Animal Magnetism

A Home Run

Most people recognize their duty in time to avoid it. Domesticated animals share this trait with us. While we all profit from having a job, there are times when we don’t want to work.

Dad used to say, “You can make excuses or you can make money, but you can’t do both.” While I don’t want to make excuses, there are days when I just want to play hooky. Don’t you feel the same? But in my line of work, a deadline is a deadline. No manuscript, no paycheck. Same with the farm. Much as I might want to play baseball on a fine spring day, the fertilizer has to go down, the pastures need to be aerated. By the time you’re finished, hitting that home run isn’t even a daydream. It’s twilight.

When I was small I’d watch the Percherons being turned out after a day at the plow. They’d rush into the pasture, kick up their heels, then settle down to groom one another or eat.

Cats, never touched by the gray brush of Puritanism, feel no compunction to be productive. They kill rodents because they enjoy it. Kittens’ play mimics killing. For them, it’s fun.

Much of animal play prepares them for the future. Human play once did, too. Any game where hand-eye coordination is important is useful in hunting. Any game involving animals or music is also critical. Before telegraphs and telephones, people communicated with flames, smoke, and lanterns. But sound came even before that. Three key sounds produced by many European and Asian cultures were horns (originally animal horns), drums, and bells. The bells came later because we had to master metalwork first. Europeans and Africans brought their sound systems to North America.

Animal play involves sounds, too, but I’m not sure the purpose is the same. If two dogs are roughhousing and one cries “Uncle,” the sound is high-pitched, short and sharp.

The rest of their play mimics hunting or herding. Stalking, bumping another dog to the ground, sitting on the downed dog, circling the dog, stealing one another’s toys, and hoping to be chased—these are all mirrored in hunting or herding and reinforced by pack hierarchy.

Perhaps the most interesting form of animal play involves birds singing. Little birds in their nests or tree hollows listen to their parents sing. Some songs are territory calls, other are the latest news such as who is on the prowl. Songs vary. The little fuzzy things in their nests, mouths ever open, hear this. They hear us, too.

Scientists at the University of Chicago have recorded levels of activity in the brains of dozing birds. How they did this I don’t know, but I read about it in The Manchester Guardian January 2–8, 2009. The small article explains that the sleeping birds had bursts of brain activity corresponding to what they had heard the day before. The babies were learning a new song. The scientists also played adult birdsongs to chicks. The next day, after a good night’s sleep, the chicks sang better.

Maybe there’s something to the practice of playing recordings of other languages (or even our own, since so few people master it these days) to your sleeping baby.

This isn’t quite the same thing as true play, wherein you escape responsibility for a short time to engage in something that pleases you. But it does tell you something about the way creatures like to learn. Ever notice that if you’re told you’re going to learn something, you drag your feet? It’s like being told to eat greens because they’re good for you, not because they taste good. But if you’re playing football with your dad as a lineman and he shows you how to upend someone’s center of gravity, that’s a good lesson. You’ve just learned how to flatten an opponent or human predator to get them out of the way. You’ve also acquired a little knowledge of physics.

Same with colors. Had my mother told me I needed to know about mixing red and yellow to produce orange, I would have listened politely but I might not have been interested. By simply doing it in front of me, she made it fascinating. Then she showed me how to breed flower colors. Even more interesting.

“Horseplay,” like most Anglo-Saxon words in our language, reflects physical reality. Horses do play. They run at top speed, stop, and turn. That might throw off a predator, not that they know it at the time. Or two horses will stand on their hind legs to spar with each other, usually squealing for effect. If they lived in the wild this would mimic the younger stallion challenging the older. My advice to the younger stallion: Age and treachery always overcome youth and skill.

You probably play with your dogs and cats. With the dog you might play tug-of-war. They just love that. Some dog trainers will say that you must always wind up with the disputed object or you lose your dominance. I don’t believe it. It’s a game. Your dog knows it’s a game. Let him win sometimes.

As for fetch, some dogs will bring back the ball, the Frisbee, or the sock you throw out until you’re ready to drop from exhaustion. Some dogs prefer for you to throw the ball and you fetch it. They’d rather watch you exert yourself than do it themselves.

With a cat, bouncing a jack ball seems to bring delight. Many cats will retrieve, too. Any string you pull captures their attention. That game can go on for hours.

My favorite game with cats, dogs, and foxhounds is hide-and-seek. A very traditional English huntsman would probably frown on the games I play with my hounds. But I learned from those wonderful departed hounds born in the late 1930s and early 1940s that if I played with them, they were happy. They looked for me. If you’re hunting hounds, you want them to look for you, to check back in. Thanks to playing hide-and-seek with the hounds I can hunt the old way, which is to say a loose cast. I can toss my hounds out there like marbles, knowing they’ll roll back to me if I call.

Puppies learn so much when it’s fun. What I like to do is to hide in one of the kennel runs (they’re big, maybe a quarter-acre in some instances). They can’t see me. Then one of my whippers-in, usually Emily Schilling, turns them loose, and I call for them. When they find me, it’s cookie time. We’ll do this in the summer once or twice a week. They love it. When I call them in during their first season hunting, they usually fly right back.

Games reinforce the fact that I’m the pack leader. Please me and wondrous events and goodies follow.

The same principles work with horses. There’s a monster of a jump. You can’t see it, but your horse can. Eventually, without brutality, although you might have to get into him with the spurs, you take the jump. Usually you take it very, very big. You pat his neck, you tell him what a good boy he is. Always praise your horse. When you get back to the barn: cookies.

Never overwork an animal or a child. Short lessons produce better results than long ones. End the lesson with a victory.

It’s either the carrot or the stick. I prefer the carrot. Play is one big carrot. Same with kids. There were no dishwashers when I was young, and I don’t have one today. Just seems like a waste of electricity; but then I’m not feeding six. There were a lot of us at the table when I was young. We each had to take a turn washing dishes, including Dad. (Were my parents smart or what? Chores weren’t assigned by gender. If they had been, our cars and tractors wouldn’t have gotten fixed. Repairing vehicles was Mom’s job, since she was good at it.) The repetitive chores rotated. Scrubbing off egg, hands in soapy dishwater, I hated it. But if I found a chipped cup or a chipped plate, I’d receive a nickel. I washed those dishes, glasses, and cups with an eagle eye. After the clean-up chores we’d sit down to play cards in winter. In the summer, when the light lingered, we kids would play kick-the-can. Then we’d come in and sit on the porch with the adults and play some kind of memory game or cards. Card games served as a backdrop for long chats about history, gossip, current events. You learned about your family, other people’s families, what was in the news that day. I don’t think that happens now since even the nuclear family is atomized. Kids don’t know who their people are. No good can come from this. Okay, one woman’s opinion.

Animals know who their people are, up to a point. A dachshund recognizes another dachshund, although I doubt the dog knows or cares about bloodlines. And species recognize one another as well as other species. Different species can play together. My cats and dogs play constantly. The big dogs flop on their sides and the cats attack. Then the dog gets up and chases them. The cat climbs onto the high back of a chair. The dog leaps into the seat. The cat jumps right on the dog, then off. The dog has to find the cat. Hide-and-seek.

One of the cats, Stonewall, grabs the Jack Russell, Tally, and rolls her over and over. Then Tally manages to stand up and pounce on the cat. But the cat, smarty, is on his back legs and claws out. The Jack Russell, being a Jack Russell, walks right into those claws, to be taken down one more time and rolled. What fun they have, and so do I.

Play brings us together, blows off steam. Wonderful though it is to learn through playing, it’s pure joy to just let it all go.

Now if I could only teach them to play baseball.