In the last BeeBee blog I talked about the real possibility that, thanks to her various impairments, BeeBee’s brain works differently. I use the word “impairment” for convenience, fully aware of the fact that whatever she experiences is normal for her. It’s conceivable that she looks at me and the other pets and thinks how lucky she is to possess the wherewithal to live with those suffering from so many limitations. Relative to perceptual ability, I’m sure even the average normal dog and cat thinks that about any humans they live with every day.
Just as humans born lacking a particular sensory ability develop enhanced ability in their other senses, so has BeeBee. Because she has limited vision in addition to her deafness, she uses her nose to evaluate her surroundings a fair amount. However, she doesn’t use it any more than a “normal” pup, but it does appear that she uses it a different way. If I seem to be stumbling as I try to describe this, it’s because I am. It’s as if she collects an additional quantum of scent data in addition to the usual, or maybe even instead of the usual when she sniffs.
I also suspect that BeeBee is either capable of collecting and analyzing scent data so effectively that she needn’t orient her nose in the direction of the source to collect it, or that or she is capable of hearing things the other dogs can’t hear. Yeah, I know. She’s deaf. She startles every time I wake her to go out. I can vacuum next to her sleeping head and she snoozes on.
BUT, there have been several times outside when she suddenly began moving very purposefully as if zeroing responding to some very specific sensory source. On at least two of these occasions, there was no wind and her head was neither up in the air like a dog air-scenting or down on the ground like a dog following a trail. Neither of the other dogs showed any inclination in moving the same direction she was. I suppose she could have been hallucinating, but she didn’t act like she was.
And although it appears that BeeBee learned to alarm bark from the other dogs, there are now occasions when she will suddenly stop whatever she’s doing, look very intent and give that same bark. Interestingly, Frica will now assume the same stance and join her. However Watson, who is losing his hearing, does not.
Here again, were I to judge her against some normal standard, I’d say that BeeBee is hallucinating and that this is further evidence of her damaged brain. But I wonder… Suppose BeeBee is only deaf to my, i.e. the human, range and maybe even the bulk of normal dog range, much of which is extra-sensory compared to the limited human span. What if what she hears dwells in the extreme periphery of the canine range, in a range that makes her ability extra-sensory relative to other dogs, and extra-extra sensory relative to me?
It’s difficult for me to get my head around this and yet it doesn’t strike me as all that impossible. What also intrigues me is, just as ancient humans had no trouble acknowledging the value of their animals relative extra-sensory perception for their–the human’s–own well-being, Fric apparently has no problem using BeeBee’s different perception to add an extra dimension to her own life. On the other hand, were BeeBee a child who happened to hear or smell, or taste or feel what others could not, other humans would focus all their energy on getting that child to pass as normal. Luckily for BeeBee, she was born a dog.