He reproduced himself with so much humble objectivity, with the unquestioning, matter of fact interest of a dog who sees himself in a mirror and thinks: there's another dog.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I've seen a look in dogs' eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts.
Why does watching a dog be a dog fill one with happiness?
Some statements concern the conscious states of the animal, what he is to himself as an inner life; others concern his original and acquired ways of response, his behavior, what he is an outside observer.
Does not the gratitude of the dog put to shame any man who is ungrateful to his benefactors?
When the dog looks at you, the dog is not thinking what kind of a person you are. The dog is not judging you.
For years that may mean imitation. Then, one day, it is like a door opening, and a new thought comes in. Why not try this instead. Suddenly he is doing something original, almost in spite of himself.
You can look at your dog and see that it's thinking and has strong feelings. And if it does, so do wolves. And if wolves do, so do elephants. People aren't the only beings that think and feel.
One of the magical things about these anthropomorphic animal movies is that we can take things that are so common in our own world that we deal with, like the DMV, or moving to a new city, or our family, and show you a mirror image of those things, reflected in a whole new way. That's why animals are great.
The dog, on the other hand, has few or no ideas because his brain acts in coarse fashion and because there are few connections with each single process.
Man is a make-believe animal: he is never so truly himself as when he is acting a part.