I will get to the lovesick goat, but not yet.

First, let’s talk about cat videos.

A few years ago, I attended a conference on using technology for good. At a session about promoting citizenship through the use of the Internet, someone asked the speaker about YouTube. The man said, despondently, that half of YouTube was videos of cats flushing the toilet. America might just be doomed by feline flushing.

Then a woman spoke up and said, “What’s wrong with that? Cat people vote, too.”

For what it’s worth, a search for “cat” on YouTube yields 29.6 million results, while “Cat flushing a toilet” comes up with a measly 35,000. However, there is a super-cute music video of many cats flushing many toilets that has 678,988 views.

By the way, I think any cat willing to use a toilet while being filmed should be allowed to vote.

When are we going to stop trying to prove that our pets are “just like us”? Or that they like us? Or figure out why we like them? Recently, Paul J. Zak, Ph.D., a researcher and “neuroeconomist” who has been dubbed “Dr. Love,” wanted to find out the scientific reason why he wept while he held his dog Teddy’s paw as the dog was put to sleep.

I know you know the answer to this, but keep in mind: (a) Dr. Zak is a cat person, and (b) Dr. Zak is a neuroeconomist.

Dr. Zak has made a career of tracking oxytocin, a mammalian hormone that plays a significant role in fostering maternal bonding, intimacy, and trust in lots of mammals, from humans to prairie voles. He thought his tears might have been oxytocin-based, that his relationship with Teddy had given him the chemical equivalent of a love affair with a human.

So he had his human subjects pet cats. He had people pet dogs. And he drew blood samples from the humans before and after.

The results were disappointing. Oxytocin rose, but not the way it did when people were lovesick or when a mother sees her newborn. And the oxytocin boost appeared in only 30% of the subjects. These animals didn’t give humans that buzz.

Random helpful facts: Dogs are better at reducing your stress and make you more likely to lend money.

Oxytocin-wise, things work a little differently with a dog and that goat.

The BBC, which is based in the country where the Queen’s corgi has appeared on a coin, hired Dr. Zak to see if this oxytocin boost thing worked between two different species of animals.

So Dr. Zak traveled to an animal shelter in Arkansas where many different kinds of animals interact. His subjects were a mixed-breed terrier and a goat that were regular playmates. Same deal: blood sample before and after.

The goat wrestled with the dog. The dog wrestled with the goat. Good times. After 15 minutes, the researchers took a second blood sample. And the results told a tragic love story as old as time. The dog’s oxytocin was highly elevated. To Mr. Dog, Mr. Goat was a good buddy. But the goat’s blood levels were astronomical. To quote Dr. Zak: “The only time I have seen such a surge in oxytocin in humans is when someone sees a loved one, is romantically attracted to someone, or is shown an enormous kindness.”

Translation: If Mr. Goat had been a person, he’d be drawing “I HEART MR. DOG” all over his notebooks. And wondering why Mr. Dog doesn’t call him more often.

Still, these dogs started out as pals. They got an easy “A.”

My dog, Faith, saw most animals as enemies or food sources. Once, she confidently flung herself into a lake to pursue a flock of angry geese hundreds of feet away. “She has a high prey drive,” our dog trainer once said, as a compliment. “She would make a great drug dog.” I wish I’d gotten her that drug-dog job. My husband and I would have jumped into fewer lakes.

One day, Faith and I found ourselves at a summer fair. Face painting. Food galore. And a petting zoo. Through the slats of the fence, one tiny lamb blinked. Faith didn’t lunge—she walked quietly up to the fence. As far as I was able to tell, she stared at that lamb in wonder.

Then Faith turned around and lay down, right in front of the little lamb, and would not move. She guarded that lamb as if she’d been a farm dog all her life, not a battle-scarred pit bull mix from Jersey City.

The dog trainer had it wrong. Faith had found finally found her job: Guarder of Tiny Sheep.

It took all my strength to drag her out of the park while Faith sighed, whined, and looked back at the lamb. Honestly, I didn’t want to leave either. I was in the presence of a miracle.

Why that lamb? Why that day? Was it one-sided? Without a blood sample, I will never know. But I think about that day a lot. My lion had lain down with her lamb. It was the kind of transformation people long for but almost never pull off.

Are animals just like us? I’m beginning to think the question is: Why can’t we be more like them?

Related Reading

• Interaction with Animals Provides Valuable Therapy for Humans
• Science Supports What Many People Already Knew: Dogs Love Us

Read about Martha Garvey.