How Dogs Think (per Lileks)

I've been saving this up for a slow news day... and since Morsch doesn't have his Tuesday post up yet (it's 11:06 AM and counting), this seems like a good time. Since the dawn of time (probably), man has wondered whether dogs think, and what they think about.

Well here's the answer, and it's as lame and predictable as only James Lileks can be.

Tuesday, April 6th

Farm life for a dog must have rocked. There was so much territory to call your own, big animals to bully, an amazing array of smells,

Up until here I was fully supportive of his premise - that dogs like it on the farm. They probably do, until they're taken out into the back field and shot.

a pack with an awesome cave that was warm in winter

Woah now! We're right into the mind of the dog here. I mean, a "pack" with a "cave"? Why, that must be how dogs think of our FAMILY and our HOUSE!

and had food in a hot-small-cave and a cold-small-cave, and chickens.

And that must be how they think of our OVEN and our FRIDGE! Because of course a dog wouldn't know those words, because it isn't as smart as we humans... although it knows words like "pack" and "cave." So dogs know words, but just not as many as we do. I think. And isn't it just hilarious how he sticks "and chickens" on the end - it's so random! Just like a dog would think!

Like having your own personal entourage of ninnies who would freak the moment you walked up and said HEY.

I don't get what he means. Is he talking about the chickens? Are we still inside the dog's mind - because how does it know "ninnies" but not "oven"?

It had its bad side – the hired man who lived in the stranger-cave, pack but not-pack;

The "hired man"? What kind of farm is this? A great twist to this little story would have been that the guy is actually a slave, and the dog struggles to understand what makes the slave different from the master. And why is this hired man a "bad side" of farm life - I mean, he's "pack"... but wait, he's also "not pack"! Whatever the heck that means.

the big loud machines that did not listen to a thing you said at all, the cars on the highway at the end of the road that had the cheek to come towards your territory, and then go away pretending you hadn’t driven them away.

Ah, the age-old battle between animal and machine. How come the dog thinks of an oven as an inanimate "hot-small-cave" but knows what a car is and thinks it has a personality?

And the horses, the stupid horses.

Ah, the age-old battle between dog and horse.

But there was the river, the rich aromatic river; the woods, endless and fragrant; the joy of running out at dawn with the whole day ahead and slops at the end of it.

If there's a word worse than "scraps," it's "slops." Now, I don't know how dogs think. I won't even pretend to. Maybe they think in pictures, maybe they just have feelings and urges. But they certainly don't think in this adorable slow-witted semi-human fashion. That's trite, cliche and lazy. In other words, that's Lileks.