Unlikely Loves
43 Heartwarming Stories from the Animal Kingdom
by Jennifer S. Holland
Workman Publishing • New York
This one is for Dad, the oldest kid I know.
“Animals other than humans love unconditionally. Put your spouse and your dog in the trunk of your car for three hours, and see which one is happy to see you when you let them out.”
—Master Dog Trainer David Latimer,
Forensic & Scientific Investigations, Alabama
Contents
Preface
Introduction
Section One: Who Loves You, Baby?
The Great Dane and the Fawn
The Old Mare and the Dog
The Terrier and the Duckling
The Donkey and the Sheep
The Pekin Duck and the Pit Bull
The Blind Boxer and the Goose
The Girl and the Moose
The Piglet and the Boxer
The Mama Mutt and the Kittens
The Hen and the Pups
The Goat and the Pit Bull
The Spotted Lamb and the Dalmatian
The Piglet and the Rottweiler
Section Two: Eat, Play, Love
The Giraffe and the Goat
The Dolphin and the Sea Lion
The Tiny Calf and the Farm Dogs
The Boy and the Marmots
The Fawn and the Woodland Friends
Tales from Rocky Ridge Refuge
The Tortoise and the Puppies
The Miniature Horse and the Capybara
The Bull and the Horse
The Owl and the Pussycat
The Fox and the Hound
Tales from Warwickshire Wildlife Sanctuary
The Turkey and the Deer
The Badger and the Fox
The Dolphin and the Stray Cat
The Macaque, the Rabbit, and the Guinea Pig
The Otter and the Badger
The Golden Eagle and the Flying Man
The Puppy and the Lion Cub
Section Three: Modern Family Love
Tales from Glen Afric Wildlife Sanctuary
The Kudu and the Giraffe
The Leopard and the Dog
The Dolphin and the Sperm Whales
The Boa Constrictor and the Pit Bull
The Black Rhinoceros and the Warthog
The Elephant and the Zoo Friends
The Lady, the Tiger, and the German Shepherd
The Zebra and the Donkey
The Swan and the Swan Boat
The Rat and the Kitten
The Lioness and the Lioness
The Alpaca and the Horses
The Pig and the Farm Pals
References
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Preface
It is with giddiness and grins that I present to you Unlikely Loves, a follow-up to Unlikely Friendships. First, I must mention what a wonderful response I got to that collection of animal tales, and how honored I was to know that the book touched so many people. Stories of caring behavior between animals seem to fulfill a need for joy and hope amid the struggle and strife in the world, and I’m glad to have found people willing to share such stories so I could bring them to all of you.
Based on the happy reaction to Unlikely Friendships, perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised when reader after reader asked me, are there more stories to tell? More photos of unexpected affection to share? Will you put them in a second volume and make us smile again? I couldn’t refuse such a lovely plea.
And so, here we are. I only hope readers will have an equally happy romp through these stories as they had while reading the previous volume. And for those of you who missed Unlikely Friendships, I hope Unlikely Loves is a pleasant surprise.
Introduction
A fawn nuzzles a bunny friend in Montana.
As anyone who knows me well can attest, I love my animals. No doubt I’m going to be one of those little old ladies with wild hair and a pickup full of dogs, maybe a cat or duck that follows me around. Perhaps a goat, too. I’ve always wanted a goat. My “eccentricities” (read: no children, animals always underfoot, fur-covered sweat suit worn in public) will be a source of caring concern for my family and friends.
While writing the previous paragraph, I got up out of my chair three times. Once to let a dog out. Once to check on a small gecko with a bum foot. And a third time to let a dog in (not the same dog I just let out). When I’m not out gallivanting around in search of stories, I do this all day between interviews, bouts of writing, and baskets of laundry. It’s just part of loving the animals I keep.
I say loving because, for me, there’s no word that describes it better. Love is no doubt different things to different people. To me, with regard to animals, it’s the tumbling energy I feel inside as I watch my dogs run around happily in the woods, the comfort I get from cuddling up with a warm cat as she stretches out a paw to touch my face, even the joy of glimpsing the ridiculous poses my geckos strike, hanging by one toe of those strange little feet. I love these critters. I’ll always have animals in my life; they make my home a better, warmer, more affectionate place.
But when there’s no human in the equation, is there love? I expect the title of this collection will make some animal behaviorists cringe. Of course “love” is a human term, describing human emotion—from the frantic pulse of a crush to the warmth and ease of a marriage long-simmered. Maybe even more so than “friendship,” we cannot know whether other animals experience love the way we do. But I have no doubt that my pets can form deep attachments, can miss a partner when separated, and would grieve in some way if that partner died (heck, even birds like magpies have been shown to mourn).
