Tonight we visited my husband’s aunt. We hung out on her back deck because for some reason on December 26th in Northern Ohio it’s sixty degrees. It’s really strange.
Anyway, she has an adorable dog named Lucy. Lucy is a mutt; she’s small but not a little yappy thing either. She was bouncing around everywhere and playing with my daughter. For the few moments she would sit still I would pet her, but there was this one moment when she jumped on my lap and we locked eyes for a few seconds. She tilted her head a bit and I felt like we connected.
I’m an animal lover and if we ever get a dog, I would want one like Lucy. The other night, I even had a dream that we got a dog, but it was just a dream. Our 950-square-foot house is already packed with five cats, three humans, and two guinea pigs. I have no idea where a dog would go.
I feel a connection when my guinea pigs and kitties look at me, too. I just wish I knew what they were thinking. I’ve posted about this before, but I am just so curious; do you think animals know more about us than we think they do?
It seems like all my guinea pigs do is eat. Every time I step into the kitchen I hear “wheek, wheek, wheek!” from their cage. Their favorite snack is organic carrots with the greens still on them. I pick some up every time we go to the store. My husband, of course, makes fun of me when I tell him that I’m wondering what they’re thinking. He claims all they say is “Feed me, feed me, feed me!” I talk to them a lot; I wonder what they’re hearing.
I just hope all my pets are happy and that I’m giving them a good life. I wish there were more ways to communicate with them or to know what they are thinking.
Maybe this is too much to ask of any living thing. It’s not like you can know what other humans are thinking either. I can communicate with other humans, but humans lie and steal and cheat; I just feel like animals would be more honest.
Are an animal’s needs basic? Maybe they’re more complicated than we think they are. How would we ever know?
Am I giving them a good life? Do they know that they are giving me a better life? I’ve always had animals around me — for as long as I can remember. I couldn’t imagine living without them.
Do you ever wonder about this? Do you have a deep connection with your pets? Do you wonder what your pets think? Are they happy? Do they think they have a good life? Do they know more about us than we think they do?
Also, if you want to see something really cute, search “guinea pigs popcorning” on YouTube. It’s their little happy dance. My piggies do this when I put them in their playpen in the living room.
I already know what my dogs are saying.
Indeed.
Someone who shares their life with their pets can pretty much decipher them, though alas the other way around is more problematic.
As for their sapience (ability to reason), well… not that much. But sentience (ability to perceive and to feel) is not particularly lesser, cats and dogs and pigs and guinea pigs and so forth are all vertebrate mammals and share lineage.
They can feel pain, cold, heat. Hunger, thirst, tiredness, sleepiness.
They can feel joy, they can suffer.
They can have expectations, they can have moods, they can be lonely, they can be harassed.
Imagine a human being who has some sort of neurological disorder, so that their thinking is not so flash and they live in the moment with few inhibitions. Same thing, far as I’m concerned.
We are kin.
Animals, like people, vary in their abilities. I fostered for a rescue for 30 years and have had a variety of dog and cat fosters come through the house, plus my own. Some cats and dogs are very good readers of people and very attuned to humans. Others are less so. Despite the common belief, cats can be very affectionate and close to humans–it’s all in how they’re treated. Dogs who are chained outside 24/7 will never be able to bond with people, and since they’re pack animals, their brains break from isolation.
Generally speaking, the more time you spend around a domesticated animal, the closer your bonds are.
I don’t know much about guinea pigs, but clearly yours associate you with food.
Of course the animals are thinking. I spent a few years contemplating the emotional state of my plants too. I concluded that their permanent and only emotional state is “Happy Happy
Grow Grow.” Even the stuff I just pruned goes into the compost bin singing that song. This got me past my inhibitions on pulling up perfectly healthy plants.
Because of this post from you, I contacted a friend who has guinea pigs to ask her opinion. She’s owned a series of guinea pigs for a couple of decades now (they don’t live more than a few years). Her opinion: they’re not domesticated like a cat or dog. They absolutely have their own personalities and their own quirks, likes and dislikes, but she’s sure they tolerate her petting them and talking to them because she feeds them. She said they know her from a stranger, but they’re not particularly bonded with her. She likes them because they’re more interactive than fish, and don’t need the vet appointments and rabies shots of more traditional pets like cats and dogs.
It’s awesome that you were able to talk to your friend about it! Thank you for the info. One of our guinea pigs is more skittish than the other, so I have been doing searches on how to tame guinea pigs. Everywhere I look, it says it’s good for your guinea pig to associate you with food, so you and your friend are right.
I knew very little about guinea pigs so I thought I’d ask someone who did. They’re traditionally raised for food (not in the USA) and they’re cage-living (in the USA), so they haven’t been selected over millennia for their ability to interact with people. But they do have their own personalities–as you noticed, one of yours is more skittish than another. My friend said some of her pigs enjoyed being held, and others just tolerated it. The more time and attention you pay and the better you meet their needs, the friendlier they are.
Just recently, I saw a documentary about dogs and how they evolved from wolves, possibly as far back as 40,000 years ago. It’s also likely dogs domesticated themselves when some wolves noticed there was always food around people, and later on, that dogs were excellent prey-chasers and people were excellent prey-killers, so it made sense to team up. Cats were only domesticated in the past few thousand years, plus their worth to people was in more solitary pursuits (e.g. catching mice in a barn), but cats can and do bond closely with people. Some cats are more inclined to bond, and cats born and raised feral might only tolerate people whereas cats born to generations of housecats may bond instantly.
At the risk of being tiresome; dogs were shaped over the millennia to work closely with humans and were bred for certain traits people found useful. In MRIs they’ve found that dogs’ brains light up around people. They’re skilled at reading people and there’s a lot of scientific evidence that they think similarly to the way we do. Cats are less so because there’s been less selective breeding for these traits, but many cats bond closely with their people.