Hot Dog! My Milanese Mutt Understands Climate Change Better Than Humans

-Essay-

MILAN — Even my dog is smarter than climate change deniers. And this past week, as a scorching heatwave swept across Europe, he refused to go outside. He doesn’t need government decrees or emergency warnings to understand that from mid-morning to mid-afternoon, the city’s sidewalks are unbearable places to avoid whenever possible. Just seeing the leash unnerves him.

Typically, that same leash triggers joyful leaps and pirouettes, but lately he just stares at it with a puzzled look, tilts his head, then flops back down on the cool kitchen floor, in the exact spot his canine instincts tell him is the breeziest, right where the draft from the window flows in.

“Let’s go,” “pee,” and “go out,” the magic words we always try to avoid saying by accident in conversation because of how excited they make him. Now, they get barely earn a flick of his ear. “Let’s go? But where? And what for? Leave me alone, I beg you. You go out into that furnace if you must. I won’t.”

Survival instincts

He doesn’t need words. He just knows, or rather, he senses things by instinct. He doesn’t care if people around him deny climate change, or if the bartender dragging chairs across the terrace shrugs and says “it’s summer, it’s always been hot, let’s not get dramatic, ma’am.” He doesn’t care if someone claims renewables are a scam, that the economy can’t be sacrificed for a bunch of radical environmentalists, that it’s all ideological nonsense, and that electric cars are already outdated.

He, the mutt, knows better. He would rather risk bursting his bladder than set paw outside. So I take him out very early in the morning, or after the sun has gone down. He pauses cautiously at the door, savoring the last traces of cool air in the dim light of the hallway, because he knows that once he crosses that threshold, it’s like stepping into a furnace, where fighting for a sliver of shade becomes a matter of survival.

It’s clear that this little creature, a mutt rescued from a kennel in Calabria — the southern “toe” of Italy’s boot-shaped peninsula — knows a thing or two about survival. He slims himself down and walks close to the walls, staying within the razor-thin strip of shadow cast by the buildings. The moment he spots a tree (not even a full tree, but a rose bush by the edge of a flowerbed), he bolts toward it like a madman. That’s enough for him. Then he stops, tongue hanging out, catches his breath, and steels himself for the next stretch.

To reach the first patch of green (although it’s more of a dried-up yellow, to be honest), we have to walk along streets where there’s no escape from the brutal heat. The combination of concrete, asphalt, stone and sunlight reflecting off car hoods makes the air nearly impossible to breathe. On the way to the park, we pass an office building where the air conditioning vents shoot out hot air like cocktail sprayers.

Learn from Copenhagen

He, the mutt, knows this, and starts tugging at the leash to cross the street and get to the other sidewalk. A tactical move, because his doggy memory helps him steer clear of trouble. Like when we run into a growling dog (always the same one, always at the same time, always on the same stretch of street) and he throws himself against my legs. Don’t worry, says the muscular owner straining to hold the beast, he’s a good boy. That may be, but the mutt doesn’t buy it. And he won’t move until that other dog is long gone.

He learns from experience. He avoids what harms him. He’s smarter than the deniers, as I said. Smarter, too, than many of the politicians running this country. Because he’s an animal, and in the great game of evolution, he hasn’t lost the instincts and the sense of what keeps him alive.

Let’s pedestrianize the city center, he would say.

If he could talk, he’d tell the mayor: get rid of all these cars, one per household at most. And park them on just one side of the street. On the other side, plant rows of trees. And no more stores with the air conditioning cranked up and the door flung wide open. So much waste and so much heat for the sake of cooling off a few mannequins in shop windows.

And then, bring back the “vedovelle,” which, for anyone unfamiliar with Milan, are the little green cast-iron fountains with dragon-shaped spouts. They used to provide free public water for kids, delivery cyclists, tourists and dogs. These days, you rarely see one, because they’ve closed half of them. Shade, water and benches? Only on café terraces — only if you pay — in this city where everything comes with a price tag.

Let’s pedestrianize the city center, he would say, since in Milan it’s small enough to cross on foot in half an hour. Let bikes rule, like in Copenhagen. My dog has never been to Copenhagen, but I’m sure he’d love it. Because by now, you must have figured it out, too: Mutts understand more than most people do.