Here’s a Washington Times article that recognizes the growing trend of books, TV and movies that highlight the love of dogs. Mark has been recognized in the article for his book, Rescuing Sprite.
GALUPO: The dog days are here again
One possibility, says Mark R. Levin, a syndicated radio talk-show host, is that the nature of today’s media, with its wall-to-wall coverage, is making an age-old love affair between dogs and people seem newly intense.“Human love for dogs has been around for as long as humans and dogs have been around,” he says.
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The recent rapid increase in energy costs along with the new concept that CO2 is an emerging pollutant has somewhat chilled affection for the combustion engine. The industrial revolution initiated the emancipation of humans from the harsh consequences inflicted upon him by a natural system that seemed to casually distribute happiness and sorrow without any regards to our sense of morality. For most of humankind all effort, each and every day, was related to survival and the choices beyond that were often meager and slim. Looking back at the greatest period of human emancipation yesterday’s combustion engine was the one single great invention that permitted prodigious amounts of work to be accomplished by a very small number of people. Humankind finally had the time to look at the world in a way that they could never previously do. And it is because of those events that we finally had the time and the inclination that changed the way we relate to our dogs.
Dogs departed from their wild brethren a very long time ago and in the process decided that they would befriend humans before humans ever thought of befriending them and so it was from the beginning that the dog decided to love, protect, and die for humankind unconditionally. Canis made the first move and went all the way while we took a long time responding and we did so incrementally. How things have now changed. Indeed, while reading “Rescuing Sprite”, with each page turned, the sorrow mounted, and we came to know how the author suffered, that he could not sleep, could not eat, could not work and most of all could not envision a future where life would ever again be worthwhile. When we read about his ordeal we realized we understood ourselves. Why? Because no matter how much we love our dogs they love us even more. And in that long goodbye we never feel we can say we made our feelings known quite the way we would have liked or conveyed the understanding that we realize that we got the best part of the devotion deal. Dogs certainly seem to posses that ability better than we do.
Humankind may be able to intellectualize, we may be able to build suspension bridges and send probes to Mars and construct ingenious devices but we do so with a specialized new brain sitting upon and older brain that instills within us feelings and emotions such as worry, anger, affection, happiness, love, devotion and compassion. In this world of emotion we do not surpass the dog, In fact it is within this world that the dog seeks to exist and so he spends all his efforts to embrace and hold dear, love and loyalty, not for him, but for us. He gets angry at those he would feel may harm us, he worries and pines during our absence, he radiates with boundless joy and happiness when we return and he guards every moment he spends with us.
Today we spend a great deal of time with out pets. We hire dog sitters to be with them when we are away at work. We have them washed and groomed. We buy and cook for them specialized diets; we employ trainers, send them to school and seek the advice and attention of veterinarians for our smallest concerns. We travel with them in cars and planes and we call to make reservations in hotels and motels that accommodate them as well. And most of us have pictures of our dogs just as we do of our family and friends. People and dogs represent the largest and strongest interspecies families I have ever known.
Speaking to someone the other day about the Genesis account of creation the story of how Eve was created to fill the void of Adam’s loneness made me digress and reflect for a moment and think that the biblical translation just can’t be right. Certainly God must have given that obligation to the dog and Eve must have been created for a purpose that many of us still wonder about. The dog is man’s best friend and it is about time that we fully realize that and give back so much that we took for granted for all these eons.
Dear Mark, I’m an italian girl! I hope you’ll read my reply.
I just wanna say THANK YOU for your book about Sprite.
I lost my two little dogs just few days ago. And my heart is crying every day. I’ll remenber you, your book and your Sprite forever. Sorry for my bad english!
With love — Valentina