Still, love is tough to define, even for us. I wouldn’t claim to know whether the term applies directly to a cat’s or dog’s or chicken’s affections, though as discussed with numerous experts in Unlikely Friendships, much of the circuitry that lets us love is present in other species. Less developed, perhaps, but it’s there. Evolution tends to reuse good bits and pieces, like the emotions that help us thrive and reproduce, rather than starting from scratch with each being. So the overlap between what we do and what other creatures do is considerable.
Time and again we read reports of animals driven to help ease another’s pain or protect another from danger. One story I came across while researching this volume was of a dog pulling his owner off the train tracks where she’d collapsed; the dog was hit as a result (but survived, fortunately). There’s a well-watched video on YouTube of an orangutan saving a duckling from drowning. A female gorilla at a U.S. zoo famously grabbed up a child that had fallen into the pen, shielding him from the other apes until keepers could rescue him. And so on.
Intraspecies care (care of your own kind) is of course common, and makes utter sense evolutionarily speaking. Squirrels will attack crows feeding on familial roadkill or a dog threatening their young, and dolphins are reported to bite through harpoon lines to save their own. Primatologist Frans de Waal tells us in his book Good Natured that whales will put themselves between a hunter’s skiff and an injured whale (or even try to capsize the boat) so predictably that whalers take advantage of it. And there’s a YouTube favorite showing a dog weaving in and out of speeding traffic as it drags its injured friend or relative from further danger—a seemingly moral, even altruistic act (though as is typically the case with animal behavior, there’s no consensus on how to define the deed). Finally, I must mention that my husband, as a child, discovered his pet
raccoon whining over a hat made from a raccoon pelt. The animal was clearly distressed to find something so familiar yet so . . . dead.
I think my dogs would protect me if an intruder entered the house, but I can’t deny that they probably “love” their squeaky toys as much as they “love” me. What I mean to them on a deeper level is a mystery. But that’s okay. In fact, part of what’s so amazing about love is how it perplexes us. Indeed, after an article came out in National Geographic back in 2006 examining the science behind love—what we can learn from MRI images of the “madly in love” brain, the chemical pathways of desire, the biological answer to why love fades with time—letters from readers poured in, expressing distress at the attempt to quantify and demystify our sweetest emotion.
All that said, here is a book about animals entitled Unlikely Loves, in which I present a batch of delightful stories of unexpected affection between nonpeople. (As in my earlier book, a few very special people-animal tales snuck into the mix, but the majority are about nonhuman creatures. Also as in the last book, a lot of dog stories made the cut; canines may just be the most empathetic animals out there.) The behaviors we see in these cases certainly resemble key characteristics of love in the human world—never wanting to be apart, protecting another from insult or harm, watching over another during illness, providing motherly (or fatherly) care, and sometimes not letting go even when love goes unanswered. I’m not trying to prove that Fred the dog truly loves Blanche the goose, or even that my dog’s tail-wags and messy kisses mean anything more than he’s hungry. But it’s fun to imagine—and not an unreasonable notion—that there’s more to it than that.
I spoke with Tara Brach, PhD, a highly regarded teacher of Buddhist psychology and meditation, after happily learning that she had referred to Unlikely Friendships in one of her lectures. I treasure what she said about why these kinds of stories move us: “There’s something very fundamental about love, and it shines through in different species in different ways, taking different shapes. But when you see creatures caring beyond their narrow affiliation, it resonates as a more universal phenomenon. It makes you trust the essential goodness of life.”
That goodness of life, sadly, is something that’s often hard to see in the dense fog of tension that surrounds us. But I think it’s always there, within reach. It’s present in the generous people who take needy animals into their homes and hearts. And it’s present in moments of caring between two other species, whether the animals are being kind through parental instinct or some urge that’s inexpressible. As each new case emerges, we’re lifted a little further above the muddle, giving us a glimpse of the sun. Love, or whatever you want to call it, is a true life preserver.
Whatever term is used to describe animal affection, says Brach, “if it helps one recognize his or her own tendency for passion and kindness, that recognition will call those feelings forth more. These stories invite us to see what’s possible. They’re part of that momentum toward a more compassionate world.”
The author and her dog Tai
Section One
Who Loves You, Baby?
“There is no instinct like that of the heart.”
—Lord Byron
Is there any love stronger than that of a parent for his or her child? In this section, I pull together some of my favorite cases of one animal playing a maternal or paternal role in the life of another. For us, true parental love enhances a child’s life in countless ways, and those who grow up without it may struggle as a result. But in the nonhuman animal world, particularly for mammals, the commitment of the parent doesn’t just improve the course of a young animal’s life; it is often paramount to survival.
The twist in this collection, of course, is that the animals doing the parenting have no DNA ties to the creatures they are protecting. That’s what I cherish about these tales. Never mind evolutionary explanations—the animals seem to be responding to something deep within themselves.
