“Why do humans whine?”

                  “Good question!” Carll scribbled into his notebook, rewarding me with a treat. The treat was one of those cheap, measly dry ones for the hoi polloi, mostly sawdust if you ask me, but did I register my disappointment? Down the hatch it went, in the sure and certain hope of better luck next time. That’s the canine way. We beg, sure, squeak and make pouty expressions to soften hearts, but after the fact do we make a fuss? Not a bit of it. We move on to the next gustatory opportunity, to which we devote our laser attention and crack communicative skills. Why cry over spilt milk? Lap what you can and get on with it!

                  The originality of my inquiries is only one of the reasons Carll prizes me. Dogs pose questions humans never think of, not just because we’re more observant, but because our vision isn’t fogged with woulda-shoulda-coulda, the miasmal murk of regret. For humans, what might have occurred obscures what did, the subjunctive, you might say, blurring the indicative, which results in resentment and whinging. Poor me, pity me, their groans befoul the communal air, resulting in awkward conversational pauses. The sympathy elicited by whining, my nose tells me, is almost entirely feigned. One human says “poor me” and the other says “poor you” as a matter of course, meanwhile muttering inwardly, “suck it up, why don’t you.” What a worthless interchange! – no, worse than useless, counterproductive. If the purpose of discourse is to persuade, what tactic stupider than whining, which invites contempt? So you had a bad morning, who f***ing cares!

                  Humans whine – from my limited but perspicuous perspective – in part because they feel they have to talk and can’t think of anything to say. Silence, which mostly satisfies dogs and other creatures, spooks humans. “Silent Sam,” in Carll’s boyhood home, was a despicable example. “Good manners” – another odd human concept – meant chattering amiably about nothing when one entered a room, putting others at “their ease.” Dogs eschew conversation. We sniff anuses, maybe tail-wag, then engage in parallel play. Much simpler.

                  What I’ve said so far is obvious and inarguable. Yet humans persist in this obnoxious habit, much as they persist in gnawing fingernails and digging nostrils. As T. S. Eliot put it – one of Carll’s favorite apostrophes – “After such knowledge, what forgiveness?”  Dogs desist from activities that make no sense. If I bark at birds or chase frogs in the swimming pool, defying human directives, far from foolish, I’m making all the sense in the world, which you’d realize if you were a dog.

                  Humans whine (here’s theory number three) from a delusion of deserving. This may derive from parental pampering. For decades, human parents coo over their offspring, “Oh, you poor thing,” when a kick in the you know where would do them more good. Nobody deserves nothing, for crying out loud! The whole idea of deserving presupposes a supernatural parent bestowing favors on their whelp. Other animal parents provide their young the nutrition and protection necessary to survive, then it’s off with you, have a nice life. I liked my mother fine and she liked me, I think, but if we met today, she’d sniff me and that would that, no auld lang syne.

                  Marcus Aurelius, who said a lot of really smart things, said, “Do not be overheard complaining... not even to yourself.” Imagine an emperor saying that! America’s current emperor, Carll tells me, takes the opposite approach. Whine every possible minute, whine to beat the band, is his motto. Stinks up the joint.