LINA BASQUETTE
American dancer, silent screen actress
1907-1994

"He'd scotched the sunglasses along with any other accessory --bandanna, straw hat, Halloween costume -- I'd dreamed up. He hated them. He'd gone to a Halloween party as a nudist."

From "The Dog Is a Ham" in DOG IS MY CO-PILOT

MARTIN
BUXBAUM
Author
1912-1991

"I lie on my burgundy velvet couch, smelly with Dog and hair everywhere, with Ralph and Bronwyn fighting for the curved space behind my legs or the soft pad of my belly, and I realize that I am happier than I have ever been."

From "The New Girl" in DOG IS MY CO-PILOT

ROBERT
COANE
Puerto Rican artist, teacher and Dog activist
b. 1945

(with Little Man Rodin)

"In the agony of death a Dog has been known to caress his master and everyone has heard of the Dog suffering under vivisection who licked the hand of the operator; this man, unless the operation was fully justified by an increase of our knowledge, or unless he had a heart of stone, must have felt remorse to the last hour of his life."
• • •
"It must be called sympathy that heads a courageous Dog to fly at anyone who strikes his master, as he certainly will."

Q: “If you could choose what to come back as,
what would it be?”

A: A Dog, so my wife would love me more.”

“Let sleeping Dogs lie - who wants to rouse 'em?”

"It’s not much of a tail but I’m sort-of attached to it.”

"For very little in food and Love, a dog will love you and guard you and your
belongings. Where else can you find this? Among Humans rarely...and, even if found, is it toally without strings? Nope! But with our canine friends, no betrayal ever, just mounds of Love and devotion!"

"They should be allowing Dogs in more places --
Dogs in grocery stores, Dogs in hardware stores."

THEODORUS
GAZA

THE WISE DOG
One day nine dogs went out to hunt. They met a lion. He said:
"I am hunting too. I am very, very hungry. Let us hunt together."

So the dogs and the lion hunted together all day.
They caught ten antelopes.

The the lion said: "Now we must divide this meat."

One of the dogs said: "Why, that is easy. We are ten, and we have ten antelopes; so each of us will have one antelope."

The lion became very angry. He hit the poor dog and blinded him. The other dogs did not say a word.

But then one of the dogs said:
"Our brother was wrong. We must give nine antelopes to King Lion. Then they will be ten together. And we dogs shall take one antelope, and we shall also be ten together."

The lion liked his answer and asked the dog: "Who taught you to divide like this? You are a wise dog."

The dog answered:
"Oh, King Lion, you hit our brother and blinded him. That blind brother taught me,
King Lion!"

"Dogs. Take them or leave them... but bear in mind that they are the only members of the animal kingdom who have bothered to make friends with humans...."

" I always pet a dog with my left hand because if he bit me I'd still have my right hand to paint with."

BENJAMIN HART
Director of the Center for Animal Behaviour
UC School of Veterinary Medicine, Davis

"Dogs don't lick people because they're hoping for a hot meal. They lick because we're their parents, or at least the head folks in the house. Even when Dogs are old, gray and grizzled, they see themselves in some ways as being our children, and a lick shows how much they respect us."

"If the gods bring to you
a strange and frightening creature,
accept the gift
as if it were one you had chosen.

"...that you came to love it, that was the gift."

from the poem
Each Moment a White Bull Steps Shining Into the World

Ten Things My Dog Taught Me

1 • That if your paws are too big to fit in your ears,
you have to get someone else to do the scratching.
2 • That if you want your hand to be licked,
you might have to put it under somebody's nose.
3 • That the exact right Dog will always come into your life
when you need him most.
4 • That loving, in the face of inevitable loss,
is the single most important challenge of our lives.
5 • That all new habits,
like weeping and praying and talking about your feelings,
will actually endear you to more people than they will drive away.
6 • That sitting in the grass together doing nothing
isn't really doing nothing at all.
7 • That if you love somebody deeply enough,
cleaning up their diarrhea doesn't make you want to puke.
8 • That in the end, the money doesn't matter a bit.
9 • That sometimes, even if you haven't acted perfectly,
the good thing happens after all.
10 • That everything is forgivable, that every moment contains eternity,
and that loving unconditionally doesn't mean you are a self-annihilating fool.

...that lesson #10 is what every Dog has been trying to teach every human
since the very beginning of time.

From
"Ten Things My Dog Taught Me That Made It Possible for Me to Get Married"
in DOG IS MY CO-PILOT

IRISH WOLFHOUND
Mascott of the
" Fighting 69th"

"I'd rather see a portrait of a Dog that I know than all the allegorical paintings they can show me in the world."

