dogs

69:7.4The dog was the first an­i­mal to be do­mes­ti­cated, and the dif­fi­cult ex­pe­ri­ence of tam­ing it be­gan when a cer­tain dog, af­ter fol­low­ing a hunter around all day, ac­tu­ally went home with him. For ages dogs were used for food, hunt­ing, trans­porta­tion, and com­pan­ion­ship. At first dogs only howled, but later on they learned to bark. The dog’s keen sense of smell led to the no­tion it could see spir­its, and thus arose the dog-fe­tish cults. The em­ploy­ment of watch­dogs made it first pos­si­ble for the whole clan to sleep at night. It then be­came the cus­tom to em­ploy watch­dogs to pro­tect the home against spir­its as well as ma­te­rial en­e­mies. When the dog barked, man or beast ap­proached, but when the dog howled, spir­its were near. Even now many still be­lieve that a dog’s howl­ing at night be­to­kens death.

76:2.7The death of Abel be­came known to his par­ents when his dogs brought the flocks home with­out their mas­ter. To Adam and Eve, Cain was fast be­com­ing the grim re­minder of their folly, and they en­cour­aged him in his de­ci­sion to leave the gar­den.

130:2.8That af­ter­noon Je­sus and Ga­nid had both en­joyed play­ing with a very in­tel­li­gent shep­herd dog, and Ga­nid wanted to know whether the dog had a soul, whether it had a will, and in re­sponse to his ques­tions Je­sus said: “The dog has a mind which can know ma­te­rial man, his mas­ter, but can­not know God, who is spirit; there­fore the dog does not pos­sess a spir­i­tual na­ture and can­not en­joy a spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence. The dog may have a will de­rived from na­ture and aug­mented by train­ing, but such a power of mind is not a spir­i­tual force, nei­ther is it com­pa­ra­ble to the hu­man will, inas­much as it is not re­flec­tive—it is not the re­sult of dis­crim­i­nat­ing higher and moral mean­ings or choos­ing spir­i­tual and eter­nal val­ues. It is the pos­ses­sion of such pow­ers of spir­i­tual dis­crim­i­na­tion and truth choos­ing that makes mor­tal man a moral be­ing, a crea­ture en­dowed with the at­tri­butes of spir­i­tual re­spon­si­bil­ity and the po­ten­tial of eter­nal sur­vival.” Je­sus went on to ex­plain that it is the ab­sence of such men­tal pow­ers in the an­i­mal which makes it for­ever im­pos­si­ble for the an­i­mal world to de­velop lan­guage in time or to ex­pe­ri­ence any­thing equiv­a­lent to per­son­al­ity sur­vival in eter­nity. As a re­sult of this day’s in­struc­tion Ga­nid never again en­ter­tained be­lief in the trans­mi­gra­tion of the souls of men into the bod­ies of an­i­mals.

151:6.6As the swine herders rushed into the vil­lage to spread the news of the tam­ing of the lu­natic, the dogs charged upon a small and un­tended herd of about thirty swine and drove most of them over a precipice into the sea. And it was this in­ci­den­tal oc­cur­rence, in con­nec­tion with the pres­ence of Je­sus and the sup­posed mirac­u­lous cur­ing of the lu­natic, that gave ori­gin to the leg­end that Je­sus had cured Amos by cast­ing a le­gion of dev­ils out of him, and that these dev­ils had en­tered into the herd of swine, caus­ing them forth­with to rush head­long to their de­struc­tion in the sea be­low. Be­fore the day was over, this episode was pub­lished abroad by the swine ten­ders, and the whole vil­lage be­lieved it. Amos most cer­tainly be­lieved this story; he saw the swine tum­bling over the brow of the hill shortly af­ter his trou­bled mind had qui­eted down, and he al­ways be­lieved that they car­ried with them the very evil spir­its which had so long tor­mented and af­flicted him. And this had a good deal to do with the per­ma­nency of his cure. It is equally true that all of Je­sus’ apos­tles (save Thomas) be­lieved that the episode of the swine was di­rectly con­nected with the cure of Amos.

87:6.11Ghosts were sup­posed to be dis­turbed and fright­ened by noise; shout­ing, bells, and drums drove them away from the liv­ing; and these an­cient meth­ods are still in vogue at “wakes” for the dead. Foul-smelling con­coc­tions were uti­lized to ban­ish un­wel­come spir­its. Hideous im­ages of the spir­its were con­structed so that they would flee in haste when they be­held them­selves. It was be­lieved that dogs could de­tect the ap­proach of ghosts, and that they gave warn­ing by howl­ing; that cocks would crow when they were near. The use of a cock as a weather vane is in per­pet­u­a­tion of this su­per­sti­tion.

156:1.5Then came for­ward Si­mon Ze­lo­tes to re­mon­strate with No­rana. Said Si­mon: “Woman, you are a Greek-speak­ing gen­tile. It is not right that you should ex­pect the Mas­ter to take the bread in­tended for the chil­dren of the fa­vored house­hold and cast it to the dogs.” But No­rana re­fused to take of­fense at Si­mon’s thrust. She replied only: “Yes, teacher, I un­der­stand your words. I am only a dog in the eyes of the Jews, but as con­cerns your Mas­ter, I am a be­liev­ing dog. I am de­ter­mined that he shall see my daugh­ter, for I am per­suaded that, if he shall but look upon her, he will heal her. And even you, my good man, would not dare to de­prive the dogs of the priv­i­lege of ob­tain­ing the crumbs which chance to fall from the chil­dren’s ta­ble.”

