Adam's Task

 

 

I have just finished reading Adam's Task by Vicki Hearne. Weird book. It is not a new book, having been originally published in 1982, but I had never read it before. Ms. Hearne is multifaceted (as I guess most people really are) and can't decide in this book whether she is a philosopher, a psychologist, a poet, a novelist, a college professor or an animal trainer. She is all of those things really but her real love is being an animal trainer. It is the thesis of her book that domesticated animals, dogs and horses at least have the ability to actually "converse" with humans if the humans are sharp enough to catch it. She also opines that dogs and horses have a "sense of morality" or at least a sense of what fits in the human social scene.

As example, she cites Salty, a bird dog she obedience trained. After some leash training she taught Salty, with some difficulty, to "sit" and said that she could see in the dog's bearing and posture the instant at which Salty recognized the relationship between the spoken word "sit" and the action which Vicki wanted. Vicki was quite surprised when several days later Salty started training Vicki. When Salty was hungry she would go to her food dish and "sit" in the exact posture that she had been taught. The info transfer between Salty and Vicki had just become bilateral. Vicki terms this "conversation" and says that most dog owners and even some dog trainers never spot the moment when the dog or horse starts training the trainer. Vicki says that nearly all dogs and horses reach this point rather quickly.

Vicki has a college degree and recounts the tendancy of zoology, philosophy, psychology and sociology professors to forbid their students a tendancy toward anthropomorphism and consider the attribution of human traits to animals a cardinal intellectual sin. Vicki refuses to accept this view and believes that dogs and horses at least not only share the emotions of love, hate, fear,greed, regret and others just like humans but also that dogs and horses at least have a rather well defined sense of "morality" or at least a sense "of what fits in the human social scene". She stresses that dogs not only consider themselves to be a part of the human social scene but often have a much more rigidly defined sense of "moral fit" than their owners have.

A tamed wolf , Vicki writes, can never be trained to be a reliable police K9 dog. If you take a well trained German Shepherd K9 dog into say the scene of a liquor store robbery you can be assured that the K9 dog will not attack the store owner or worker or other police people uniformed or not or witness customers in the store. The dog instantly recognizes that these people are not the culprit and the dog will not attack them because it can tell by the reaction of the people there that these people "fit" in the social scene. A wolf, however , does not know what constitutes a "fitting human scene" and does not consider itself part of that human scene and it may very well attack the store clerk or fellow cop.

Vicki claims that dogs and horses if they have some training become far more observant of humans than humans are of them. They instantly recognize small changes in stance, arm position, eyebrow slant, mouth position and probably differences in odors that we cannot even understand much less detect. She cites the story of "Clever Hans", a horse in Germany. Hans' owner could say, "Hans, what is 2 plus 3?" and Hans would place his hoof on the card bearing a printed 5----but only if his owner was in sight. Put a wall between Hans and his owner and Hans lost his mathematical ability. It was pretty conclusively proven that Hans was detecting some sign from the owner when the horse looked at the letter five that observing humans could not detect. The owner was accused of being part of the scam until it was found that Hans would do his trick on some occasions when a disinterested party asked the question---so the clue must have been unconscious.

The book is replete with philosophical conclusions and literary allusions---some of which--no, most of which were over my head. Ms. Hearne is a very well read and erudite woman. She is very emphatic and sure of her conclusions--perhaps a little too sure, but I enjoyed reading it. I too am one of those who believe that dogs and horses have human-like emotions and a sense of morality. Zoologists say animals do not feel guilt because that implies a knowledge of what is right and what is wrong and dogs don't have that. Nonsense! When Rommel got in the flour sack and spread flour all over the kitchen I did not have to see the flour to know that he had done something that both he and I considered to be immoral--or at least not to fit within the bounds of the social contract between us. All I had to do was look at his face and his body posture and I knew damn well that he had done something wrong before I ever saw the flour.

Now I am going to read The Druids by Peter Berresford Ellis. He must be a descendant of the General Berresford that commanded the British troops at the Battle of Albuera in the Peninsular War---otherwise why would he have that middle name.

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