Guest Comments by John MacAllar


Editor's Note: A dog-lover and musician, the writer lives in Canada. His 13-year-old canine friend Odie died in 2008. “That was a good age, but it went by so fast, as all life does,” John recalls. Odie once “sang a song” on one of John's CDs.


CHARLOTTETOWN, PEI, Canada (Written in 2003) -- My fingers grip the doorknob. A daily ritual is about to begin. I've done this 1,000 times or more.

Today, I hesitate and listen. On the other side, a true friend waits. I hear his tail fluctuate from side to side. It has enough force to knock a full coffee-cup off a table and across a room.

Turning the knob clockwise, opening, I'm greeted by 90 pounds of love and loyalty who grunts and groans, always happy to see me. I can't articulate the day's events for he has limited grasp of English. He understands only certain words and my body language. To him, other spoken words sound like “blah, blah, blah”. So intellectual conversations are out of the question -- in those terms, I'm from a far more sophisticated species.

Then we set off to the backfields. No discussion is needed. My friend's body language says it all.

A few feet ahead, he puts his nose to the ground, suddenly stops and begins to dig. Within moments, he has a bone. An air of pride and achievement surrounds him as he holds it in his jaws. How does he do that?

Obviously, my friend has skills that I don't. Moreover, I recognize that his skills far exceed mine. Once I read that if you have a bowl of soup, a dog can smell each ingredient separately: onions, green peppers, carrots and more. I'd just smell soup. That's why you'd never see me sniffing out drugs at an airport.

In winter, my friend sometimes halts and looks across the river with his head elevated, tail straight, as he focuses on a fox that he sees and smells there. He's so in tune to his surroundings.

As he laps up, his snout submerged in a water bowl, I place his food dish alongside. So I can't talk religion, sports or politics with him. I can't share my innermost thoughts, but we still communicate in our own ways, and I have huge respect for him.

In a sense, loyalty amounts to a form of intelligence and is something he has in spades. Ultimately, I think we're of equal intelligence.


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