The Curious Dog: a Lesson for June!
I declare this June to be dedicated to curiosity. As my models for this declaration, I take our dogs, Maisie, and Toby. As I write this, Maisie is crunched up against me on our couch, shaking because of thunderstorms, and Toby is hiding in the bathroom — with a line of sight to me to make sure that I don’t disappear.
But this morning! On our walk, their curiosity was in full force. They zig-zagged down our road, going from Piñon to the Common Mullein that grows in the ditch. Everything must be smelled and explored. Toby, as a Great Pyrenees, in particular takes his time. Nothing can move him as he inhales the scents of our walk.
They are driven by curiosity, the need to absorb as much information as they can about their world and the inhabitants who have passed — the coyotes who have marked the trees and left their scat, the whitetail rabbits who have brushed by, that mysterious creature, the Jackrabbit, who peered at us, only his head sticking out from the bush. Even the occasional beetle gets a once-over.
Their need to know seems insatiable. It’s the same walk we’ve done morning after morning, but they are excited every time I say “walk.”
All our dogs, save one, have had the same enthusiasm. Tank, our late Berner, would go out the door, then lay down on the road and roll over on his back as if to say, “Please! Not again!”
But the others were forever curious, never bored.
A lesson.
This brings this essay to us. There is a lot of research showing that kindergarteners ask hundreds of questions a day. But have you ever wondered how many questions we, as adults, ask in a day? Probably less than a dozen. Now, you may argue that it’s an unfair comparison, the developing brain of a child, new to the world, and us, the adults, knowledgeable and wise in the ways of the world. (Insert laugh here).
The late chef and travel writer Anthony Bourdain allegedly had this tattoo on his arm: “We know nothing.”
I would amend that to say that we, as older humans, have put our natural curiosity on hold. Two reasons. First, as the “grown-ups,” we are creatures of habit. We know our world well enough to navigate it daily without asking questions, be you a writer, a plumber, or a doctor. We think, “Been there, done that.” Second, the world expects us to know and asking questions is, in some twisted way, seen as an admission that we don’t know and are somehow less.
I don’t think our dogs suffer from the same tortured logic. They are just openly looking for answers. (To the question, “Who pee’d on the tree?)
What I have learned from walking with curious dogs is to pay attention, take the time to slow down, and observe more of the details on a simple walk on a country road. For example, this spring in the arroyos, there are dozens of these brilliant white flowers, the Whitest Evening Primrose. They are like trumpets in a sea of grass, blaring to the pollinators, “here I am!” They’re everywhere. But they weren’t there last spring. So where did they come from? How did they spread?
I know nothing!
So. I am dedicating June to curiosity. To ask more questions and to make fewer assumptions — to get to the nitty-gritty, dirt in our fingernails, heart of things. To get to where the professor shrugs and says, “We don’t know.”
All of us, at one time or another, had that one person in a high school class who annoyingly kept asking question after question, why this? Why that? When the rest of us just wanted to get on the bus and go home. Now, I want to brush off my curiosity and be like her — or like our dogs.
My advice for the rest of June is to be as curious as your dogs. Pay attention to the natural world, wonder about the names of flowers, and how that colony of lupines exploded in purple and blue. Why are they purple and blue? Ask questions of the authority figures and the experts and annoy them until they admit they don’t know.
Being curious can shake things up, and it can be immensely satisfying. Maybe that’s what a curious being is after — the satisfaction of knowing their world slightly better. Pay attention. Ask questions. Be curious — It’s June!
Hersch Wilson’s new book Dog Lessons: “Learning the Important Stuff from Our Best Friends” will be available wherever books are sold on September 5, 2023. It is a meditation on the powerful presence of dogs in our lives and the transformative lessons they can teach us about love, loyalty, grief, zoomies, and more.
