I’ll never forget the first litter I helped my father raise when I was a young boy. They were housed in a stall set up in the back of our boarding kennel. It was quiet there and so the mother and her pups wouldn’t be disturbed by the hubbub of daily kennel activity. One morning I was in their pen cleaning up newspapers, and soon they forgot about me and resumed tumbling over each other with their roly-poly bellies making them look like cement mixer trucks playing bumper cars. At some point my father walked into the room to check on how I was doing and even though the pups were only a few weeks past opening their eyes and able to see no more than ten or fifteen feet, at the sight of a human they wobbled as fast as they could to the front of the stall and then pressed against the wire mesh, mewing, whining and jockeying for position. They seemed even more intensely attracted to the form of a human than when they saw their mother being returned after her exercise session. From then on I remained struck by how profoundly dogs are attracted to human beings and virtually at the start of life. I knew this revealed some fundamental principle of nature and I was never satisfied with the catchall explanation into which it seems every mystery of dogs is placed: “due to domestication.”

From my study of animals as emotional beings, I’ve learned that animal consciousness is a medium of displacement, just like the time/space continuum of the universe is displaced to yield gravity as a virtual force of attraction. Human beings displace the emotional continuum of consciousness more than any other animal, just as large objects of mass displace time and space more than smaller objects. Thus, animals are more attracted to man than they are to any other living being, even their own kind, because humans have the most emotional mass.

What is emotional mass? Just as physical mass is resistance to physical acceleration, emotional mass is resistance to emotional acceleration, i.e. being moved by a feeling. I think it’s safe to say that we are more  attracted to huge boulders than to little pebbles, but it’s easier to pitch a pebble than move a boulder. If it wasn’t for emotional mass, animals would be like a boat without a keel in the water, skimming aimlessly across the surface whichever way the wind was blowing.

The main point I wish to make in regards to the dog/human connection is that the higher the emotional capacity of a species, the more emotional mass they acquire through experience, and the more emotional experiences they have simply by virtue of living longer, the more “gravitas” they acquire and the more they displace the emotional tipping points (i.e. consciousness) of other beings, and so therefore, the stronger the force of attraction other beings experience toward such high capacity beings. (Consider how awe struck we are by a great predator such as a lion or grizzly bear, or a huge, powerful animal such as an elephant or whale. The bigger and more powerful an animal, and the longer it lives, the more emotional mass it displaces.) Likewise, while all animals are profoundly attracted to human beings, nonetheless it’s hard for most species to feel emotional movement towards us.
So just as a large object of mass displaces more of the time/space continuum and thereby generates a stronger force of attraction than smaller objects, a species with a high emotional capacity will more profoundly displace the continuum of animal consciousness and thereby generate a stronger force of attraction than animals that carry less emotional mass.

So all animals are attracted to man given that human beings carry the greatest emotional mass, however, given the high emotional capacity of canines, only the dog can fully cross the species divide and connect with man, emotionally. Only the dog can go by feel in man’s world whereas all other animals must go by instinct, and it’s a two-way street as well. The dog as a fellow high capacity emotional being, triggers feelings in us that accelerate our emotion. Dogs put our resistance into motion and so humans feel especially close to their dogs. While this explanation may at first seem technical and clinically cold, in truth adopting an “energy theory” of emotion and realizing that nature is itself constructed in accordance with emotion, can serve to open our eyes to the amazing magic by which nature (and our dog) works.

Related posts:

1. Why Do Dogs Do Everything in a Circle?
2. Why Do Dogs Chew Up Squeaky Toys?
3. Why Do Good Dogs Do Bad Things?