The Chronicle of Higher Education has a piece on studies related to dog intelligence. The author went by a leading university:
There are no cages at Lorand Eotvos University's department of ethology, the study of animal behavior. And why would there be? asks Mr. Csanyi, the department's founder and chairman. 'The human world is the dog's natural environment,' he says, as a gregarious adolescent mutt pokes into the office, wags his tail, and leaves.The rest of the article is interesting, but that is a core insight. It is good to keep a dog, and the best way to do it is to let him live with you. Let him guard your truck (or car) while you're in the store; let him lie on the rug by your desk while you work. Take him running with you. In those ways, both you and he will be happier than you would have been otherwise, unless the dog has a malformed personality, or you do.
More or less the same principle applies to children, who are best raised by being kept close to hand. Modern urban society has gone to such lengths to separate children from adults, and to keep dogs out of so many places that it is hard to bring them with you. This is one reason, I suspect, for the growth of the "exurbs" -- people will gladly spend hours of their days in commuting, each day if need be, and fortunes on gasoline, if only they can live in a place that is friendly to children and dogs. Meanwhile, the few exceptions in genuine urban areas -- in the D.C. region, I notice that Alexandria and DuPont Circle are dog-friendly, though only Alexandria is also child-friendly, and not completely at that -- become the most sought-after and expensive of neighborhoods.
Just some idle thinking on a Thursday morning. Hat tip: Arts & Letters Daily.
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