A Theology for the Dogs: saying what needs to be Said Without Saying what needs to be said

    Stephen H. Webb's A Theology for the Dogs provided a lot of interesting points on our relationships with dogs. He talked a lot about how dogs relate to God and even more about animal rights. Personally, I think one of the most interesting topics Webb talked about was what we need to talk about without talking about it. Super confusing, but basically not using human language to express important concepts.

    One of the minor aspects of this is our very approach to research about dogs. Obviously many humans have strong feelings towards these animals. These emotions have a large range, but you can not deny deny that they exist. Or that they play an important role in how we see and think about dogs. However, we also make it a standard to leave out our emotions when participating in research. It is often seen as something that can 'get in the way' of something serious and yet also something that we need to include in research due to its importance but not in a way that we will be affected by it. It's a pretty confusing concept, though it's one that is drilled into our heads repeatedly.

    In other words, we must include very real emotions in our studies without actually addressing those feelings so that we're not impacted by them in a way that will mess up our professionalism. Sometimes I question just how smart this is. Interestingly enough, while what we can't say in research can be a burden can actually be a strength in a different area. That is, communication. Or as most people like to call it, stories and films.

    Stories have a unique way of telling about the dog-human relationship by not saying what needs to be said. This is done be avoiding using human language to communicate the complex relationship. It's the body movements, the pauses, the feeling that give you an understanding of the unstated. You may hear a character express their feelings towards a dog; more often than not it's the interaction between the character and the animal the gives you the sense of their connection even though they're either talking about something completely unrelated to the dog or they're not saying anything at all. Stating it in this blogpost isn't giving this idea justice. It's like tasting salt, you have to experience it for yourself.

    My last thought on this is whether this concept of saying what we need to say without actually saying it is so foreign. Scientifically speaking, a large amount of human communication is actually body language. Most of what you 'say' to people doesn't actually come out of your mouth. So this interaction between dog and human could possibly be another example of our everyday communication methods, just with another species. My point is that we need to understand that this concept isn't some new discovery of how to portray our relatively undefined relationship with dogs. Rather, we are simply expressing this concept with an emphasis with our everyday communication methods.