The Empty Space from pet dogs past

The story, Blue and Some Other Dogs is completely relatable to my life and to most other dog lovers I would venture to say. It is the real life story of love and loss, but I didn't get the feeling that the owner of Blue necessarily thought the painful loss was worth the years of love because "[he] do[esn't] believe [he] want[s] to face so big a dose of that sort of emptiness again (Graves, 424)." I think that it is always worth it because "love is never lost. If not reciprocated, it will flow back and soften and purify the heart (Washington Irving)." Losing a dog is like losing a family member, but sooner and inexplicably because "dogs are [not] nothing but dogs (Graves, 450)." It seems a sin that dogs live such short lives, as "there is love of course. And then there's life, its enemy (Jean Anouilh)." We want our pets to be everlasting and we love them as such. We, animal lovers, treat our pets as part of our family. We treat them as if they understand what we say and what we feel, and are able to sympathize along with us "at least in [their] own way (Graves, 441)."

"He was weak, he had not ever owned a dog before (Bass, 454)." Above is an illustration concerning the historical nature of mankind befriending caninekind, in reference to Argos in Homer's Odysseus. Argos, Odysseus's dog, waited twenty years for his master to return home to him. Leadership is often accompanied by such a pal, presidential pups are steeped in their own political history. Examples including: Pete, President Theodore Roosevelt's Bull Terrier, who was so aggressive that he was eventually kicked out of the White House and Checkers, President Richard Nixon's Cocker Spaniel, who was gifted to the then Senator’s family and was the center of a financial controversy. Dogs offer a sort of undying loyalty and companionship that can't be substituted or even easily explained. We offer love to each other, dogs can save people and people can save dogs. "All of these things are life. All of these things are a gift to us, and from us back to [them] (Bass, 460)."

Unable are the Loved to die

For Love is Immortality,

Nay, it is Deity --

Unable they that love -- to die

For Love reforms Vitality

Into Divinity.

-Emily Dickinson 

From every poem in the assigned reading and every story, children are mentioned in reference to the ultimate good. Children are considered the chance to change the future for the better. "A child has a voice to tell its wrong (Saunders 483)." Who do adults think they are to abuse a "poor dumb beast (Saunders, 480)?" The story of Beautiful Joe (considered a sort of response to Black Beauty) depicted this swimmingly as the dog "has seen few cruel children (Saunders, 479)." Joe shows symptathy towards animals of other species as well as compassion. It is ironically written from the dog perspective, because some don't consider animals to rank with humans. This story should prove those people wrong, by debasing such a statement through a dog's eyes because such an idea can't be proven wrong. Joe's family equates animal abuse to domestic abuse, as if a precursor for the other. "We're thinking too much about educating the mind, and forgetting about the heart and soul (Saunders, 493)." This is where children step in, and love the "poor, miserable, broken down creatures (Saunders, 479)."