Kaze and Annecy

The holidays always bring sort of a peace around both the humans and the canines. We always say “I love this time of year” or “I cannot wait for the holiday time” While i do believe the dogs have “emotions” i do not think they understand time in the sense of the year like they can in the sense of the day. What i mean is that you frequently see Fido get really excited everyday around a certain “time” which almost insinuates that your dog can tell what time of day it is. One of our dogs Max is always sitting by the window at the front of the house around 4:30pm on Tuesdays when i’m home. I’m sure he does it when i’m not home too, but i see it on my day off, he sits and waits anytime between 4:20-4:40 because that’s when my significant other comes home from work. If there is a disruption in the schedule then he waits it out till 5 or so and eventually gives up. While Max has a concept of “time” for the day or the routine, dogs do not appear to be capable of having a concept of “time” for the year. Maybe because it doesn’t happen frequently enough, or within a close enough proximity of the other trials for learning to actually take place, but i have never seen my dogs get thoroughly excited on thanksgiving weekend when we always put the tree up or go crazy waiting to open their presents Christmas morning.

A dogs sense of “time” is what distinguishes how they live, and why so many dogs can be rehabilitated even after experiencing traumatic events in their lives. A dogs sense of time is what they are experiencing right now, in this very moment. For the kids at Allynwood this frame of mind is exactly what they need to follow, living in the moment a day at a time. Everyone forms behavior patterns, human and canine, from certain repetitive events in their lives, but the overall sense of “time” is what allows us to live either care free day or day or burdened by our haunts from the past and our fears of the future.