Disgust is signaled by word, gesture, expression, or – unknown to most humans – olfactory emissions. I like most of Carll’s smells (including some he himself recoils from) but not disgust. Disgust bristles, clenches, threatens, banishes love. His sock-sniff’s roseate by comparison.

The instant Carll flips open his gray metal box in the morning, disgust gusts. I curl at his feet to comfort him but it’s little use. He mutters things like “Unbelievable!” and “I could kill that…!” in an undertone intended to be neither understood nor ignored. Humans often produce these muddled utterances; when a dog barks, growls, grunts or smilingly pants, make no mistake.

The object of his disgust is – you guessed it – the state of his nation. Dogs have no nations, only tribes. Humans suffer this disease called identity. “Who am I?” they can’t help asking, which leads, apparently inexorably, to “Who are we?”

Hot with disgust-stink, Carll hisses, this time more audibly, “I refuse to write about it. He –” by which the Nameless One is understood, “won’t wreck every dawn, damn him.” Sometimes Carll heeds his injunction, sometimes he starts typing so fast words seem to vomit from his fingertips.

This morning he angrily grabs a poem to divert his attention from despair. He won’t tell me what’s upsetting him, but I can read his mind. Herewith a verbatim transcript retranslated, needless to say, from Dog back to Human:

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedCan you f-ing believe this! In order to fund lucrative tax-breaks for well-heeled heels, they deprive twelve million poor people of essential medical care, all the while denying they’re doing it and pretending not to. How do they manage it? With paperwork. New hoops the weak, enfeebled, sometimes hardly literate poor must jump through, so they end up saying to hell with it, they’d sooner die. Their monstrous excuse? ELIMINATE WASTE AND FRAUD. As if vaccinating an infant or extracting a tumor were a misuse of our nation’s wherewithal. What is wrong with these people? What malign forces disordered their minds and withered their hearts? Why do Americans, any Americans, put up with this! Where is wrathful Jehovah when we need Him!

And so forth. Flamboyant rage, more violent and voluble for being impotent.

I feel bad for Carll. And for those poor sick people deprived of care. And curiously, also for the malefactors with their diseased minds and shriveled hearts. Hatred, though it may gloat, can never be glad.

We dogs do not emit disgust-stink. Alarm and antipathy, yes, dangers abound, but not misery at our divergence from some loftier ideal. There’s no subjunctive in Dog to wallow In – what might have, should have, could have been. There’s not even any past or future tense – simply the present. We are where we are and who and that’s that, so make the best of it.

If I were human, I might carry on like Carll, which is why I’m glad I’m not. In the canine kingdom, there is no injustice, cruelty, despair, tomorrow, yesterday, just facts, with which we cope. We dread correction, abandonment, rainy weather, but not judgment, for we can’t be better – or worse – than we are.

So-called intelligence makes the human condition tragic, frantic, vicious, trying. The wider the awareness, the more wounding its sorrows, the keener the longing for spiritual assistance, myths and gods and the like. Carll’s disgust-stink befouls the sweet air like electrical smoke. Though I envy humans their viands and vehicles, I would not be human for the life of me. Too much stress.

I keep wondering what I might do to cheer Carll up. Take away his gray box maybe.