Rub Belly Frequently

by Brian K. Mahoney and photographs by Thaddeus Kostrubala, October 28, 2010

In 2002, while convalescing from Lyme disease, journalist Steven Kotler adopted an abused Rottweiler mix at the goading of a friend. The dog, named Ahab, bit him. Not knowing the first thing about dogs, Kotler asked his friend to write down a list of what he would need for the care and feeding of Ahab. The list contained all the usual items, like separate bowls for water and food, chew toys, etc. Item number 14 was “rub belly frequently.” And rub Ahab’s belly Kotler did. Counter intuitively, every time Ahab destroyed something—a couch, a chair—Kotler smothered Ahab with affection. According to Kotler, within a week, Ahab stopped destroying the furniture.

Soon after adopting Ahab, Kotler met writer and dog rescuer Joy Nicholson, whom he would eventually run off to New Mexico with to found Rancho de Chihuahua, a dog sanctuary 30 miles north of Santa Fe. Like Kotler’s approach to curing Ahab of his bad habits, Rancho de Chihuahua is an atypical dog rescue—no cages; the dogs run free across the house and the ranch’s fenced-in acreage. A Small Furry Prayer: Dog Rescue and the Meaning of Life (Bloomsbury, 2010) is Kotler’s memoir of running a dog rescue. It’s also a insightful mediation on the relationship between humans and animals that explores the realms of neuroscience, anthropology, and spirituality. Kotler, a blogger for Psychology Today and author of West of Jesus, which explored surfing as a spiritual quest, is at equal ease discussing scientific literature as he is narrating a face-to-face encounter with a mountain lion.

I spoke with Kotler from his home in New Mexico in October about coevolution between dogs and humans, equality among species, and dealing with the death of companion animals.

Steven Kotler will read from and sign copies of A Small Furry Prayer at Oblong Books in Rhinebeck on November 11 at 7:30pm. (845) 876-0500; www.oblongbooks.com.

In A Small Furry Prayer, you write extensively about the coevolution of humans and dogs, and you suggest that not only did human evolution influence dog evolution but vice versa as well.
Coevolution is the outsourcing of basic survival needs. In our case, dogs became our alarm clocks and our burglar alarms. There is new information that’s coming out now that I haven’t looked at deep enough to know if its 100 percent, accurate but there are a lot of people who are starting to believe it was wolves who actually taught us how to hunt. They’re certain it was wolves who taught us how to live in larger groups and how to cooperate. But basically, when you coevolve, its the outsourcing of needs to another species. This makes fundamental changes on everyone involved.