Photos by Catherine Ledner
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Tails of Love
By Geoff Brown, November & December 2009
The bond between people and animals is one of the strongest and most beneficial friendships in history. Now researchers are beginning to learn more about this unbreakable connection
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The rocket came in fast, maybe 900 feet per second—too fast for anyone to sound the warning siren, and much too fast for all the troops of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force to take cover. It was March 21, 2007, when the 73-millimeter insurgent-launched rocket exploded inside their base in the Al Anbar province of Iraq, right next to Corporal Dustin Jerome Lee and his canine partner, Lex. Lee, a 20-year-old Mississippi native, was gravely wounded by the blast. Lex—a German shepherd trained to sniff out hidden explosives—was also injured, his brown and black fur burned, shrapnel lodged in his back and spine.
Marines on the scene watched as the bleeding Lex climbed on top of Corporal Lee to protect him from further harm. They saw Lex try to revive his master by licking his wounds. And the Marines who rushed to their comrade's side had to peel Lex reluctantly off the young corporal so medics could try to save him. But Corporal Lee's injuries were too severe; he died at a nearby military hospital.
A few days later, two uniformed Marines arrived at the Lee family home in Quitman, Mississippi, to deliver the news of the corporal's death. "After the Marine Corps representative told us everything that happened," recalls Dustin Lee's mother, Rachel (pictured above with Lex), "my next question was—and I'll always remember it—'What about Lex?' "
The Marines seemed puzzled. "We're not sure," they said. "We know he's alive. Why?"
"The more we talked, the more I wanted Lex to be at Dustin's funeral," she says. "After hearing that Lex climbed on top of Dustin as they both bled…Lex and Dustin shared a bond, and now that bond is a blood bond. Lex was the last to see my child. I wanted him there at the funeral with me."
What explains this powerful human-animal connection? What makes a wounded dog protect his dying partner—and what makes a grieving mother want that faithful canine companion at her son's funeral?
“Lex was the last to see my child. I wanted him there at the funeral with me.”
—Rachel Lee
Humans have long been fascinated by the other animals with whom we share this planet. Our distant ancestors started painting horses and the fearsome aurochs (which humans would eventually tame and breed into the contemporary cow) on cave walls tens of thousands of years ago. Animals both wild and domesticated adorned ancient pottery and jewelry, and joined our ancestors in their tombs.
Today animals still enchant us, perhaps more so than at any time in history. There are roughly twice as many pets in American households as there are children under 18. Forty years ago Americans owned about 40 million pet dogs and cats in a nation of 200 million people; today our pet population has more than quadrupled, as the human population has grown to 300 million. Sentimental books such as Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World and Marley & Me have become New York Times bestsellers. We knit for our dogs and serve lobster to our cats. And when our pets become ill, we're ever more willing to spring for veterinary care. Ailments that used to be death warrants—cancer, a broken hip, kidney failure—are now often successfully treated. "When I first went into practice [in the late 1980s], ten was pretty old for a Labrador or golden retriever," says Jeff Wells, D.V.M., the author of All My Patients Have Tales. "Now I often see those breeds at 14, 15 years old."
But even though we've benefited from the loyalty, intelligence, and labor of animals for thousands of years, humans are only beginning to understand why we feel such strong attachments to specific members of other species. Over the past ten years intriguing studies have started to reveal the evolutionary, social, and biochemical reasons that people and animals are such fast friends—and offer the rudiments of an explanation for the amazing phenomenon of animal heroism.
Winnie, domestic shorthair, 16, with the Keeslings
"The deputy sheriff told me that if Winnie had waited five more minutes to wake us up, we'd all be dead."
—Cathy Keesling Early Spring floods in 2007 had inundated the flat neighborhoods and farms around the eastern Indiana house of the Keesling family. Their home's basement had taken on some 30,000 gallons of water, and a gasoline pump had been set up to empty it. After the family went to bed, a crack in the pump's venting system caused carbon monoxide to pour into the home's heat ducts.
Cathy Keesling had closed all the windows in the house, save one on the first floor where Winnie, the gray-and-black-striped cat the family had rescued from a barn years before, was sleeping. When deadly gas filled the house, Cathy's teenage son, Michael, fell unconscious in the hallway. Cathy and her husband, Eric, were slowly sinking into unconsciousness as well. Winnie had been breathing the clear night air, so she was the only living creature in the house that could tell something was wrong. But rather than escaping through the open window, Winnie raced over to Cathy.
"Winnie was pulling my hair and yowling in my ear," Cathy recalls of her normally mellow cat's unusual behavior. "I would wake up and pass out again. Every time I passed out, Winnie would wake me up again."
Cathy managed to rouse herself and dial 911, but the gas knocked her out before she could tell the operator what was going on. The dispatcher sent out a state trooper and sheriff's deputies, who dragged the family onto the porch and into the fresh air. A firefighter found Winnie in a closet.
Everyone recovered after many hours in the hospital, where the dire nature of their situation became clear. "The deputy sheriff told me that if Winnie had waited five more minutes to get us up, we'd all be dead," Cathy Keesling says. "I'm so proud of her.
"I guess because we saved her life, she saved ours."
In 1987 the National Institutes of Health (NIH) launched a workshop on the health benefits of owning pets: at that time there were a few scientific papers on the subject, including a study that proved pets boosted survival rates for coronary care unit patients. By last year, when the NIH held a workshop on how pets help people, new findings had proliferated, though in many cases they simply validated what people have known about pets for centuries. One study showed that dog ownership promotes regular exercise. Another found that being near a pet lowers its owner's blood pressure (an effect that family members, no matter how beloved, can't match).
More surprising were new data on the key role of chemistry in the relationship. When a person interacts with a pet, the central nervous system releases several hormones that cause feelings of pleasure—and one hormone in particular, oxytocin, appears to play a major role in reinforcing the bond. Produced by new mammalian mothers to encourage bonding with their offspring, oxytocin creates a sense of warmth, nurturing, and calm. In 2002 two South African researchers measured oxytocin levels not only in humans petting dogs but in the dogs themselves: the dogs experienced the same chemical releases and calming effects as did the humans. Researchers are still unclear about the exact role of these chemicals, though when two different species can produce feelings of peace, closeness, and contentment in each other, it's clearly an intriguing find.
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