After a lifetime of affectionate regard for dogs and many years of close observation and reflection, I have reached the conclusion that dogs feel more than I do (I am not prepared to speak for other people). They feel more, and they feel more purely and more intensely.

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

Categorized in : Friendship Dog Reflection

Dogs never lie about love. by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

Dogs never lie about love.

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

dog friendship lying

Animals are, like us, endangered species on an endangered planet, and we are the ones who are endangering them, it, and ourselves. They are innocent sufferers in a hell of our making.

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

innocent hell animal

Perhaps one central reason for loving dogs is that they take us away from this obsession with ourselves. When our thoughts start to go in circles, and we seem unable to break away, wondering what horrible event the future holds for us, the dog opens a window into the delight of the moment.

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

circles events dog

Dogs love us not only because we feed them, walk them, or groom them, or protect them, but because we are fun. How astonishing!

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

protect dog fun

Animals love and suffer, cry and laugh; their hearts rise up in anticipation and fall in despair...they feel.

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

heart animal fall

We need cats to need us. It unnerves us that they do not. However, if they do not need us, they nonetheless seem to love us.

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

cat seems needs

Love for a dog during childhood is one of the deepest and purest emotions we are ever likely to have, and it remains with us for the rest of our lives. For some people, their first experience with love is with a dog. The fact that the dog returns the love so fiercely, so openly, so unambivalently, is for many children a unique and lasting experience.

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

unique dog children

Hardly any animal can look as deeply disappointed as a dog to who... by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

Hardly any animal can look as deeply disappointed as a dog to whom one says "no."

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

dog animal funny

Every time I told my cocker spaniel, Taffy, my very first dog, that we were going for a walk, she would launch into a celebratory dance that ended with her racing around the room, always clockwise, and faster and faster, as if her joy could not be possibly contained. Even as a young boy I knew that hardly any creature could express joy so vividly as a dog.

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

family dog boys

We might miss the sign or we may be unable to read the expression, but it is almost a contradiction in terms to say that a dog feels something but does not show it. What a dog feels, a dog shows, and, conversely, what a dog shows, a dog actually does feel.

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

expression dog missing

The curiosity of cats is, like their affection, of a purity and intensity rarely seen in humans. We would be jaded when faced with the fiftieth paper bag. Not so our cats.

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

cat curiosity would-be

Questers of the truth, that’s who dogs are; seekers after the invisible scent of another being’s authentic core.

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

dog motivational inspirational

Many people have heard the remarkable example of devotion involving a Skye terrier dog who worked for a Scottish shepherd named Old Jock. In 1858, the day after Jock was buried (with almost nobody present to mourn him except his shaggy dog) in the churchyard at Greyfriars Abbey in Edinburgh, Bobby was found sleeping on his master's grave, where he continued to sleep every night for fourteen years.

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

dog sleep friendship

What struck me whenever I visited a farm was how much more sophisticated was the life the animals were capable of living than was assumed by those exploiting them. The more we are willing to see about their lives, the more we will see. Humans seem to take perverse pleasure in attributing stupidity to animals when it is almost always entirely a question of human ignorance.

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

stupidity ignorance animal