Like many of us these days, I sometimes question the news. I scan the newspaper headlines, catch up on the 6 o’clock TV report and gaze like a bleary-eyed zombie at news on the computer screen at my desk. Some of it is still interesting to me. The rest, I must admit, has made me a bit jaded.

A lot of news is boring and even more of it is downright depressing. Call me an optimist or call me naïve, but I’d like to roll things back about ten years. Ten years ago, beautiful TV anchors weren’t so tough and hard-nosed. Ten years ago, things were … well, they were pretty good.

Ask my dogs. They’ll tell you the same thing. Dogs can sense fear and they can sense kindness. Are your dogs happy when they watch the news?

We often hear the saying: “No news is good news.” Until lately, I dismissed that saying as meaning “If you don’t hear otherwise, then everything’s OK.” But, maybe there is a whole different meaning to it.

Why do we watch the news in the first place? Do we watch it to let us know if we should make the trip to the next dog show? Do we watch it to know if there is a re-call on our favorite dog food, and if the latest vaccine has been properly tested? Many of these things – and more – are reported in our own dog media (and more correctly!). The fact is, we watch mainstream news for information we cannot otherwise obtain.

I know a dog lover who, years ago, spent an entire summer not listening to the radio, not watching TV and not even reading a newspaper. By the end of the summer, nothing substantially different had happened to his town, or to his state or to his country. There

Were no bombs exploding anywhere. The banks were open and doing business. The vet was still charging just a bit too much for his procedures (and he still had to pay at the time of service). The electric company was still as nasty as ever. The phone company hadn’t yet felt the competition of cell phones or the internet that would remind them that even the mighty can fall. Oh … and GM and it’s buddies were still flying high (in private corporate jets).

Agreed, there have been changes (good and bad) in the forty years since my dog-loving friend conducted his experiment to see the consequences of freeing oneself from the impact of daily media. How strange it feels, realizing how quickly those forty years have gone … how much one wishes to get the most sensation and benefit of every minute. Changes have indeed happened, but some things haven’t changed at all.

What has not changed – not even a fraction of an ounce – are the sudsy joys, dimensions of responsibility for other life, and all the colors of emotion from having a dog. When it comes to dogs, there is no such thing as “pet” versus “show dog.” All dogs are someone’s pet to one degree or another. By the very nature of that relationship (and it is most definitely a relationship) there is a great deal of information, which (to borrow from a previous paragraph) cannot otherwise be obtained.

There is a difference between the kind of information obtained from our dogs, and the kind of information obtained from mainstream news to which so many of us seem “addicted.” The thing about news from the media – even though it triggers our emotions all the way from laughter to depression and hopelessness – is that it’s “flat” … flat, one-sided, and completely on their terms.

Dog lovers can’t ask media news for the rest of a story that seems important to them. We can’t ask for the other side of a story in order to get a balanced point of view or to feel our own sense of truth (thereby making our own decisions). Our relationship to mainstream media (as it is today) is almost like being told only what “They” believe we should know … and nothing more.

If information is what we’re after, then what kind of information could possibly be more important than information about life – opening our minds and hearts and souls and showing us how great we can be.

Dog lovers are so much greater than we know. If it’s information about how to find and keep one’s balance in a troubled world, then we don’t have to look any further than the dogs in our houses. Chances are, they feel pretty good about themselves, pretty secure about life and pretty happy all around. Maybe our dogs know something we only wonder about … After all, aside from the development of a few new breeds, dogs haven’t changed much in the past forty years, have they?

When it comes to life and all its craziness, dogs have common sense. They love, they laugh (or try to) and they have faith in a higher being (Listen up, because that’s supposed to be us).

That old saying, “No news is good news,” was probably said by an observant dog lover.