On Non Human Heroes: Captive Associations
Barbra Zuck Locker, PhD `
Dogs… At first I thought they would be blamed…
Plague Dogs
When It first began I feared it…
Plague Dogs…
It was the name of an animated movie
too upsetting to watch.
Scenes of animal cruelty and abuse:
Two dogs escape from a science lab where they have been experimented with and treated badly.
They face horrific dangers in order to survive in the world as
their escape prompts a dog hunt.
They are wanted….
thought to be carriers of the bubonic plague.
Something about that in my mind…Camus’s novel?
That was rats.
Rats not dogs.
But, what happened to the dogs?
Did they banish the dogs?
Exterminate them?
I remember that in the end the sound of a barking dog meant that life was returning…
I imagine scenarios of fleeing the city with my dog,
Gussie.
See myself carrying her hidden in my backpack.
Paying off mysterious armed guards
chastising myself for every missed work out as I feel her weight against me
and the need to be quick
protect her
escape…
In this plague
dogs are the heroes.
Shelters, are no longer overrun with the abandoned and unfed but
emptied by the lonely and homebound looking for companions.
The nonhuman kind
Not a domestic pet to found to foster or adopt on the eastern seaboard.
*
I am on the phone with my patient who is having a panic attack.
It is so bad that his wife is on with us. Almost at the once we both say:
“Quick, get Aggie, put her in his lap”.
He is indeed calmed.
His breathing slows and his heart rate reduces.
He calls Aggie his life saver.
Life Saver.
These last weeks have been all about the dogs.
Dogs as life savers.
Not a day goes by without someone saying, something like:
“And of course, Gunther is here too and that is what is getting us through it. “
“We are up in the country, we escaped the city and I think the whole family would go crazy if Ruby were not here with us playing outside and really enjoying herself. She binds us all together.”
“Buddy is having a blast…he has never been happier with everyone home and the fact that we are all together here.”
“We decided it was the best time to get the new puppy…now that we are all at home.”
“ I am still grieving…there will never be another dog like Scout. If anyone told me that I would have a new pup now, I would not believe it. But I’ve a 12 year old boy home from school. This pup is a life saver.”
Life Saver.
Barbra Zuck Locker, PhD, ABPP is assistant clinical professor, clinical consultant and member of the Executive Committee at the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, and is on the faculty of the National Institute for the Psychotherapies. Her research interests include psychoanalysis and the non-human environment and the human-animal bond. She is in private practice in New York City.