Let's begin with the opening lines of Lawrence Vambe's remarkable history of pre-colonial Zimbabwe, An Ill-Fated People.

Almost as soon as you began to be able to absorb facts and to recognize human and animal forms you saw dogs everywhere. There was an infinity of dogs, little, big, tame or vicious dogs whose physical condition largely depended on what they could sniff and scavenge out of the village garbage heap rather than on the generosity and animal-loving nature of their masters.

Now, let's isolate (or bracket) and give thought to this line: "...the generosity and animal-loving nature of their masters." What type of generosity is this? The generosity that we find in a dog owner has its cause in the curious human need for something that is needy. Humans have the need to be needed. The dog owner needs the dog's neediness. And the dog is loyal because its needs are met by the owner; and the owner's need for being needed is satisfied by the dog's complete dependence. And the more the dog depends on the master, the more love it gets from the owner. This is why certain dog owners often compare the care of a dog to the raising of a child—a child has nothing but needs. And the only thing we can fully trust is a thing that gives us all of its needs.

A person whose worst fear is betrayal is the sort of person who owns a dog.

Once the relationship between the dog and its owner is established, there is a strange development. The dog owner allows the dog to take control of more and more of his/her life. But this reward of control is in the context of the exchange of needs—the need for being needed that is satisfied by the absolute neediness, the dog. (Cats are not needy.) So, when a dog owner says, "I do not walk my dog, the dog walks me," this is the need for being needed in its state of freedom. Because the dog has surrendered all of its needs, it is permitted to dominate the need that needs its neediness.

The end result of this domination finds its expression in the dog owner picking up his/her dog's shit. For many of us, picking up dog poop during walks in the park or the city street is the very reason why we do not own the creature. We have no access to the pleasure of being fully needed. (We prefer cats.) Indeed, the owner of the dog wants us to see him/her picking up the poop. The visibility of the lowly act adds to the first pleasure—being dominated by the need the feeds your neediness. Everyone knows it's disgusting, and the dog owner knows that what they are doing disgusts others, but they are indifferent to our disgust because all they see in this picking up (a raw aufhebung), and what they want us to see, is an absolute love of the thing that needs it absolutely. Holding the poop in his/her hand, the dog owner is showing us the power of this love. We cannot love like them. The dog owner's love is beyond us.