Recently, I’ve been thinking and blogging about Scottish Terriers as models for healthy, victorious living. They’re worthy teachers and guides, not least in the matter of self-respect, dignity, and pride. What I admire most in my Scotties is the deep dignity in the mature Scottish Terrier soul. Theirs is a quiet, robust sense-of-self that is nothing short of magnificent. It’s what fuels their “big dog in a little dog’s body” personality manifest in how they walk, relate, and subdue life.
What’s refreshing about them, I believe, is their authenticity—they’re the real thing. Scotties don’t posture as humans do; they don’t pretend; they simply are creatures of enormous dignity and self-respect. Unlike modern silliness in American education in which esteem is divorced from measurable reality in character and achievement and thereby everyone is pronounced “special” by fiat, my dogs claim nothing in the way of dignity and pride that is not real. Their regal demeanor is in their bones and it infuses and animates everything they do.
Dignity comes readily when the world is at your feet. The test, however, is when your life is shattered and nothing any longer makes sense. Our late-Willie wore his larger than life dignity intact to the end. A golden wheaten, strikingly handsome, Willie was what Charlotte calls “an old soul,” one whose personality and character seem too large for a single lifetime, inviting notions of prior lives and reincarnation. In his final days, when his liver cancer filled his stomach with bile and made eating impossible and when he scarcely had strength to get out of his bed, he dignified even his wretching by facing away into a private corner and then begged forgiveness with his big brown eyes for making a mess!
I believe one of the reasons our Scotties are such authentic models of dignity and pride and why they impact our lives as they do is because their dignity and pride never come to us piece-mealed, blurred, or multi-tasked. They put themselves heart and soul into everything they do so our companionship with them is full-measure and undiluted. By contrast, we outsource pride from the work of our hands these days and it shows in products that don’t work and a service sector that doesn’t care. Dignity and pride in the workplace are today as quaint-sounding as ‘dime stores’ and ‘dime store cowboys.’ No wonder we struggle to muster dignity and pride: we divorced them from our bones and our being and the work of our hands long ago.
My favorite Saint from medieval times is Saint Francis, founder of the Franciscan Order. Statues, paintings, and other depictions of him abound in our home and gardens at Las Golondrinas, complete with Scotties and other critters with whom he communed. One of my favorite sayings attributed to him is this one about the dignity of work:
He who works with his hands is a laborer.
He who works with his hands and his mind, is a craftsman.
He who works with his hands and his mind and his heart, is an artist.
The Scottie Way is the Way of the true ‘artist’—the way of heart, soul, mind, and strength. Dignity and pride are not embellishments for the Scottish Terrier; they are expressions of being a Scottie; they are simply the Scottie Way. That’s why they’re real. Whether these dogs are on top of the world, or facing death, I’ve watched them keep dignity and pride intact. Scotties are no ‘wannabes.’ They’re the real thing. And because of it, they appeal to my jaded senses as examples for noble living worthy of following.
Joseph Harvill, publisher of Great Scots Magazine
Trouble is, by the time we acquire sufficient wisdom to read situations discerningly, it’s too late to matter. And Life has ways of getting pretty stinky when we misjudge situations!