When your best friend is a different species

In her book For the Love of A Dog, Patricia McConnell describes the reaction of her farm dog, Tulip, to the death of a sheep:

"She lay down beside the body. She placed her big, white muzzle on her paws, sighed once - a long, slow exhalation ... and then refused to move. I don't remember how long Tulip lay beside Harriet, but she wouldn't leave her voluntarily. Finally, as darkness softened the sky, I took her by the collar and walked her back to the house."

Most dog owners, seeing this reaction, would believe that their dog was experiencing grief. McConnell, who has a Ph.D. in biology and is a certified animal behaviorist, admits that she has observed Tulip display exactly the same behavior, the same soulful expression, while lying next to a chew toy.

The subtitle of her book is Understanding Emotion in You and Your Best Friend. In it, McConnell discusses the changes in brain chemistry that accompany emotional reactions in both humans and dogs. She describes the visual cues that dogs give to communicate their emotions: the flick of a tongue that indicates nervousness; the round-eyed, sideways glance that shows true fear and might precede a flashing bite. She talks about the way observant dog-owners can learn to better understand their dogs.

However, as the anecdote about Tulip shows, sometimes it is simply not possible understand what our dogs are feeling. My own dog recently gave me a reason to remember that lesson.

This is Lalo. I took this picture a few summers ago, holding a tennis ball above my head to capture his eager expression. Nowadays when I hold a ball, Lalo looks just the same; it's hardly noticeable that he's not focusing on the ball. Lalo is almost totally blind.

I realized he was blind when, on a walk, he lost me. I was standing in daylight on an open expanse of lawn, and Lalo could not find me until I made a noise. The vet confirmed that very little light was getting through Lalo's cloudy eyes - and probably hadn't for at least a year. How had I been unaware of this for so long? I walk him and play with him every day, and I had never noticed.

Undoubtedly Lalo compensates for the loss of his eyesight extremely well. Is it actually unimportant to him? Or does his blindness make him feel anxious or vulnerable? Is he aware of what he has lost? If I think so, am I anthropomorphizing him?

The truth is, I'll never know.