but it forces us to consider them, and our relationship to them, to think about our own motives and history as well as their behaviors. And anything that does that is a good thing, in my book.
