COMPANION ANIMALS
1. Shelby on 'The Purpose of Dogs’
“The difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind.”
—Charles Darwin
[Shelby:]
Ninety percent of our genetic makeup is the same as yours.
But you, my friend, twenty-two feet from your mouth to your anus.
It’s all right, Boss. Dogs understand,
They know what it means to be human.
Still, the doctor who said, ‘The purpose of dogs
is to stimulate the sub cortical reward system’,
that doctor needs a doctor.
The purpose of dogs is for you to walk around after us with a little bag.
2. The World According to Shelby
Now shut up! Shut up and let me bark...
For starters, food has a way
of anchoring thought. I’ll tell you that.
The stomach and the heart,
they’re the same thing.
But I wanna know, after 10,000 years
of domestication,
what does it mean to be a dog anymore?
Of course 90% of our genetic makeup
is the same as yours.
I read. I read shit like that.
You need. You think I need? Need what?
An interspecies relationship?
Gimme a bow, gimme a wow,
gimme a BOW WOW WOW.
Remember your WOOF WOOF
is connected to your BOW WOW.
Be cool. Love like war.
Winner is who stays longer.
You know, sometimes it’s just good to hang out with your own kind.
3. In A World of No
…all that I cared for was the race of dogs, that and nothing else… To whom but [dogs] can one appeal in the wide and empty world?
—Franz Kafka
In a world of No,
dogs are a Yes.
Sixty-eight million dogs in America
and they understand
there is a fundamental human reaction
to everything,
and it’s No, No.
Grrr! Dogs hate hearing shit like that.
People, it’s all No and No
and No.
They look at a dog sometimes
and the dog is on its back, say,
on someone’s lawn,
legs in the air,
rolling and bouncing…
‘This is the hand I was dealt. I’m a dog,’
says the dog. ‘It’s not a problem.’
But people—
Look at me, Goddammit!
‘I don’t have time for this,’ you’re thinking.
‘Something better is going to come later.’
No, no it won’t. As Ram Dass says, ‘This is all there is.’
This is all you get.
‘All knowledge, the totality
of all questions and answers,
is contained in the dog.’
Do you know who said that?
Kafka. That’s right, Kafka.
Bow-wow, bow, wow.
Bow-wow NOW.
—Excerpted from Unleashed: The Dogs in My Life, forthcoming in 2014.
About The Writer Robert Sward is author of numerous books of poetry including, most recently, New and Selected Poems: 1957-2011 (Red Hen Press). He edits The Outdoor Poet for Hilltromper. He lives on the Westside with his wife, the artist Gloria Alford, and a poodle mix named Cosette.
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