These dogs could teach us all a thing or two about friendship

Jennifer S Holland collects stories of dogs who made friends in unlikely places

Author Jennifer S Howard with her dog Tai which once saved a chameleon's life (Washington Post)

When Jennifer S Holland’s pet chameleon went missing, she figured it was only a matter of time before the tiny lizard would die of dehydration. A day later, Holland found him safe and sound, nestled gently in the moist, warm mouth of her dog, Tai.

“I don’t know why Tai didn’t bite down,” the DC-based writer says. “She [would chew] on everything else.”

Though we can’t know Tai’s thought process, it does seem that dogs have an uncanny ability to empathize across species lines, Holland says. In fact, dogs are the original cross-species communicators, having befriended us humans some 30,000 years ago.

For her new book, “Unlikely Friendships: Dogs,” Holland has collected 37 true tales of dogs bonding with creatures across the zoological spectrum, including reptiles and birds. The way dogs can pick up on the needs of creatures so different from themselves is inspirational, says Holland, who will give a talk at Politics and Prose on Wednesday.

“Looking at the current political climate, I’m starting to think maybe we should be learning something from these dogs,” she says.

Poldi, a Belgian Malinois,has a pygmy owl for a best buddy (Tanja Brandt)

Hooting and howling

Ingo and Poldi, a Belgian Malinois and a pygmy owl, live in Dusseldorf, Germany, where they go outside and watch deer together. Their owner was surprised when the two bonded because Ingo is not a very friendly dog, Holland says. “This is a dog that you’d expect to immediately pick up and shake this bird and kill it, and instead they are really buddies,” she says. One time, when Poldi’s foot was injured in a hawk attack, Ingo gently licked the owl’s wound and kept her company while she healed.

Laska, a German shepherd-like dog, helped nurse this abandoned fawn back to health (Frank Hecker Naturfotografie)

Licked back to life

In 2009, the Hecker family in Germany took in a fawn who’d lost her mother. Despite the family’s best efforts, the little deer, Tirza, remained stressed and weak. As a last-ditch effort, they let their gentle dog, Laska, try to soothe the deer. Laska licked the fawn until she calmed down enough to eat — and the two became inseparable until Tirza grew up and returned to the company of other deer in a nearby wildlife preserve.

A stable relationship

When Leslie Stark brings her Doberman to the stable in Lima, Peru, where she keeps her horse, the strangest thing happens: The dog lies down and the horse gives him a full-body massage. Afterward, the two romp around together, though Stark “keeps an eye on them and pulls the dog away if it looks like they might be getting too rough,” Holland says.

Meerkat manor

When the Bent family in Derbyshire, England, brought home a meerkat named Timone, they thought she’d join up with their existing colony of meerkats. Instead, the established meerkat gang attacked the newcomer, leaving her isolated and scared. Enter Poppy, a Chihuahua-Maltese mix. “This little dog, it’s like he noticed the meerkat was lonely and filled in,” Holland says. Now the two are inseparable, eating, sleeping and even taking baths together.

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