{Vancouver Island, Canada, 2011}
The Great Dane and the Fawn
I met a pair of Great Danes in Costa Rica once. They lived at a B&B near Lake Arenal. What I remember about them is not just their impressive dimensions, but also their immediate comfort with and sweetness toward strangers. If in the morning you sat on the chairs of the front porch to watch the tropical birds at the feeder, a Dane that barely knew you would amble over and sit in your lap. Literally. Front paws on the ground, butt settled squarely on your thighs, it turned you into a human chair. No warning, no questions asked. Sit. Stay.
So when I heard about the Dane that laid its affection on a tiny fawn, I was relieved to hear the dog didn’t mistakenly crush the little animal with the weight of its love. In fact, the friendship between dog and deer, though rambunctious for a time, was as tender as it gets.
Dane owner Isobel Springett told me the story in such nice detail that I wanted to share many of her words.
But first, some introductions. There’s Kate—that’s the Great Dane—and Pippin, the abandoned fawn. Isobel got Kate as a six-month-old puppy. The family lives on Vancouver Island in Canada; this love story takes place at the Springett home at the edge of a small forest.
“Kate was the type of dog left behind after people pick from the litter,” Isobel recalls of her loving canine. “She was the plain black one, very scared—when I got her she wouldn’t even go into the house. She’d do the big flop and lie there until we carried her inside. But within two weeks she was over her fears, not afraid of anything. I was absolutely in love; she was amazing.”
And then Pippin came into Isobel’s and Kate’s lives. “It was early June when I first saw the tiny newborn fawn playing in one of our buttercup meadows under the nervous gaze of its mother,” Isobel says. “That was nothing new, but it was always a pleasure to see.”
Two days later, she says, she began hearing bleating sounds like a baby crying, distress calls, coming from nearby. When she and Kate went for a walk to their barn, “Kate discovered the fawn curled up on the edge of the driveway. She was fascinated!” Isobel left the baby there to see if the mom would come back for it. But a day later, she realized the fawn had been abandoned. It was a hot day and the baby wasn’t going to survive much longer without something to drink, “so we finally gave in and rescued it.”
And that’s where the Kate–Pippin story truly begins. Says Isobel, “Kate instantly took to the fawn, as if she’d been waiting for this moment. She went over every inch of her, and gave gentle little licks here and there. Pippin definitely got comfort from this and nestled in close to Kate’s side.”
The fawn was dehydrated and weighed less than five pounds, so Isobel started hydrating her with saline water from an eyedropper and then moved to milk replacement in a bottle.
Meanwhile, Pip began exploring the house and getting to know Kate better. Isobel didn’t want to make a pet out of the wild animal, so she intentionally didn’t handle her more than necessary. Instead, she let the dog do the touching. “Kate proved her value as a surrogate mother. Having a four-legged mom, even if it was a dog, was far superior to a two-legged one.”
Pip’s routine, like most babies, was sleep, eat, and poop, then sleep some more. “Every time she woke up,” Isobel says, “she’d look for Kate. And Kate seemed to realize this little thing was depending on her, and acted as if it was her job to help me feed her. She’d stand like a statue while Pip bunted her and fussed about.”
Pip soon knew the sounds of bottle preparation and would get excited to eat. One day Isobel heard Pip “racing in circles around the dining room table”—much like a wound-up puppy. “I knew then that she was going to be okay.”
With the fawn growing stronger every day, she began to follow Kate outside and might spend an hour poking around in the garden, always within a nose of the dog. But once she was comfortable outdoors as Kate’s shadow, the fawn’s wild instinct crept in: “Pip decided she’d had enough of the
house and wanted to sleep in the woods, like a real deer,” says Isobel. One morning Isobel saw her curled up at the edge of the woods with a wild deer standing nearby. “This was the first time I’d seen Pip associate with another deer. As I watched, the deer wandered into the woods and disappeared. I realized then that she had a chance at being integrated into the wild herd.”
Great Dane
Though the modern Great Dane has its roots in Germany and England, dogs of similar appearance are portrayed in Egyptian art dating back to 3000 b.c. The name, not surprisingly, originated in Denmark, but Denmark was not involved in developing the breed.
But she wasn’t ready to leave her comfortable home and surrogate mom just yet. Pip spent many hours playing and grazing on the front lawn that summer as Kate lounged nearby. The dog took the relationship quite seriously. “She would get a little worried if Pip was gone longer than usual, or if she suddenly decided to leave. But deer are incredibly independent, a fact that helped enormously in Pip’s survival.” To Kate, the behavior didn’t make sense since pups always stay with their mom. “If Pip wandered off, Kate would wait for ages for her to come back.”
Eventually, the fawn began spending more time with the wild deer drifting among the trees, floating effortlessly between her wild and domestic lives. When winter came, Pip would show up on the wooden deck, her hooves click-clacking her arrival, wanting to come in to visit Kate and have a bite of grain and bread.
Domestic Dog
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Carnivora
Family: Canidae
Genus: Canis
Species: Canis lupus
Subspecies: Canis lupus familiaris
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