Oh my My little STEIN

Oh my my little Stein

            Gertrude Stein, famous quote from Geographical History of America, “I am I because my little dog knows me.” To me, I feel that the dog reference is important, and can even answer what she is doing in the piece. There are many things to say about this so for now I will only stick to one idea and come back and fill in much more. So I will go toward mixing Gertrude Stein with the dog whisper. This little dog knows me can be consider a friend, but this friend is not human. I believe that this dog deals with discipline, loyalty, listening, nervousness/excitement, dominant/submission, domestication/colonization, and all this somehow deal with human or are related to humans or are the image of people that do not use the human mind, but human nature

             Let’s start out with the history of dogs, shall we. Dogs were probably the first tame animals. They have accompanied humans for some 10,000 years. Some scientists assert that all dogs, domestic and wild, share a common ancestor in the small South Asian wolf.(nationgeographic web)  But why where they domesticated? To hunt for human? To protect things? How did a dog become a man best friend and why? All these questions have to deal with Stein. She explain about number, “they have something to do with money and with tears and flat land, not much with mountains or lakes, yes with blades of grass, not much a little but not much flowers, some with birds, not much with dogs, quite a bit with oxen and with cows and sheep a little with sheep and so have numbers anything to with the mind. They have nothing to do with dogs and human nature.” (p.406) things like oxen, cows, chicken and sheep have all been domesticated for food or money. Dog have not. They have very little worth to human existence. But anybody that is anybody, everyone that has a dog thinks they are so important. There is an emotional worth. It is just human nature. Maybe its loyalty, maybe it the quietness of a friend or it is just love.

           

            “Any dog can get excited he can know that he can get excited and he can know that he intends to get excited and he can gradually get forced to get excited although he does not care about it.”(382) Stein gives clue that excitement is just nervousness, and she states, “When a dog is nervous.”(392)  I am a very dedicated dog whisper fan and as such I have learned that nervousness and excitement are of the same high energy and can influence when a dog attacks. This is animal instinct. A dog was once a wild animal until the domestication. (as were human, I think) “Dogs do behave as they please that is as they naturally please until they are told not to.”(374) We can help or hinder dogs with discipline. One must act like an alpha but not hurt, just be assertive. Which bring me to the dominant and submission part, which is:

“I am I because my little dog knows me, even if the little dog is a big one, and yet a little  dog knowing me does not really make me be I no not really because after all being I I am I has really nothing to do with the little dog knowing me, he is my audience, but an audience never does prove to you that you are you. “(404-05)

A class order for do/ wolf, alpha is more dominant and is more like a bigger dog, is more important, superior. The little dog is submissive and will stay in its place and follow orders, and listen. A perfect audience, if it challenges the alpha, it will be harmed.

            “I am I because my little dog knows me, but perhaps he does not and if he did I would not be I. oh no oh no.”(402)