42. This is How You Do It: Maintain a Sense of Humor
Do dogs actually have a sense of humor?
According to the American Kennel Club, the answer is indisputably “Yes.” (Actually, that’s the short answer. The long answer is, well, longer, and you can read it yourself here).
Now that the HH and I have lived with four distinct canines, I can say unequivocally that dogs do, indeed, have a sense of humor.
Thinking about our brood, it’s obvious that Elsie was the most comical, while Jasper, at least for now, has the least developed sense of humor (we can’t blame the boy, whose past is anything but amusing)
My husband is fond of telling this story: Years ago, we were invited to a friend’s country cottage along with our first dog, Elsie, a black Borador (Border Collie-Lab mix). At the time, my friend had her own dog, a border-collie-golden-retriever mix (so no slouch in the intelligence department), staying up north with her.
At one point, my friend had set up a little spread on the dock: two low wooden tables replete with platters of cheese, hummus, crudites, cold cuts, potato salad, bread and the like.
Immediately, the dogs made a beeline for the food. Because, well, they’re dogs.
After a few rounds of “Shoo! Get away! Off!”, my friend decided to take matters into her own hands. She positioned a line of Muskoka chairs (for our American cousins, that’s similar to an Adirondack chair) across the dock, acting as a barrier between the dogs and the snacks.
Both pooches froze, staring at the makeshift border wall. My friend’s dog whined a bit, then lay down. Elsie, on the other hand, was not so easily deterred when food was involved.
Within a few seconds, she’d figured out how to navigate the maze-like spaces between the chairs’ arms and bases, weaving and undulating through like a python making its way along the jungle floor. Before we could get to her, she’d grabbed a piece of sliced chicken and brandished it in her mouth, holding it aloft like a prize catch.
But here’s where the story got interesting: the other dog, still on the opposite side and completely ignorant as to how Elsie reached the finish line, was treated to a display of Ms. Elsie as she pranced and flicked her head back a few times, looking like Ms. Muskoka strutting along the runway.
“See? This is how you do it, stupid!” she seemed to be saying. Then she gulped down her prize and ran off despite our attempts to grab her.
I could almost hear her giggling as she plunked herself back down on the other side of the “barrier.”
Zoey, like Elsie before her, most definitely enjoys humorous antics as well.
Her favorite prank occurs every time we play “chase the ring”, during which I toss a rubber ring through the bannister to the lower level of the house, she runs down the stairs, retrieves it and brings it back for a treat. There’s always at least one run during which she returns and moves up close, waits until I reach out to grab the ring, then briskly retreats, flouncing away with furiously-wagging tail. It doesn’t take a dog psychologist to see how much she’s enjoying the gag.
Next along the humor spectrum was Chaser, who rarely expressed that kind of trickster behavior with humans.
She was, however, more than happy to frolic for hours with Elsie, the epitome of which was captured in this vintage video, below, where they play the “catch me” game. (If you, unlike I, don’t enjoy watching dogs run after each other for almost three minutes, skip to around minute 1:10 to get the general idea; then keep watching for the humorous surprise).
Which brings us to our newest family member, Mr. Jasper. From what we’ve learned, Jasper was born in a shelter, fostered out a few times and then transported from his original Texas home to Toronto.
He thought he’d found his true family in 2022 when he was adopted during the pandemic, but alas, his owner (like millions, apparently) never anticipated that he’d be required to return to in-person work once the Covid panic subsided, and the man didn’t want to leave Jasper alone at home for eight-plus hours per day.
Which is how I found him, featured on a “dog rehoming” page on Facebook.
According to the description, Jasper sounded like an ideal dog. Quiet, calm, sweet, loving. . . yet when we first fostered him, we discovered that Jasper was missing half of the tip of his tongue, a couple of teeth, a piece of the tip of his ear, and had scars on his eye, face and hip.
Needless to say, this boy’s past was riddled with difficulty, a whole lot of mystery, and likely some re-education on how to slurp water effectively.
No wonder the poor fella has no sense of humor!
Yet.
I’ve noticed that Zoey is, well, pretty relentless when it comes to play. So, despite Jasper’s natural reticence, our Ms. Zoey has repeatedly pushed him to engage in “jaw sparring” (or, as one site called it, “Bitey Face’)--you know, that somewhat alarming-looking yet totally harmless game in which dogs bite each other’s faces, muzzles, necks and, as we discovered with these two, legs.
Since Zoey is always up for some fun, Jasper will just have to learn to live with it. And, hopefully, nurture a sense of humor over time.
Dogs make their mental states obvious, of course. After all, there are clear physical signs (biting mouths while panting and lying on their backs = play. Biting with tail stiff and breaking skin = time for serious training).
With humans, while perhaps not as evident, a sense of humor can also be a reflection of one’s mental health.
According to an article in Discover, your particular style of humor can also “act as a window into your psychological well-being.” For instance, putting yourself down or laughing at your own weaknesses isn’t considered a healthy thing to do. Go figure.
Despite negative experiences or events, dogs seem able to revert to humor at almost any time. It’s something I love about them, and a healthy approach to living that I’ll make an effort to implement in the coming days. .
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Follow-up to last week’s challenge: Remain open to all kinds of people.
After spending almost three years basically at home with just the hubs and the dogs, this past week really did give me the opportunity to encounter–and remain open to–a diverse group of people.
If, as Jim Rohn ostensibly said, you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with, well, I wonder what that says about me over the past week? I spent more or less equal amounts of time with a veterinarian, an administrative assistant at a psychologist’s office, a former-teacher-turned-women’s-empowerment-coach, a dog trainer and the manager of an adult erotic toy shop. All at different times, on different days.
Open to different kinds of people? Bring it on. A sad legacy of the last three years or so, in my opinion, is that people have become way less tolerant of those with differing viewpoints from theirs. People’s responses to others and others’ ideas have become so simplistic that we now seem to relegate everyone we meet into one of only two categories (which, at the core, are “with me” or “against me”).
Since when did it become a crime to disagree? Since when were we required to reject someone completely because we had contradictory views about some issue?
I don’t know about you, but throughout my life, I’ve had friends with different politics, different religions, different socio-economic statuses, different gender identities, different family structures and different careers from me. Those differences were only slightly more important than the fact that we also had different eye or hair colors.
So why have we suddenly created a society in which everyone must be in agreement? Either that or, it seems, we can’t allow them into our lives.
Let’s open our hearts a little more. Open arms will follow. And who knows what good will come if we begin to expose ourselves to people–and views–that are different from our own?
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