i'm not a big fan of guilt

as a motivator but yesterday,  when i was too tired to go to the shelter, it finally drove me there. my first reaction, on finding that all the dogs had already been walked, was relief.  it was too hot and like i said i was too tired and i had the choice to give them each a cookie and head home.  but i chose, instead, the pleasure of surprising them with seconds.  most, by then, were badly in need of another potty break.  it made me think how many hours, on a normal day, they spend waiting.

it's so easy to get into a minimal mind set, where it feels somehow like a victory if every dog has had one chance to pee outside in a day.  but many of these animals come from homes where they've been taught to wait and some of them, like little Jackson and sweet Nellie, will stop eating when they can't get out.  once a day feels less than grand when you notice the way they suffer to keep from soiling their little space.

i read about a place called Dog Island where they say the animals are free...uncaged, unfenced to run as they please.  they have no masters.  there are no rules.  they have returned to Eden. according to the website, the dogs come from individuals and from shelters.  you apply and once he's accepted,  you just slap a stamp on Bowzer and send him along.  he will spend a few weeks being socialized with other new arrivals.  when that group has bonded, formed a pack, they'll be released together to return to their feral state, spending their days hunting for food (the island has been stocked with a large rabbit population) and their nights sleeping together outside or in caves.  in the few photos they share, the dogs look happy and healthy - engaged with one another as they play in the surf or sit side by side in doggie meditation.

there's little information available, a certain vagueness in the details, so i'm not clear what's behind it...how well it works or whether to trust that it is what it claims to be.  it's financed by "very rich people."  no joke.  that's how they account for it's existence.  really?  it feels almost like some kind of sinister experiment...some Lord of the Flies, Canine Edition, so i'm definitely not recommending it, but i am suggesting that as a concept, there's something worth consideration.  as a concept, it sets a few things in sharp relief - like the ways we mold our pets to fit our lives... it raises the question whether our demands are entirely fair or helpful...whether we might want to change a thing or two.  i'm not suggesting you stock the back yard with bunnies and lock the dog outside.  but maybe there's a middle ground - located between our ears - a place where we simply hold on to the awareness that the animals in our lives, despite generations of domestication, still have instincts and impulses and survival skills they need to exercise...that we might do well to respect them because when we don't, it can lead to those things that make us crazy and that we label as misbehavior.

i quit buying stuffed toys for Nini years ago cause all she did was disembowel them in the first five minutes.  i realize now that she actually needed to do that...it's in her DNA, just like gnawing on a bone.  if there's no bone, there's always a table leg or a running shoe, which for sure smells like the wild outdoors. up there beside you on the sofa, eating popcorn and watching Jeopardy, that's a hunter...a predator.   cat's chase a feather on a string for the same reason dogs chase a tennis ball...cause in their instinctive brain, it's supper, getting away.

i have some uneasiness around the Dog Island idea...but despite my scepticism, the insatiably nosey part of me can't help wanting to go and work there, for the chance to see what happens.  i'm curious what dogs are really like, when they're free of our society... when they don't have to wait for either our help or our permission to get on with living.