This is a venture into what, for a lot of readers, will be
more-than-you-wanted-to-know territory. Those who have a low threshold of
tolerance for personal stuff should definitely go read something else
RIGHT NOW. OK? OK. Now: I have just walked Boris. I have walked him
pretty much every morning for the past 11 years, vacations aside. That’s
close to four thousand walkies with Boris. Almost all walkies occur early
in the morning. I am a lark–I get up at either 5:30 or 6:00, depending on
how busy I am. I scan the newspaper over breakfast. Then I do the
essentials. Then I walk the mutt. Now, as with the rest of you (I imagine)
the essentials go better some days than others. You know what I mean.
Well, when I walk Boris, he does his essentials. And like yours and mine,
his essentials go sometimes well, sometimes not so well. Now here is the
mystery: Boris and I are in sync. When things go well with me, they go
well with him, and vice versa. I have mentally resisted noticing this for a
long time, but after four thousand walkies, the empirical evidence is
overwhelming. There is no doubt. Yet how on earth is this possible? We
sometimes give Boris scraps as a treat, but his diet and mine have really
nothing in common. He eats dog food out of a can, with dry dog food in the
evening. I know Boris has bonded with me deeply, and have told a story
about that here. Can a dog
bond this deeply, though? Where is the science here? A true mystery.
Have any other readers noticed this phenomenon? Is there any scientific
literature on it? How do I even google this?