“Thanks to their DNA, dogs are usually obsessive-compulsive. Obsessively loving and compulsively forgiving. Another reason I should be more like my dog.”
—Jay Griffith
Unlike our past two rescue dogs, which were puppies, Camino, was about a year old and had been in four foster homes before landing permanently with us. We were told she came from a reservation in New Mexico. We’ve been told that she looks like a “rez dog.”
Nine months ago, when we took Camino in, she was extremely skittish and skinny. Rib-showing skinny. Skittish around flags, intersection crossing beeps, and other dogs, people—most everything. Fortunately, her ribs are no longer showing and she now seems well-adjusted and happy.
A DNA test revealed that she is 75% Border Collie, 12.5% Kelpie (a rare Australian herding dog), and 12.5% Super Mutt.
We have three hens in a large enclosure, and Camino’s DNA drives her to distraction in circling them endlessly. She and I will return from a several-hour trail run, I will feed her, and she will not finish eating before she starts that little short, fast-stepping gate toward the chickens. She becomes completely tuned in to them.
When I play with her in the backyard, some thirty feet from where the chickens are, she often does the same thing. Minutes after we begin playing, she catches sight of them and is soon doing her collie trot to them. Then round and round she goes. She’ll run fast around the enclosure, then stop and stare. Over and over.
Her behavior has made me consider my own. There are some foods that I feel driven to obsess about, circle, and then eat. Get me a loaf of high-quality, freshly-baked bread, add generous amounts of butter, and I can eat nearly all of it in one sitting.
So, while I can be entertained, dismayed, and even frustrated at times by Camino’s driven behavior, I must admit to my own obsessions. Which helps me have grace for others who do what seems, inexplicable things. Even things that move beyond amusing or annoying into the frightening and appalling.
Maybe it’s the accumulation from years of discovering my own wrong judgments and assumptions that makes me reluctant to jump with certainty and enthusiasm into any political party. Or to hold most of my beliefs too tightly. Like my dog, Camino, there are reasonable reasons why people think, feel, and do what they think, feel, and do.
We all have a long history manifesting through our DNA our chosen and driven responses to the world. This should give us pause when unequivocally choosing sides to support or beliefs to believe. And it should engender greater empathy for those who appear driven by their DNA to do differently than we would.
