Soul of a Dog: Reflections on the Spirits of the Animals of Bedlam Farm Book

I love it when liberal arts city folk move to the country, acquire animals, discover love, and then feel the urge to get philosophical about it all. The books they write are wonderful.

In this case, the deep question at the root of the book is: Do animals have souls? Katz has obviously done some of his own soul-searching on the subject. He ponders what it would mean for animals to have souls: he ponders why the question matters so much to some people. In the end, his conclusion is an intriguing one: Animals either have souls, or don't, independent of how much human angst is spent on the subject. Animals are what they are.

This is a much stronger conclusion than I was hoping for. I was worried he was going to conclude for or against souls definitively. Which was worrisome to me, as I can't recall any quantitative, scientific study proving humans have souls, and there's certainly a high degree of debate about at what point in development humans are issued souls.

On one hand, this is an extremely interesting debate. It we take it as read that humans have souls, it makes sense that other animals would as well. There are very few things, evolutionarily, that separate us from non-human animals.

On the other hand, this is really a question of faith. I believe that I, and all humans, have a soul. I can't prove this, any more that I can prove love exists. On this basis, and this basis alone, I believe that other creatures have souls. I'm especially sure of mammals and birds. I don't know where the line is. Do frogs have souls? Or snakes or lobsters or beetles? What about tuna? Do cephalods have souls? What if I can only recognize souledness in animals that think relatively like me, and cephalopods have them, they're just too alien to me for me to understand?

With all that in mind, I can forgive the length to which Katz thrashes around philosophically. It's a very deep question. And it touches on the question of animal intelligence. What frustrated me is his immovably anthropocentric viewpoint. At several points, he concludes that we need animals to have souls more than they themselves need to have souls. And that animals "don't think like us" and so may not have souls.

Even more frustratingly, this line of thinking got a Disney song stuck in my head (always the mature response to a philosophical debate): "You think the only people who are people, are the people who look and think like you." Just because they don't think like us, doesn't mean they don't have souls.

He also talks about his dogs "becoming the dogs [he] needed them to be." I'm sure to some point that's true, but it's also a dangerously egocentric way to think. Dogs aren't blank slates when they come to us. They're hard-wired for aspects of their personality and intelligence, and, if I'm to be believed, they already have a soul, regardless of who owns then or how they're treated.

The other part of this book that required some deep thinking on my part was his discussion of the morality of our interaction with pets. He frequently disparages people who treat dogs like children or treat them "better than humans." I will agree that treating dogs (or any animal) like human children is dangerous, unhealthy, and unfair to both human children and the animals.

But the "treating dogs better than humans" link smacks of the argument "Why are we spending all this money on dogs when there are hungry humans?" implying that we can take care of the animals only once we've saved all the people. He brings this up as he's discussing the dog rescue movement, snidely writing that it "says something" about our society that there's no parallel rescue network for humans.

To counter the last argument first, there are rescue networks for humans. All sorts of government programs, church outreach programs, non-profits, you name it. It's just that, logistically, it's way easier to rescue a dog, so the networks aren't as well meshed together. You don't have to worry about what the dog wants, for instance. It's much easier to take a dog away from bad owners than it is to take a child away from bad parents, which is as it should be. It's also much easier to care for a dog once you have it than it is to care for a baby, a child, a teen, an adult, or a family.

This book made me think very deeply. It made me laugh, and cry, and while I didn't agree with everything he said, I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, and will seek out some of the sources he references.