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Susan Vonder Heide's avatar

Jenny, I'm so sorry that you have been going through all of this. I have been praying for you and Danny.

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Steve Elliott's avatar

Thanks for your very interesting and amusing article. I think you have to be careful interpreting the behavior of dogs (or actually any animal) in human terms because they are not human and there may be other, more doggy, explanations for what they do. There may even be other human interpretations of Bo's behavior when she let the big male dog catch up and get the ball. Maybe she wanted him to get the ball because that way it was more fun. She was playing. We see something like that in our two dogs. Both quite young and they like to play. I'm not saying that's right but I don't think you should jump to the conclusion that it was about male privilege. There are other explanations.

My wife and I run a smallholding in England and we have livestock and poultry and I'm sure we are often guilty of placing animal behaviour in human terms. But we try not to. In fact we have a hen who thinks she's human. We live out in the sticks and in the summer all the doors are open. The hen often comes in through one door, walks through the house and out the other door and sits down next to us on the patio chucking away like she's talking to us.

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