Tag: dog

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Happy Mother’s Day to Momma Bears and Spartan Women

Fresno Bee, May 12, 2024

Mothers need to be tough in loving their kids. Shooting pet dogs is another story.

Let’s give a shout out to all of the tough mothers out there. These strong women work long hours away from the house and then supervise homework and housework. Tough moms keep you honest and teach you courage. They’ll wipe away your tears. Then they’ll kick you in the pants and send you back into the fray. They stand beside you for a time. But they want you to stand on your own two feet.

Mother’s Day can we be sappy and maudlin. The pastel cards and fragrant flowers make it seem that mothers are all sweetness and light. But a mother’s love can also be tough. The momma bear must defend her vulnerable cubs against a vicious world. But she can’t defend you forever. Her job is to prepare you to confront the world with bravery and integrity.

I’ve been reflecting on tough mothers while thinking about the governor of South Dakota, Kristi Noem. As almost everyone knows by now, the governor claimed she shot the family dog in a gravel pit. She explained that it was a “hard decision” but that she did it for her kids. She said, “I had a choice between keeping my small children and other people safe, or a dangerous animal, and I chose the safety of my children.”

The episode has generated a lot of heat. Comedians and critics have piled on. Some clever congressmen started a “Congressional Dog Lover’s Caucus.” But behind the backlash is a serious question for moms everywhere. Who or what would you kill to defend your kids?

The governor added, “Tough decisions like this happen all the time on a farm.” No doubt there is a lot of killing down on the farm — and elsewhere. And moms are part of it. Mothers in war zones around the world have to send their sons and daughters off to war. Tough choices are made by mothers whose children are starving and dying in places ravaged by famine and disease. Motherly love unfolds in a world that can be violent and cruel.

Some of the toughest mothers in history came from ancient Sparta. Spartan mothers were famous for encouraging their sons to be brave warriors. They would rather their sons die in battle than run away in cowardice.

Sometimes the Spartan mother has been turned into a cold and shrewish caricature. Plutarch collected a number of “sayings” of Spartan mothers, which portrayed them as mean, spiteful, and scolding. In Plutarch’s collection, Spartan mothers make fun of weak and cowardly sons in crude and insulting ways.

I doubt those Spartan mothers were as callous and cold as Plutarch makes them out to be. Men often mock strong women because they fear their power and independence. The Spartan women were more liberated than other women in the ancient world. They trained in athletics, owned property and engaged in public life. That’s a threat to men who want women to be soft, weak and dependent.

A saccharine ideal of motherhood disempowers mothers — and women in general. Sometimes moms need to get tough. This does not make them less motherly or feminine. This brings us back to Gov. Noem. It’s worth considering whether the backlash against her involves a bit of old-fashioned sexism. If it had been a man who killed that dog instead of a woman, would the judgment be different?

I’m not condoning shooting dogs. There are better ways to deal with unruly hounds. Spartan mothers don’t need to be cruel. Tough mothers can provide encouragement without being mean. They can defend their kids without being spiteful. The difficult balancing act for every tough momma is to be loving and strong, powerful and kind.

That’s not easy. In a culture that idealizes mothers as paragons of peace and softness, the momma bear will be viewed as unfeminine, and well, overbearing.

But everyday, tough mothers make hard choices, down on the farm and everywhere else in this cold world. This does not make them less maternal, feminine, orworthy of respect and admiration. Good mothers love us. But they also defend us, teach us virtue, and toughen us up. And for that we should be grateful on Mother’s Day.

Read more at: https://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/readers-opinion/article288441483.html#storylink=cpy

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Wolves, Dogs, and Civilization

A wolf has appeared in Central California for the first time in a hundred years. He left a pack in Oregon, wandered 500 miles south, passed Yosemite and ended up in the Central Valley. The scientists tracking him are keeping his location a secret. But apparently, he is somewhere out in the fields of Fresno county.

This is a great story about the resilience of nature and the conflict between the wild and the domesticated. Wolves once roamed across this region, as did the grizzly bear, who adorns our state flag. Coyotes and condors, bears and wolves figured prominently in native Californian myths.

The last California wolf was killed in 1924, about the same time that the California grizzly was exterminated. But wild nature has a way of pushing back. Civilization won’t last forever. On the borderlands, wild critters are waiting to return. Civilization is a man-made raft floating on a wild sea.

Wolves touch a primal reservoir of meaning.  Civilization revolves around the ambivalence of the canine—which reflects our own dual nature. Dogs and wolves are symbolic brothers, whose difference marks the border between domestication and wildness. 

The civilizing urge struggles against the wilderness. Real wolves are killed by hunters and farmers. Education domesticates the wolf within. 

Plato described education as taming the inner beast. Aristotle extended this in his account of beastly humans and barbarians. Colonialism and slavery can be traced back to Aristotle’s idea that civilized humans were entitled to hunt and enslave the beastly other.

The wolf often shows up in European culture, as a symbol of the wilderness on the edge of civilization.  Consider an image from Euripides drama, The Bacchae, which is a play about the wild other. In the play, the female worshippers of Dionysus nurse wolf cubs with their own mother’s milk.

The Greek god Apollo was known to manifest himself as a wolf. Homer called Apollo “the wolf-born god.” Legends held that Apollo was himself nursed by a wolf. A similar tale is told about Romulus and Remus, the mythic founders of Rome, who were suckled by a mother wolf.

These stories point toward the mysterious emergence of civilization from out of the wild.  There is only a subtle difference between the wild, unruly wolf and the loyal, domesticated dog.

The wolf-dog divide is found in Plato’s Republic. Plato described the guardians and philosopher-kings of his ideal city as faithful watchdogs. They are loyal to friends, fierce toward foes, and curious about sniffing out the truth. But Plato warns that watch-dogs can turn feral and run amok. We need to guard the guard-dogs (as I discussed in a recent column).

Plato described tyrant as wild beasts. He said that tyrants have a taste for human flesh. The tyrant is “transformed from a man into a wolf.”

This Platonic metaphor resonates through the history of European culture. The Bible warns of wolves in sheep’s clothing (Matthew 7:15). Political philosophers worry that “man is a wolf to man” (homo homini lupus est), as Hobbes did in his argument against “the state of nature.” Wolves and werewolves haunt us in horror films and fairytales.

But does this focus on domestication cause us to overreact? What do we miss when there are no wolves, when everything is domesticated—even our souls?

I love dogs. But in their domesticated cuteness, they lack the edge of ferocity and power that makes the wolf, the grizzly, and the mountain lion so inspiring.  What do we lack when we stay home with the dogs instead of running with the wolves?

There is something unsettling about the presence of a wolf in Central California. This demands that we think the limits of domestication. What was lost as civilization wrested the land from its native inhabitants? And what might the future hold?

We are not the masters of the earth we suppose ourselves to be. This land once belonged to bears, wolves, and lions. The rivers held salmon. Great flocks of birds crowded the wetlands. People lived here, long before European culture arrived. One wonders how long our concrete cities and cultivated fields will last.

How long will it take for wild things to return? And what are we missing when no longer hear the howl of the wolf?