MIND MOVES: The work of Prof Samuel Gosling of the University of Texas, who has taken measures of human personality and applied them to animals, may have caught your eye.
Certainly it suggests, what animal owners have always known; that animals indeed have their own characteristics, capacities and idiosyncrasies by which they may be distinguished.
This animal individuality, the inimitability of each animal, makes the question of "breed" an ambivalent one. While there are distinctive characteristics associated with specific breeds: to guard, rescue and assist humans, owners do not usually wish to confine the attributes of their pets to the mere outcome of ancestry.
Indeed, in instances where a breed has any negative ascriptions, owners will hasten to assert their animal's particular personality and defend their pet from such uniform descriptions. Owner-to-owner conversations often include the latest canine accomplishments. Cat owners know the precision with which their own cats choose them. None is in doubt about the personality traits of their pets.
The family pet is personal. In and through its relationship with family members it develops its own routines, anticipations, reactions and behaviours and an understanding of selected human expression and words. This comprehension is not restricted to "sit", "fetch" and "stay", nor are behaviours confined to conditioned Pavlovian responses to the sight of a recognisable tin of food.
Dog owners, who have found themselves spelling the proposal of a "W-A-L-K" to each other, know the degree to which pets appropriate and incorporate the language of routine; that their understanding of human ways and emotions is stunning, as is their response, unerringly provided to humans in need and those to whom they are attached.
In The Odyssey, Homer's epic tale, was not Argos, Odysseus' old dog, the only one to recognise him, when after many years Odysseus returned home, masquerading as a beggar? This faithful dog that waited for his master "lifted his old bones" and died as Odysseus had to conceal his tears and ignore him in order to preserve his disguise. This vignette from ancient times points to the historical extent of human-animal affinity, the enduring similarity of interactions and emotions across culture and time.
Animals also abound in other child and adult literature, from Aesop's salutary Fables to George Orwell's anthropomorphic Animal Farm. Meanwhile the films of Walt Disney have cast a lighter lens on animal personality in portrayals captivating generations of children in imaginary worlds of animal-human harmony.
In more recent times, nobody who has read Alaistair MacLeod's spectacularly beautiful novel, No Great Mischief, could have remained unmoved by the manner in which generations of MacDonald "dogs" - dogs that "cared too much" and "tried too hard" - intersect the transgenerational psychological history of the MacDonald clan.
But there is a bigger issue than animal "ownership". It is the ethics of respect for all living things; the deeper dimensions of nature, natural wisdom, existence and uniqueness. This is an issue about which we must begin debate, and not cease until we have incorporated regard for all living creatures into our everyday lives and laws. Not in some maudlin manner, but in practical understanding of nature, respectful reciprocity between animal and man, recognition of our co-dependence and the mutuality of our existence: nature's balance, nature's terms, the seasonality of life and the powerful psychological presence of living creatures.
Too many people do not regard the life of animals as of any psychological consequence to them. And, as Gosling's research suggests, and any human who has ever respected animals will know; if the individuality of the personality of animals is observable and verifiable, then what onus lies on us as humans to understand the capacity of that living being to suffer? How does that colour our attitude to the fox fleeing for his life, the cat left dead, the dog abandoned, the sheep worried, the donkey overburdened, the birds' habitats destroyed and the right of those who strike, kill or maim a living thing on the roadway, to leave it in the dark coldness of its suffering to be hit again by the next car?
Physicists know that understanding begins with the tiniest particles. It was in the nucleus of the atom that power lay. Psychologists too, know that cruelty begins with the tiniest creatures. What we do to the "least of creatures" we can do to all. The casual, chilling cruelty inflicted upon animals is an issue of far greater psychological import than we are prepared to concede: in the words of Blake "each outcry of the hunted hare, a fibre from the brain does tear".
Cruelty to animals in any form, diminishes us emotionally, hardens us psychologically and delimits our definitions of suffering, sensitivity and human responsibility. It thus provides the crevice of carelessness towards living things that allows living carelessly in our environment. It is the first step in insensibility, the corridor to cruelty and the kernel of disregard for life forms, including our own. For if we allow suffering in anything we may allow suffering in everything.
Marie Murray is director of psychology at St Vincent's Hospital, Fairview, Dublin.