Inside a man or woman who owns a service dog is a hidden dog; inside that dog is another and another—dogs reaching all the way back to the Basenji and the Shar-Pei. Further in is a wolf and inside that wolf a soul of spine and desire.
Who has time for Groucho Mark? “Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.” Funny old man. But inside a dog is where reality weights itself.
Inside a dog is where whatever passes for instinct has its last chance.
Walk uphill in the rain as Guiding Eyes Corky and I did one afternoon in late March 1995. We were in Northern California walking the grounds of an old estate. The woods smelled like bay leaves. Somewhere before us among the trees were many peacocks. Sometimes they screamed—a scream that drew a circle around us mammals. We stopped in our tracks. Corky scented the air and I listened to my heart beating. “Who has time for church or science?” I thought. The peacock made a sound so prehistoric my body wanted only to run.
My body wanted to run but the dog inside the dog stayed put. The dog beside me had immeasurable and uncountable hearts. Corky said with her whole being, “let’s keep going.” And we did. We walked up a hill and a warm rain fell and from somewhere not too far off I heard the peacocks running in dead leaves.
The dog inside us is all former dogs—old survivors. Call this epigenetics. Call me romantic. But by a year “in” with Corky I saw how inherited security belongs to us.
You may be in love with the dog beside you, but I swear you’re in love with ten thousand dogs who have weathered countless storms and heard a million human cries.
Planet of the Blind 