This being the title of a book by Marc Bekoff that caught The Equuschick's eye at the library, cute polar bears being on the cover and everything. And the title caught her fancy, as it is a great philosophy of The Equuschick's that to simply watch an animal with fully absorbed attention, "to mind" an animal, if you will, is an unappreciated and underpracticed activity with rewards of education, experience, and understanding far beyond expectation.

She did not originally intend to check it out however, but only to browse the pages while she waited for her sister to get off work. The Equuschick is fond of animals and believes their intelligence and awareness of what goes on around them to be vastly underestimated, but she is suspicious of the sort of book with a forward by Jane Goodall and reviews on the back proclaiming evolutionary dogma.

But being the sort of person she is, The Equuschick started the introduction and got so interested she pulled out paper and pen started taking the sort of notes The Equuschick takes. These vary from the challenging and probing (because writing her own challenges down argumentatively and responding in kind is the only way she can come to a conclusion on anything) or approving and thoughtful, or sarcastically disdainful when she encounters the Just Plain Silly.

For instance, Jane Goodall provided this little gem, referring to the hunting habits of the Indian tribes of North America, which she seems to approve of.
..."They referred to them as Brothers and Sisters." (They being the animals, of course.) "They hunted for food, but they offered up a prayer of thanks to an animal they had killed. The animals lived wild and free before their death."

The Equuschick, not knowing where to start, has bullet pointed her thoughts.

*In two sentences Jane, you have equated animals with human family members and made known your approval for the hunting, killing, and eating of a brother or sister, provided that after they're dead you say thank-you politely. How bizarre.

*"Wild and free" is, and always has been, Loopy Liberalese for "Half-starved, diseased, and inbred, probably injured, and definitely exposed to the elements in all kinds of weather." How very humane.

The Equuschick is compelled to note that here Jane Goodall probably had in mind the confined and unsanitary conditions that some (but not all) large-scale farmers provide for the animals raised for food. Let us not forget that there is a happy medium to be found between "Wild and Free" and "Confined to a pen so small they cannot move and have to stand in their own waste." But, The Equuschick repeats, she recognizes exceptions and she means no disrespect to any farmers.



But Jane Goodall's rare gems of utter nonsense came after a sentence which caught The Equuschick's true attention.

"As he (the author) observes different animal species-and he has had firsthand experience with many- Marc is continually asking himself: what would it BE like to be this coyote, this wolf, this dog?"

And The Equuschick must confess, she has done this herself. She does it every day, and she asks herself this question deliberately and passionately, with great interest. She goes to aquariums and sits down and watches the dolphins, and there are things she wants to know. What is it like to live in a dolphin's world? What is it like to be a dolphin? What do they experience, how much do they understand, and how do they learn to understand it?

It sounds rather silly admittedly, but The Equuschick could spend a happy half-hour in front of a goldfish bowl "minding" the goldfish. What does a goldfish see? How do they see it? In what colours? She wants to KNOW.

When she trains her horse, her dog, her goal always is to see things from their own point of view. You cannot train an animal when you do not see their point of view, and it is impossible to train an animal if you do not even acknowledge that they have one.


And that, you see, is the crux of the issue, and why The Equuschick feels that "minding" an animal is more than just an activity for animal lovers. To learn to mind an animal, you must learn to see things from another point of view. You must admit that such a thing exists. You must step outside yourself and admit the possibility that there could be another opinion. You must take yourself outside of self (always a good character exercise) and ask "What if I wasn't me, and I was the dog instead?"
And it may sound silly, and in some cases, the answer itself may be irrelevant. (It doesn't matter that the dog doesn't like his medicine, he must take it.) But the answer has never been the issue, the important thing is to learn to ask the question.

It is true that science can never empirically prove the range of intelligence, emotion, or awareness of any animal, but it is also true that it has never been proved, or can ever be proved, that they don't have any at all. The intelligence, emotions, opinions, or awareness or lack thereof, of any animal has never been within the range of empirical science.

To be frank with the readers, neither has the intelligence or emotion of my severely retarded sister. Yet no one who has spent an an hour "minding" Angel, with a mind all ready open to the possibility of a point of view without a voice, can doubt that she loves and laughs with the best of them.


If you believe that the only points of view that exist are those spoken in your own tongue, you are a very small-minded person indeed. Step outside yourself please, and meet the world.