The movie musical Doctor Doolittle opens with Rex Harrison singing, “If I Could Talk to the Animals.” He sings about how wonderful it would be if he could effectively communicate with all animals, each in its own language:
If I conferred with our furry friends, man to animal,
Think of the amazing repartee.
If I could walk with the animals, talk with the animals,
Grunt and squeak and squawk with the animals,
And they could squeak and squawk and speak and talk to us!
Anyone with a companion animal has undoubtedly wished this too. I know I’ve spent hours talking to my dogs over the years. Sometimes I just needed someone to listen to me, other times I wished they could talk back. Of course there are times I am thankful they cannot, but for the most part I wish they could. More precisely, I wish I could understand what they are saying.
When one of our dogs is sick or injured, we wish he or she could tell us exactly what is wrong. When one of them has surgery we wish we would explain what happened. When our dog Chandler was being treated for cancer, all I could do was hold him gently, tell him I loved him and just hope he understood we were doing everything we could to help him. In fact, when he was first diagnosed with cancer, I held him and told him that if it ever got to be too hard for him, all he had to do was let me know. Eight weeks later he told me so, and that was that. Sometimes we can understand each other quite clearly.
Me and Chandler in 2009, the day before he told me.
Everyone with a companion animal can understand this. Anyone who spends enough time around an animal will tell you that eventually you learn to interpret what the animal is saying. We do our best to understand what the animal is trying to communicate. But what of the millions of animals help in captivity and tortured wanting nothing more that to be free? What would they tell us? What would a cow who is repeatedly forcibly impregnated only to have her calves stolen from her moments after birth and then hooked to a milking machine say? We can guess it would be no different than what a human woman would say in the same situation. Moreover, we would all be outraged.
If we could understand what animals are telling us, we would no longer be able to see them as objects designed solely for human use. We would have to see them as individuals. As human beings, we all wish to live our lives free from harm. We do not want to be used solely for another’s pleasure without our consent. In human societies around the world, we construct laws that criminalize the non-consensual use and exploitation of other humans. Rape, slavery, and murder are illegal virtually everywhere in the world today. This must be the default position for all living beings. The animals are speaking to us, but until we can understand them, we must err on the side of compassion, drawing on our collective sense of justice, and standing up for their rights as individuals.
Doctor Doolittle was on the right track. However, it is really about communicating with the animals, not just talking to them. We can all talk to them. The trick is listening to and paying attention to what they are saying back to us.
