Vicki Hearne > Quotes

“There I was, with a mare I knew I could do anything with—but the owners! Mary Pat had never even seen a jumping saddle. Her father had no conception of what goes into the making of a show jumper. But there is a lot of heart in that family, apparently a hereditary condition, for Mary Pat started surprising me. She was the first student I ever had who actually did what I told her to do. Older trainers had warned me that there would be such students, but I hadn’t believed them until now. Watching Mary Pat and Peggy, alone in the California desert, I thought of the diary of one nineteenth-century traveler who had said of southern California, “The mountains cut the land off from sympathy with the East.” I sometimes felt that God was whispering things into the landscape, in the breathing of that child and that horse.”
― Vicki Hearne, Animal Happiness: Moving Exploration of Animals and Their Emotions - From Cats and Dogs to Orangutans and Tortoises

“I would tell you some of the bizarre things I have heard otherwise rational philosophers say about parrots, but it would probably be actionable if I did so in print, and they would deny it anyway. A human philosopher thinks that no one notices when she starts putting on airs. A parrot doesn’t think this way. You may say that a parrot puts on airs. Well, a parrot does. But a parrot knows he’s putting on airs; he’s not like a blue jay that way, it’s completely different. A blue jay gets all mixed up in his thinking because he starts believing his own PR, but a parrot is more cool-headed than that, which is why you can win an argument with a blue jay and never with a parrot.”
― Vicki Hearne, Animal Happiness: Moving Exploration of Animals and Their Emotions - From Cats and Dogs to Orangutans and Tortoises

“teasing dogs is a popular activity among some people, just as teasing voters is a popular activity among politicians. In both cases, teasing dogs and teasing citizens, it often turns out that the tormentor doesn’t realize what he or she is doing and has to learn the hard way.”
― Vicki Hearne, Animal Happiness: Moving Exploration of Animals and Their Emotions - From Cats and Dogs to Orangutans and Tortoises

“Rottweilers are one of the breeds coming under attack as vicious dogs. Honcho himself is “real good with kids.” Well, all breeders say that about their favorite dogs, but Honcho’s soundness has been tested. “Honcho had a bit of a rough time. He’s been teased by kids, but he came through that and still really likes kids. Some other dogs go through that, well, they’ll just hang back when kids come over, but Honcho introduces himself to new kids on the block. When my sixyear-old, Adam, goes outside, I have him take Honcho. Then I know he’ll be safe.”
― Vicki Hearne, Animal Happiness: Moving Exploration of Animals and Their Emotions - From Cats and Dogs to Orangutans and Tortoises

“You know how it is. You go up to a parrot, and he’s probably in a cage and you’re not, so you feel pretty superior, maybe you even think you can feel sorry for the parrot, and you ask the parrot how he is, and he says something gnomic like, “So’s your old man,” or “How fine and purple are the swallows of late summer.” Then the parrot looks at you in a really interested, expectant way, to see if you’re going to keep your end up. At first you think you’ve been insulted, but a parrot is too cool to throw insults around, unlike a blue jay, and once you notice that, you start trying to figure out what the parrot means by it, and there you are. You haven’t a prayer of reintroducing whatever topic you had in mind.”
― Vicki Hearne, Animal Happiness: Moving Exploration of Animals and Their Emotions - From Cats and Dogs to Orangutans and Tortoises

“Swig read French philosophy, people such as Descartes, and would say that parrots only appear to be talking because they are possessed by devils, and as a result, on July 3, 1956, exactly one month after the arrival of the San Franciscan, Napoleon died of a heart attack, thus, I think, maintaining his southern Californian refusal to let usurpers from the north ruin the conversation.”
― Vicki Hearne, Animal Happiness: Moving Exploration of Animals and Their Emotions - From Cats and Dogs to Orangutans and Tortoises

“What Cinder is like to look at: The paws express Cinder the mischievous kitten, playing innocently, and the eyes and mouth reveal the lovable kittycat, the one who wants to sit in your lap, and the whole leopard reveals something else. The affectionate kitten is real, the mischievous kitten is real—and so is the leopard.”
― Vicki Hearne, Animal Happiness: Moving Exploration of Animals and Their Emotions - From Cats and Dogs to Orangutans and Tortoises

“Cinder’s fate, thanks to Dr. MacElroy, was not so bleak. In fact, she was slated to be a working cat, an actress, so you may have seen her on movie and television screens, though the big cats rarely get decent credits. She may one day play the part of a lovable pet, and you may be moved to want a leopard. Don’t do that. Leave the big cats alone.”
― Vicki Hearne, Animal Happiness: Moving Exploration of Animals and Their Emotions - From Cats and Dogs to Orangutans and Tortoises

“There is a parrot living in a bar in Tijuana—I have this on excellent authority—who causes people to order more drink than they intended by sidling up to them, cocking his head, and asking, “Can you talk?” And there was Napoleon, a parrot from Brazil, who put on airs at Riverside’s Mission Inn from the time in 1907 when he was given as a gift to Frank Miller, the inn’s founder, until 1956. Napoleon held his own with more dignitaries than any other parrot in history, so Riversiders say, including Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, Albert Einstein,”
― Vicki Hearne, Animal Happiness: Moving Exploration of Animals and Their Emotions - From Cats and Dogs to Orangutans and Tortoises

“This sort of thing happens with leopards, which is why Dr. MacElroy has big cats in the first place. It started with Rocky, a lion who was brought to him with virtually every bone in his body broken—“pathological fractures caused by rickets.” There was a bobcat with a similar story, and Cinder’s mother was another. Dr. MacElroy fixes them up, and that’s how they become his pets.”
― Vicki Hearne, Animal Happiness: Moving Exploration of Animals and Their Emotions - From Cats and Dogs to Orangutans and Tortoises