A Dog-Being

Dogs, can you imagine what it is like to be a human? Humans, can you imagine what it is like to be a dog? In the book The Lives of Animals by J.M. Coetzee, the main character Elizabeth Costello addresses this question but about bats and people;

What is it like to be a bat? Before we can answer such a question, Nagel suggests, we need to be able to experience bat-life through the sense-modalities of a bat. But he is wrong... To be a living bat is to be full of being; being fully a bat is like being fully human, which is also to be full of being. Bat-being in the first case and human-being in the second....To be full of being is to live as a body-soul. One name for the experience of full being is joy.

As we are all beings with a soul, of course we can put ourselves in anothers paws, hooves, fins or shoes. There is a big human word, anthropomorphism, to describe people putting human qualities onto animals. Of course, a dog wants to be treated and thought of as a dog. But some people seem to think that animals do not have souls and are somehow inferrior, almost robot like. I say all animals have a soul and all animals are equal. And no animals are more equal than others. Not even dogs. Not even fast, intelligent, good-looking dogs.