A visual essay about dogs, how they absorb and become pictures, and create democratic alternatives to monopoly capital’s cover story of freedom. This collage of found dog moments underscore reflections on labour, class war and the roots of radical democracy.

Dogs speak many languages, the language of the stream, the forest, the rabbit. But today I’m going to recycle pain into understanding. Isn’t that what language is for you?

The alternative life of dogs is presented in a suite of short scenes in this essay brief. They watch movies differently, greet each other differently, they make art differently. But most importantly, they are counter-culture figures of resistance, offering pathways out of a capitalist monopoly of opinion, of how lives should be led, of what matters most. Dogs are freedom fighters, examplars of new citizens, beings who are made out of each other.

The isolations of social media, the class war disguised by the fog of individual freedoms, the “dazzling special effect” of ideology are all unpacked with touching and humorous examples from the lives of dogs. Dogs are a “living science fiction,” a portal to possible futures.

Director's statement:
One of my closest friends was a dog. I met her late in her life, and while it wasn’t so early in mine, I had spent no time with dogs. In my childhood dogs appeared as distant foreign agents, unpredictable and fearsome. But my new friend opened the door, and for reasons neither of us understood, I stepped through it to knowing that nothing would be the same afterwards.

Her name was Layla, a large poodle, independent and regal. Her first lesson was about how to greet someone. Forget hugs or handshakes. Like the avant dancer Deborah Hay, Layla believed that “the whole body at once” is the teacher. This is how she would greet me, her body electrified, throwing herself at me in greeting, and the call, the hope, was that I would be able to meet her in that place. Over and over she modelled it for me, and like any student I slowly worked on my form, my hesitations, the knots in my practice.

The next lesson was about walking. My walks were aimed at a goal. Walking was a means to an end, useful, practical, necessary even. But it was necessary because of something that was going to happen after the walk was finished. Layla showed me that the walk itself was the destination. And unlike me, she never took a straight line. She didn’t walk like she was counting off territory, as if she were a colonist landing on new ground. Instead she circled and stopped, reversed course and set off again, bending into the winds and the delirious scents of places I thought I knew because I had passed through them so often.

Her last lesson was about how to die. She spent most of her last day parked at the top of a ridge, just outside her house of a home, saying good-bye to the neighbourhood. Even though she was so weak she could hardly walk she insisted on going to High Park, where she would meet some of her pals for the last time, and trot beneath the oak savannahs. We came down the path and then she stopped, unable to manage another step. She looked at me and I picked her up and carried her home. I cried and held her with my friend Catherine. The vet came and gave her the shot and then she was gone.

I Measure My Life in Dogs is dedicated to Layla, and all of the dog friends and familiars I’ve come to know over the years. They’ve shown me an alternative society, a new language, different ways of being and loving.