Further Meditations on Dogs (and humans)

In literature, movies, pop culture as a whole, there is a tradition I like to call the Anachronistic Man, or the man out of time. By out I don't mean "time's up!" rather the figure has existed outside the boundaries of time. Sometimes he ages; sometimes he doesn't. They are hapless time travellers.
Odysseus is the earliest example I can think of. Dragged into battle against his will, he spent ten years fighting the Trojan War and another Ten trying to get back home. In fact, at one point in the Odyssey, the isle of Ithaca is in sight when Poseidon blows him away, adding years to the trip. Rip Van Winkle goes to sleep a youngin' only to wake up an old man. Even though Philip J. Fry doesn't age, he wakes up a thousand years into the future. The hero of I Am Legend (the novella), stands at the very end of human civilization, hopelessly alone. They are living a kind of trauma, not like mine, but a trauma none the less: violent seperation from all they know, disorientation, culture shock.
In most cases the figures share a common episode. They are accompanied by or have an encounter with a dog. When Odysseus finally lands on the shores of his home, the first creature he meets is his dog, who has waited twenty years on a pile of shit and flies just to see his master one more time before he dies. It is heartbreaking, very rarely have I felt palpable anguish from any art form, and this is one of them. Reading the Odyssey for the first time, the scene brought me to tears. Desperate and lonely, the hero of I am Legend, tries and fails to save a dog. In the 20th century, a dog waits, and is still waiting, for a Philip J Fry who will never return (and this from a geeky screwball sci-fi comedy!).

Why does this pattern exist? Well, I'm glad I asked that rhetorical question!

I don't wish to lionize humanity's relationship with dogs, and I admit that the dog could be a symbol for ANY pet, could symbolize our relationships with the animal world as a whole not just canines. Still, I think the dog works in these stories because of something specific about our relationship to them. They wear their hearts on their sleeves, even stubborn rascals like my Scottish Terrier, who wears his postured indifference on his sleeve. A dog is lonely with his whole self, he does nothing half-way. When he suffers, he suffers completely. Maybe it is because we tamed them early in our history, but we see something of ourselves in dogs. They were with us before time mattered, so perhaps they are a reference point, a marker. Regardless, when they suffer, we see our own suffering. Their pain is our pain. We are spiritually linked.


(If there is an alternative symbol, it would be the horse. They are the only animal I can think of who shares a history analagous to that of the dog)