Through encounters like these, I have developed a deep appreciation for the subtlety and gentleness of her communication, and I have tried to respond in kind, by keeping my voice low and my touch soft, even in situations of great emotional intensity, for her or me or both. These situations are bound to arise when dogs live in a human-dominated world that carries dangers they may not understand (such as cars) and prohibitions that defy their instincts (such as not eating squirrels or chasing deer). For example, early in our relationship, we came upon several deer about a hundred yards away grazing in an open field. They were barely moving, but Safi had clearly caught their scent. One doe lifted her head and turned toward us. In response to this movement, Safi leapt forward (she was not on a leash). I said, without raising my voice, “No, Safi, don’t chase.” To my amazement, she stopped in her tracks. Thus I learned that I could communicate prohibitions without yelling or punishing her. I learned later that with Safi, rules do not have to be absolute. Under some circumstances, it’s OK for her to approach a cat (for instance, one who is an expert on dogs), and more often, it’s not. If I notice a cat nearby, before I open the door to let Safi out of the car (or disengage her leash), I say either, “No cats” or “It’s OK to greet the cat.” If I say the former, she turns her head away from the cat and walks with a bit of a slink in the other direction (as if avoiding temptation), but if I say, “It’s OK,” she’ll check to make sure I mean it, and if I repeat myself, she’ll approach the cat.
The most remarkable example of Safi’s willingness to respond to my preferences concerning her relations with other animals involved a very tame, very fat (and very stupid?) fox squirrel who approached us, sat a couple of feet away, went up on his haunches, and chattered at her. I asked Safi to stay put. Her body trembled all over but she held her ground. The squirrel did too. I asked Safi again to stay put, and then I told her over and over how much I appreciated her self-control. The squirrel remained. Finally, I turned away and said to Safi, “Please come with me.” She did.
These examples might be taken to indicate that I make and enforce the rules in our relationship, but this view is inaccurate, for two reasons. First, Safi has trained me in at least as many prohibitions based on her needs. For example, she has taught me that I must not clean the mud off her delicate tummy area with anything but the softest cloth and the tenderest touch. She has made it clear that stepping over her while she is asleep makes her extremely uncomfortable, and so I never do it. Second, Safi knows that absolute prohibitions are rare. More often, we find ourselves in situations in which I have one preference and she has another. Unless her safety or someone else’s is at stake, we negotiate. For example, we have come to an agreement about the much-hated bath. I bring her into the bathroom and suggest that she climb into the tub. Usually, with great reluctance, she does so. But sometimes she chooses not to, in which case she voluntarily travels to the kitchen where she remains until the mud has dried enough for me to brush it off. Similarly, when playing fetch with a toy, Safi drops it when I ask her to only about half the time. If she refuses to drop it, it means either that she’s inviting a game of keep-away, or that she wants to rest with her toy for a while before chasing it some more. Since the toys belong to her, and since she never substitutes objects like my new shoes, it seems fair that she decides when to keep the toy and when to share it with me.
I could sum up our relationship by saying that Safi and I are equals. This does not mean that I think we are the same; we are, in fact, very different, she with the blood of wolves in her veins, me with the blood of apes. What it does mean is that I regard her{And, equally important, she behaves as if she regards me as a person in the same sense of the word.} as a “person,” albeit of another species—a possibility first made real to me during my life with the baboons. In the language I am developing here, relating to other beings as persons has nothing to do with whether or not we attribute human characteristics to them. It has to do, instead, with recognizing that they are social subjects,{Cf. Elizabeth Costello on viewing animals as subjects rather than objects.} like us, whose idiosyncratic, subjective experience of us plays the same role in their relations with us that our subjective experience of them plays in our relations with them. If they relate to us as individuals, and we relate to them as individuals, it is possible for us to have a personal relationship. If either party fails to take into account the other’s social subjectivity, such a relationship is precluded. Thus while we normally think of personhood as an essential quality that we can “discover” or “fail to find” in another, in the view espoused here personhood connotes a way of being in relation to others, and thus no one other than the subject can give it or take it away. In other words, when a human being relates to an individual nonhuman being as an anonymous object, rather than as a being with its own subjectivity, it is the human, and not the other animal, who relinquishes personhood.
The possibility of voluntary, mutual surrender to the dictates of intersubjectivity constitutes the common ground that Aquinas and O’Hearne ignore when they claim that animals and humans cannot be friends. I use the word “surrender” intentionally, for relating to others (human or nonhuman) in this way requires giving up control over them and how they relate to us. We fear such loss of control, but the gifts we receive in turn make it a small price to pay.
Thus because I regard Safi as a person, and she regards me as one, we can be friends. As in any genuine human-to-human friendship, our relationship is predicated on mutual respect and reciprocity. Although she depends on me to provide certain necessities, like food and water, this dependence is contingent, not inherent; if I lived in the world of wild dogs, I would depend on her for food and protection and much more. She is not my child; she is not my servant. She is not even my companion, in the sense of existing to keep me company. I wish for her what I wish for all of my friends: maximum freedom of expression, maximum well-being.