What It Means To Be Human.

G’Day Humans!

This is Rosie-Roo, Rowena’s adorable and geniously smart puppy dog. I’ve jumped onto her blog to end her interminal screen-gazing. Put her out of her misery. I know she’s always teaching me stuff, and thinks she knows it all, but her brain’s now gone into park, and won’t budge. So, seeing that I’ve now worked out how to pull the string on my toy mouse and make it run all by myself, I figure I’m now ready to step into Bilbo’s paws and  be the brains trust around here. After all, that goes with the territory when you’re the Philosopher’s Dog.

That’s me on the left.

So, here I am paws to the keyboard.

Rewinding to last night, you might’ve already read all Mum’s philosophical, new year ramblings about turning Chaos Central and it’ s inhabitants, into clockwork robots. Have a place for everyting and everything in its place.

Of course, we who know Mum better than she knows herself, know better. We know she drank too much pear cider over the holidays. Was dazzled by the fireworks. It’s all gone to her head, and now she thinks a  new year makes her a new person. That her DNA myseriously changed overnight.

I might only be six months old, but I’m a great observer. Not only that, I’m smart. Scary smart. Only this morning, I learned how to pull the string on my toy mouse, but I’ve been pulled mum’s string a lot longer. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with being creative. However, I’m a working dog, and that means getting on with the task at hand and not writing about it instead.

Anyway, we working dogs are adaptable. I can herd humans, and I can philosophise like a human as well. After all, as you’ve always suspected but have never been able to verify, we dogs can read your minds. Well, at least, that is the more astute of us canines.

Moving forward, I’m going to pick up from Mum’s last post where she concluded: “I am going to be a human being.” Shortly, after signing off there, she quickly typed “What It Means to Be Human” into a new post and went off to bed.

Who did she think she was? Professor Stephen Hawking? Why couldn’t she just be happy with 42 like everyone else, and leave it at that? Why did she feel the need to tackle a question whose answers spread the full length and breadth of the World Wide Web. How did she think she was going to reduce all of that verbosity into 500 words, or even a 1000?

It didn’t take me long to work out Mum was a dreamer, and nothing like a working dog.

 

Anyway, this leaves me to explain what it means to be human.

Firstly, humans are always telling us dogs to “sit”, while I figure all humans do is sit. They need to get out of their chairs. Switch off the TV. Turn off their laptops and mobile phones and walk, Run. Go outside. Smell the roses.

Secondly, humans seriously over-complicate things. We dogs keep it simple. We wear the one coat for life, and we’re always ready to go out. Adventure awaits. None of this hair, makeup, clothes, can’t find my shoes, wallet, phone. I don’t even need a lead, but I did get in trouble last week for what turned out to be a pre-emptive run.

But, while I can be a little critical of the humans and would like to give them some really thorough training, my humans have loved my brother and I unconditionally. We were homeless and had been taken away from our Mum, Dad and sisters and didn’t know what would become of us. Then, Mum and Miss turned up there in the middle of the night to pick us up and gave us a home. We had so much to learn, leaving puddles and piles all over the house and even chewed on the furniture, but they still loved us. Humans have big hearts.

A big heart is mum’s biggest trouble. Of course, she’d like to be uber-organized and have everything running like clockwork, but her heart gets in the way. She cares too much. I also understand that she can’t move around as easily as the other humans and then lets the other humans and us dogs get away with things we shouldn’t. Please don’t tell her that. That can be our little secret.

Well, I don’t know if I’ve answered the question, but I’d appreciate a bit of understanding. This is my first dog, I mean, blog post, and I’m still only a pup.

What do you think makes humans human? Perhaps, you could enlighten Mum!

Love,

Rosie-Roo

PS: In case you’re wondering why I’m called “Rosie-Roo, it’s because the humans reckon I look like a kangaroo. I don’t know why they’d think a dog looks like a kangaroo. Perhaps, poor eyesight and confusion are further aspects of what it means to be human.

The featured image was drawn by my teenaged son many, many moons ago.