My godson Taoh recently adopted a pound dog, about eight or nine months old – a huge black-with-some-white-patches beast, a mixture of bulldog and god knows what else. (Huskie?) He named her Parker.

Actually, maybe “huge” is an exaggeration but Parker is very thick, and weighty, and strong, and definitely already a big dog, on her swift way to becoming huge. She is very loving, just wants to jump on you and lick you to death and give you little toothy love bites up and down your arms and hands. Remarkable, really, that such an impulsive, immature creature shows such instinctive restraint with those teeth, which could easily do serious damage. When I let her practically swallow my entire hand, I feel brave and daring, like some kind of lion tamer sticking his head in the animal’s mouth. Taoh is trying to train her not to bite at all, but I think that’s hopeless, at least for now. (Maybe he can train her not to jump on people. Eventually.)

This dog, poor thing, experiences intense separation anxiety when she is apart from Taoh. In fact, if he leaves her alone in the house, she goes crazy, tears into things, knocks objects down off shelves, tears stuff apart. Taoh thinks he’s slowly training her to calm down but it’s looking dubious. She does seem okay to wait for him in the car when he takes her places with him. The other night, he and I took a one-hour-plus swim at the local community center while Parker stayed in the car. When we got back to the car, she seemed calm and fine.

Then we decided to live a little dangerously. We left her at the house while we went out for dinner, figuring we’d be very quick.

Taoh has cameras in his house so he can spy on Parker when he’s not there. At the restaurant, I got up to pee, and when I got back to the table, he fixed me with a grim look. (I thought maybe I had done something wrong for a moment.)

“Do you have something to tell me?” I asked.

His phone was in his hand. He showed me the picture.

Parker wasn’t in the frame, but the shredded lemons and paper towels and other detritus strewn across the floor were visible.

“Oh man,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “I thought I could maybe leave her alone for 20 minutes or so, but I shouldn’t have.” He seemed truly dispirited. “I just wish she’d mellow out already.”

I asked, “Do you think she goes crazy because she’s anxious, or because she’s lonely, or both?”

“Anxious,” he replied instantly, in the tone of someone who’s done his research.

“So then it’s doggie trauma.”

“Yeah. She can’t help it,” he muttered resignedly.

I contemplated that. I could not imagine the level of existential terror that could just take me over completely like that.

Or maybe I could imagine it but didn’t want to.

“I guess she was abandoned as a puppy,” I hypothesized.

“Probably,” Taoh wearily agreed.

“Wow,” I said. “Isn’t it ironic that she’s behaving in exactly the way that makes it most likely she will be abandoned again?” I was kidding of course. Kind of.

Taoh replied with a little wry humor of his own. “I wish I could tell her that: ‘Do this one more time and I’m taking you back to the pound!’ Unfortunately, she wouldn’t understand.”

I know the thought does cross his mind; it must – the “maybe I should just return her to the pound” thought. But Taoh won’t do that. He’s got too strong a core of creaturely decency, and besides, Parker really is a very sweet dog. Currently, she’s a lot more work than fun for Taoh, but – fed up though he may feel much of the time – he is sure that will change, and that Parker will eventually chill out, and I suspect he’s right. (As I say, he’s done his research.)

But in the meantime, Parker simply can’t help herself when that primal animal fear takes hold of her. And Taoh understands. He’s not sentimental about it; he certainly makes no cooing sympathetic noises about it, but he isn’t mean to her either. His attitude is just very dry, very matter-of-fact.

I admire this. I view it as something like bottomless compassion (though Taoh might throw up at that phrasing, and tell me that now he’s seriously reconsidering the pound option).

And it makes me wonder if we humans could ever summon that measure of acceptance for one another, with all the ways we witness each other acting out old pain and trauma, in annoying ways, upsetting and unpleasant ways, ways we’re not even conscious of, ways we cannot help because we’re in the grip of ancient fears. I think that, more often than not, we tend to judge others, and ourselves, for compulsively “dysfunctional” behavior patterns, rather than applying the simple, firm patience my godson affords his dog.

Of course, practically speaking, it is generally far more complicated to tolerate the behavior of other humans who disrupt or disturb our lives. And if they’re not our own children – or we didn’t adopt them like Taoh adopted Parker – we naturally don’t feel obligated to put up with people’s shit.

And I’m not saying that ought to change. In fact, I plead no contest to having 86’d quite a few “difficult” people from my own life, and I’m neither remorseful nor regretful about that.

But it does strike me as an interesting possibility … what if human beings typically had as much patience, tolerance, understanding, and implicit compassion for one another – with all our inconveniencing and unappealing patterns of behavior and communication – as Taoh has for his dog?

What if we could – at least – cultivate a similar degree of detached non-judgment of each other’s weaknesses and core vulnerabilities?

I believe that some day humanity, en masse, will be able to do just that, as a matter of course, just like Taoh assumes as a matter of course that he will continue to care for Parker.

And in the meantime, I look at my own life and reflect on certain undesirable conditions that I create for myself over and over again, seemingly helplessly, with little or no control over the fears that drive my self-sabotage in various ways, ways I don’t consciously understand and can’t seem to help.

Maybe God or someone could try to explain myself to me, but I wouldn’t be capable of understanding, just as Taoh’s dog isn’t capable of understanding his English sentences in sufficient detail.

But perhaps that is part of what is so charming about Parker. Not her fears or her freak-outs specifically, but her helpless unselfconscious total emotional transparency and essential innocence. Her happy uncontrollable doggy love bites are as pure and uncomplicated as any earthly expression of love could possibly be. I suspect that’s partly why Taoh doesn’t get that upset about the biting (though I’m sure he means it when he says he is trying to train her not to do that).

Maybe some higher consciousness can see human beings in just such an innocent light, despite how complex we appear to ourselves.