What is going on in there? Why do dogs seem so much like furry people? This spring, a new study about canine-human eye contact made journalists salivate; supposedly, evolution was involved. I do want it to Mean Something when a dog looks at me—something more than their hope of being fed. Probably they have us trained, as in the great joke about Pavlov’s lab. One dog says to another dog, “Watch: when I salivate, I can make that guy write on his clipboard.” For all we know, the dog in the gif is waking up from a nightmare about balancing his checkbook; I hope not, for his sake. Not that *I* know how to balance a checkbook. That shit is for the dogs. That’s the thing. Animals are capable. We have to be careful.
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