 

"Men may come and go, but Dogs walk (and sniff) on forever."
•••
"Dogs come into our lives to teach us about love and loyalty.
They depart to teach us about loss."
•••
"We try to replace them but never quite succeed. A new Dog never replaces an old Dog, it merely expands the heart. If you have loved many Dogs,
your heart is very big."
•••
"She anointeth my head with saliva."
•••
"In a world of hypocrisy and betrayal, Dogs are direct. They never lie."
•••
"Finally, a day came when she lay in her own pee and couldn't get up. We cried while the vet attached the pink plastic butterfly to her vein. We cried when the poison went in and she trustingly took the dose. Her eyes remained open. A terrible shudder shook her body. A whole chapter in my life closed."

From "A Woman's Best Friend" in DOG IS MY CO-PILOT

“Dogs are blameless, devoid of calculation, neither blessed nor cursed with human motives. They can’t really be held responsible for what they do.
But we can.”

From "The Dogs of Bedlam Farm"
•••
"But one thing is sure: When Donna dies, she will not be alone. Harry will be by her side, singing his own kind of song. She will leave this world feeling loved."

From "Donna and Harry" in DOG IS MY CO-PILOT

“He usually stays at home with the children. But the children are away on vacation and he gets very lonely. So I bring him down here and get pretty girls to take him for walks.”

“His name is not Wild Dog any more, but the First Friend, because he will be our friend for always and always and always.”

The Australian DINGO

"Before you get a Dog, you can't quite imagine what living with one might be like; afterward, you can't imagine living any other way."
•••
"The Dog had introduced to her field of vision some previously unavailable hue and, without the Dog, that color was gone."
•••
"When I'm feeling bad or thinking about something I can't handle, I pick up my Dogs and it helps for the moment. It may not be the perfect relationship we all hope to have with a human, but it's a relationship. And love is love."

From "The Color Joy" in DOG IS MY CO-PILOT

"Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a Dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring, it was peace.”
•••
"The very beginning of Genesis tells us that God created man in order to give him dominion over fish and fowl and all creatures.  Of course, Genesis was written by a man, not a horse.  There is no certainty that God actually did grant man dominion over other creatures.  What seems more likely, in fact, is that man invented God to sanctify the dominion that he had usurped for himself over the cow and the horse.  Yes, the right to kill a deer or a cow is the only thing all of mankind can agree upon, even during the bloodiest of wars."

See anything you like so far, something so... Fido, that perfect match to Fido,
so on the nose, so written just for him?

Visit
MATCH~ a ~POOCH
and let's see what we can come up with...

"My Dog Chandi lives in the holy now. She daily instructs me, without words or lesson plans, in the meaning of the golden eternity, here and now, every single day. Divinity gleams in a Dog's eye."
•••
"Dogs teach us about faith, trust and devotion;how never to give up; and how to keep coming back and just showing up, which is more than half the battle. They teach us how to devotedly serve a higher master, how to attend and wait, and how to let go of a grudge. But most of all, they teach us about the meaning and experience of unconditional love."
•••
"In the presence of a Dog, you love and are loved.
And all that love helps purify our karma."
•••
"If there is any attachment worth holding on to, it is love of my Dog."

From "God Is Dog Spelled Properly" in DOG IS MY CO-PILOT

"If you are a Dog and your owner suggests that you wear a sweater... suggest that he wear a tail.”

Q • Do you think cats and Dogs are capable of rational thought?

A • Rationality is generally located in the prefrontal cortex, and while that brain area is really big in humans, it’s a pretty small part of the Dog brain. This is why Dogs don’t play chess — they chase Frisbees.

Q • My Dog strikes me as basically rational, except when she barks at garbage bags.

A • Your poor Dog is like a 4-year-old, because 4-years-olds still don’t have a fully formed prefrontal cortex, which is the last part of the brain to develop.

Interview NYTimes Magazine by Deborah Solomon

“No animal I know of can consistently be more of a friend
and companion than a Dog.”

MAURICE
MAETERLINCK
(1862-1949)
Belgian Nobel laureate
Playwrite, Poet,
Essayist

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“We are alone, absolutely alone on this chance planet; and amid all the forms of life that surround us, not one, excepting the Dog, has made an alliance with us.”
•••
"In the world which we know, among the different and primitive geniuses that preside over the evolution of the several species, there exists not one, excepting that of the Dog, that ever gave a thought to the presence of man."
•••
"Ah, the dust-bin! Inexhaustable treasury,receptacle of windfalls,
the jewel of the house."
•••