81:2.11Most of the an­i­mals best suited to do­mes­ti­ca­tion were found in Asia, es­pe­cially in the cen­tral to south­west re­gions. This was one rea­son why civ­i­liza­tion pro­gressed faster in that lo­cal­ity than in other parts of the world. Many of these an­i­mals had been twice be­fore do­mes­ti­cated, and in the And­ite age they were re­tamed once again. But the dog had re­mained with the hunters ever since be­ing adopted by the blue man long, long be­fore.

66:5.5Sev­eral types of use­ful an­i­mals, now ex­tinct, were tamed, to­gether with some that have con­tin­ued as do­mes­ti­cated an­i­mals to the pres­ent day. Man had long lived with the dog, and the blue man had al­ready been suc­cess­ful in tam­ing the ele­phant. The cow was so im­proved by care­ful breed­ing as to be­come a valu­able source of food; but­ter and cheese be­came com­mon ar­ti­cles of hu­man diet. Men were taught to use oxen for bur­den bear­ing, but the horse was not do­mes­ti­cated un­til a later date. The mem­bers of this corps first taught men to use the wheel for the fa­cil­i­ta­tion of trac­tion.

89:5.16Fi­nally an­i­mal sub­sti­tutes came into gen­eral use for sac­ri­fi­cial pur­poses, and even among the more back­ward tribes dog-eat­ing greatly re­duced man-eat­ing. The dog was the first do­mes­ti­cated an­i­mal and was held in high es­teem both as such and as food.

61:2.7Var­i­ous groups of mam­mals had their ori­gin in a unique an­i­mal now ex­tinct. This car­niv­o­rous crea­ture was some­thing of a cross be­tween a cat and a seal; it could live on land or in wa­ter and was highly in­tel­li­gent and very ac­tive. In Eu­rope the an­ces­tor of the ca­nine fam­ily evolved, soon giv­ing rise to many species of small dogs. About the same time the gnaw­ing ro­dents, in­clud­ing beavers, squir­rels, go­phers, mice, and rab­bits, ap­peared and soon be­came a no­table form of life, very lit­tle change hav­ing since oc­curred in this fam­ily. The later de­posits of this pe­riod con­tain the fos­sil re­mains of dogs, cats, coons, and weasels in an­ces­tral form.

61:3.13The dog fam­ily was rep­re­sented by sev­eral groups, no­tably wolves and foxes; the cat tribe, by pan­thers and large saber-toothed tigers, the lat­ter first evolv­ing in North Amer­ica. The mod­ern cat and dog fam­i­lies in­creased in num­bers all over the world. Wea­sels, martens, ot­ters, and rac­coons thrived and de­vel­oped through­out the north­ern lat­i­tudes.

61:5.7These first two ice in­va­sions were not ex­ten­sive in Eura­sia. Dur­ing these early epochs of the ice age North Amer­ica was over­run with mastodons, woolly mam­moths, horses, camels, deer, musk oxen, bi­son, ground sloths, gi­ant beavers, saber-toothed tigers, sloths as large as ele­phants, and many groups of the cat and dog fam­i­lies. But from this time for­ward they were rapidly re­duced in num­bers by the in­creas­ing cold of the glacial pe­riod. To­ward the close of the ice age the ma­jor­ity of these an­i­mal species were ex­tinct in North Amer­ica.

140:3.18“Dis­cern the truth clearly; live the righ­teous life fear­lessly; and so shall you be my apos­tles and my Fa­ther’s am­bas­sadors. You have heard it said: ‘If the blind lead the blind, they both shall fall into the pit.’ If you would guide oth­ers into the king­dom, you must your­selves walk in the clear light of liv­ing truth. In all the busi­ness of the king­dom I ex­hort you to show just judg­ment and keen wis­dom. Pre­sent not that which is holy to dogs, nei­ther cast your pearls be­fore swine, lest they tram­ple your gems un­der foot and turn to rend you.

88:1.4If an an­i­mal ate hu­man flesh, it be­came a fe­tish. In this way the dog came to be the sa­cred an­i­mal of the Parsees. If the fe­tish is an an­i­mal and the ghost is per­ma­nently res­i­dent therein, then fet­ish­ism may im­pinge on rein­car­na­tion. In many ways the sav­ages en­vied the an­i­mals; they did not feel su­pe­rior to them and were of­ten named af­ter their fa­vorite beasts.

84:3.10De­creas­ing prim­i­tive war­fare greatly less­ened the dis­par­ity be­tween the di­vi­sion of la­bor based on sex. But women still had to do the real work while men did picket duty. No camp or vil­lage could be left un­guarded day or night, but even this task was al­le­vi­ated by the do­mes­ti­ca­tion of the dog. In gen­eral, the com­ing of agri­cul­ture has en­hanced woman’s pres­tige and so­cial stand­ing; at least this was true up to the time man him­self turned agri­cul­tur­ist. And as soon as man ad­dressed him­self to the till­ing of the soil, there im­me­di­ately en­sued great im­prove­ment in meth­ods of agri­cul­ture, ex­tend­ing on down through suc­ces­sive gen­er­a­tions. In hunt­ing and war man had learned the value of or­ga­ni­za­tion, and he in­tro­duced these tech­niques into in­dus­try and later, when tak­ing over much of woman’s work, greatly im­proved on her loose meth­ods of la­bor.