Science is finally catching up to what we dog lovers have always known: Dogs are fuzzy people. Their vocabulary is astronomically larger than simply “ball” and “din-din.” They understand everything. Our words. Our tone. Our body language. Our emotions. Dogs know us intimately. More intimately, perhaps, than people do.
And they do it without words. They leap on us when we come home. They lean into us when we need a friend. They put a paw on us and lick our faces when we’re crying. They smile when we play together. They smile even more when they have something they know darned well they shouldn’t have and won’t give it back.
That very experience, in fact, was the inspiration for my novel Golden Boy. I thought I was playing fetch with my dog. But he was playing keep away. I’d throw the ball. He’d get it, then come within a couple of feet and just stand there with the ball in his mouth, drooling a wicked smile, tail helicoptering at warp speed.
When I tried to take the ball, he’d move his head just slightly out of the way. Still wearing that big grin. I’d grab again. He’d pull away more. I’d take a step forward, and he’d tear off across the yard. I could almost hear him yelling, “Psych!” as he ran off, leaping with glee.
After several minutes of chasing him around trying to get the ball, with him lunging this way and that, doubling back, darting between my legs, dodging trees, just plain taunting me, I thought to myself as I stood there panting (he wasn’t at all) and holding the stitch in my side, If that dog were human, he’d be an incredible running back. And thus, the seed for Golden Boy was sown: A dog becomes a human football hero.
It took me several years and many, many incarnations to get it right. My original idea was that the dog in the story was somehow magically transformed into a person. But the light bulb went off when I read an article about how dogs and humans share between 80–90% of their DNA. That’s what I mean when I say science finally caught up. I’d known all along that dogs were much more than just man’s best friend. Dogs are our cousins. Our family.
If you’ve had a basic biology course, you know that a good many of the thousands of genes we humans carry aren’t “turned on.” The genes for blue eyes or red hair are there in most of us. They’re just not activated. The same goes for dogs.
