Maupassant once remarked that he felt kinship with dogs who howl – that their howling amounts to a lament addressed to nobody, traveling nowhere, bearing no message fit for translation. The sound issues forth and dissipates, pure expenditure of breath and ache. I have always understood what he meant. Some expressions exist without audience or destination. They persist because the body requires them.
I learned this early, listening to dogs.
My first tutor was Maple, a Cairn Terrier with a coat the color of dry leaves and beach sand, a creature assembled from stubbornness and affection in equal measure. She belonged to my childhood with the firmness of an axiom. Maple possessed the alertness of a sentry and the dignity of a small monarch. Her ears pivoted at the slightest provocation. Her body angled itself toward the world as though expecting instruction from it.
She had a howl that emerged rarely, ceremonially, usually in response to sirens or the moon rising with particular emphasis. It was not loud, yet it carried a piercing steadiness, a narrow beam of sound that seemed to pass through walls and weather alike. When she howled, she did not look at us. Her gaze lifted elsewhere, toward something without coordinates. The sound neither asked nor accused. It existed because it had to.
As a child, I found this both beautiful and unsettling. I would sit on the floor beside her, hand resting on the coarse warmth of her flank, feeling the vibration pass through bone and muscle. The howl felt older than language, older than explanation. Maple did not seek consolation. She did not expect response. The sound seemed to complete a circuit entirely within her own being.
Years later, another dog entered my life by inheritance rather than choice. Mia arrived with my grandfather’s belongings, a Shi Tzu whose body bore the unmistakable evidence of indulgence. She was round in places dogs are rarely round, carried forward by short legs that performed their task with stoic resignation. My grandfather had loved her with the generous negligence of old age. Walks were infrequent. Treats were abundant. On occasion, fast food wrappers appeared, and with them the improbable knowledge that a dog had once eaten a cheeseburger meant for a human hand.
We tried, briefly and earnestly, to correct this legacy. Smaller portions. Encouragement. Gentle persuasion. Mia regarded these efforts with placid incomprehension. Her habits were sedimented. Her body had accepted its shape as fate. She moved through rooms like a small upholstered object with opinions.
Unlike Maple, Mia rarely howled. She communicated through sighs, through the strategic placement of her bulk, through a look that suggested ancient disappointment. When she did vocalize, it emerged as a low, wavering sound, less proclamation than leakage. Yet in those moments, I recognized the same principle at work. The sound did not seek remedy. It announced presence. It occupied air.
Living with dogs teaches a particular metaphysics. They experience emotion without narration. Grief does not require justification. Desire does not require architecture. When they suffer, the body speaks directly. When they rejoice, it does so with a simplicity that resists irony. The howl, the sigh, the whine – these are not messages encoded for interpretation. They are releases, valves opening under pressure.
Watching Maple age, then leave, I learned that the body retains its habits even as its strength recedes. Her final months were quieter, her movements economical, yet when the sirens passed and the night arranged itself just so, the howl returned. Thinner, perhaps, but resolute. As though something within her insisted on completing its gesture one last time.
Mia, too, aged into a softness that bordered on abstraction. She slept often, breathing audibly, dreaming with small movements of her paws. When she rose, it was with deliberation. Her presence filled rooms without effort. She accepted care with mild surprise, as though kindness were a phenomenon that continued to puzzle her.
I think often of Maupassant’s image: the lament that goes nowhere. It seems bleak at first, stripped of hope. Yet living alongside these animals reshaped it for me. A sound addressed to nobody is not wasted. It does not require reply to justify itself. It completes something within the one who gives it voice.
There are days when human speech feels overburdened – weighted with expectation, misdirection, the need to persuade or perform. In those moments, I think of Maple lifting her head, of Mia sighing herself into sleep. Their expressions carried no thesis. They altered nothing. Yet they mattered because they were faithful to sensation.
Perhaps that is enough. To give voice to what passes through us without demanding it arrive anywhere. To allow the body its lament, its music, its brief occupation of air. Dogs understand this without instruction. They howl, and the sound dissolves, having done exactly what it was meant to do.
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