I’ve spent time with supposed intellectuals, credential-clutching Ivy League types who couldn’t find their own ass with both hands and a roadmap, people so wrapped up in their own mythology they’ve forgotten what actual intelligence looks like when it’s staring them dead in the face with those dark, knowing eyes.
And then there’s Sharka.
This Portuguese Water Dog, this magnificent, curly-haired genius, operates on a frequency most humans will never access. She’s not just smart in that “oh look, the doggy learned a trick” patronizing bullshit way we congratulate ourselves for training lesser beings. No. Sharka’s intelligence is the real deal, the kind that makes you question every smug assumption you ever had about consciousness, about who’s really in charge here, about what it means to actually see the world instead of just stumbling through it half-blind with your Ph.D. flapping behind you like a fucking security blanket.
You know what Stanford gave me? Debt and the ability to name-drop Stanford. You know what Sharka’s got? Pure, uncut awareness. The kind of intuition and perception that cuts through the noise, the pretense, the endless human carnival of self-importance. She watches. She understands. She judges. And unlike most people I’ve met, in seminar rooms or boardrooms or anywhere else where credentials supposedly matter, when Sharka decides you’re worth her time, she’s not performing some elaborate social ritual. She’s making an actual choice based on actual intelligence.
The rest of us are just catching up.
I’ve seen a look in dogs’ eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts.
John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America