A good police dog has not only a large vocabulary but also
extraordinary social skills. He understands many forms of human
culture and has his being within them. He can be taken to the
scene of a liquor-store robbery and asked to search, with the
handler trusting that he won’t molest the customers or other
police officers or the clerk behind the counter. He knows what
belongs and what doesn’t, sharing our community and our
xenophobia as well. He can take down a criminal who is attacking
his handler on Monday and on Tuesday play with the patients at
the children’s hospital. These dogs, then, are glorious, but for
anyone familiar with working dogs they are not surprising, any
more than your pet dog is surprising in his or her ability to
distinguish between your friends and strangers. But someone
might say that a dog’s courtesy with guests is surprising, or
that it ought at least to be remarked on that such profound
connections between two species can happen at all. (It should be
surprising, perhaps, that we can