Perceived Injustices

Just because something indicating an injustice may be seen, this does not always mean it has necessarily occurred.

For example, two dogs are thrown their biscuit each for returning inside as requested.

One biscuit lands where the hound sees and consumes it quickly.

The other biscuit breaks as it lands in front of the wolf: a piece lands where she can see and thus consumes it; but the other piece slides between her legs and behind to where only the hound sees it – and then scoots between the wolf’s hind legs and snaps it up.

Whereupon the wolf is confused as to what has just happened.

Where did her piece go?

So I give the wolf another biscuit, which gratifies the wolf and erases the perplexed sense of loss from her face.

But now the hound sees this “second giving” in which she has not been included and feels wrongly left out of the equation.

A human could say that the hound had been “greedy;” that she “should not have” eaten the wolf’s second piece; and therefore, that the hound deserves this sense of disparity.

Further, the tallied data is that the hound got one and a half pieces of biscuit, while the wolf initially only received one half.

Therefore, technically, feeding the wolf another biscuit while then excluding the hound “evens” their intake – and it could be said that justice has been quite literally “served.”

However, dogs do not think in human “abstractions” once food hits the ground, senses become engaged, and primal directives take over.

Dogs register opportunities, and they assess and act upon them according to their long-encoded internal “laws of canine survival.”

In this case, the hound gauged the location of the piece as being nowhere near the wolf’s mouth, so it was “fair” “game” as long as she could act quickly and smoothly enough to not incite the wolf’s ire.

According to the hound, she had executed her successful play according to “pack rules” and therefore had earned the piece.

So why has she been excluded from second serving? What could she have possibly done to deserve such treatment?

Such questions are now being conveyed audibly by certain low-toned groan-whines as the hound quietly grouses to herself, yet volume increases as she directs hurt inquiries to me.

The only way for my actions to be seen as “just and fair” is to give each dog a third serving of biscuit!