One of my favorite bloggers is Rachel Mankowitz, who blogs at rachelmankowitz: The Cricket Pages. First of all, she is a wonderful writer. Secondly, she writes about her little dogs, Cricket and Butterfly, managing to illuminate the human condition by watching and photographing her dogs.
This time she has surpassed herself, though. She wrote “Listening Like a Dog,” about the way that Cricket listens to everything and everyone: intensely, actively, and with full engagement. I read it and recognized the quality she wrote about: Gabi is like that. She, too, listens with her entire body, all 7 pounds of it.
What if we human beings listened like dogs? What if we listened intensely to one another, waiting until the end of the story, then responding to what was said, not to our own thoughts?
I wonder if Martin Buber had a dog?