Jane Goodall's compassion for every creature, from chimps through insects, and her passion for dogs.

Winky Smalls and I got to learn about that last one firsthand.

I was thinking about Dr Jane Goodall as I wrote my first Substack on October 1. Just minutes before I learned she had died, I read her endorsement of a friend’s book about meat. I realized it’s the best possible endorsement, as no name is more universally and positively associated with animal protection than hers.

Insects

Though most famous as a primatologist, she was deeply concerned with the suffering of all animals. Speaking with strange prescience just a week before she died on what she hoped her legacy would be, she discussed the sentience and emotions we share with all animals, including insects. That reference is crucial given the growing interest in farming insects for food, which is likely to cause even more individual suffering than current factory farming of larger animals (against which she also spoke forcefully) given the numbers involved.

While I imagine men in white coats rolling their eyes at her comments on insects as they initially had about her interactions with chimps, it is common sense to those of us who chase the creatures out of our homes, rather than squashing them, that they experience fear. As usual, Jane Goodall was way ahead of her time: ants have now passed the mirror test, considered a gold standard test for self-awareness.

Meat

Goodall said, “In the late 60s I stopped eating meat. I stopped eating meat when I learned about the intensive animal agriculture and these terrible factory farms and the next time I looked at meat on my plate I thought, this symbolizes fear, pain, and death. So I stopped eating it.”

It is disappointing that lengthy obituaries in the Washington Post and New York Times didn’t even mention that passion, which she spoke about often, even producing a vegan cookbook. One New York Times piece that explored her good health and longevity (she died at 91 while on a speaking tour) failed to even mention her diet though a Business Insider piece focused on it, which would have pleased her.

Winky Smalls

Jane Goodall’s favorite animals were not chimps (too much like us), they were dogs, which Winky Smalls and I learned firsthand on a trip to Washington DC in 2019.

Here’s a little background on Winky:

I visited the Best Friends NKLA (No Kill Los Angeles) shelter in 2016 for a blind date with a different adorable pittie, who, it turned out, was not dog-friendly. That was a dealbreaker, as I take my dogs everywhere, including to off-leash trails and beaches daily, a lifestyle opportunity that shouldn’t be wasted.

Strolling through the shelter I saw a brindle beauty staring up at me out of one eye.

I was so struck by his adorableness that I kept walking. I wanted to provide a home that was sorely needed. I knew that at shelters the tripods often go first, taken by those who assume nobody will want them. Meanwhile the infamous BBDs (Big Black Dogs) and nondescript medium-size mutts are left to languish.

With each dog more beautiful than the next to this beholder, I finally went up the front desk and asked, “Who’s been here the longest, who is great with other dogs?”

The gal at reception said Smalls, then went on about him like a waiter who’d been asked to describe the best dish on the menu.

I learned he was so good with other dogs that they used him as their tester dog to assess new arrivals, because no matter what lunacy the other dog pulled it never turned into a fight.

He’d been there 8 months.

Then she asked me if I had seen him, the one-eyed brindle. My heart leapt.

An attendant brought him into a room where I invited him onto the bench next to me. He curled up with his head against my chest.

I couldn’t believe he had been such a long-standing resident. Were people blind? But after taking the angel home I realized that his immediate comfort with me had been an exception. He was notably standoffish upon meeting strangers and had surely been stuck at the shelter for so long having interviewed poorly with potential adopters.

I was compelled to call the one-eyed wonder Winky but didn’t want him to lose his gangsta roots (he was placed in the shelter when his daddy was arrested) so Smalls became Winky Smalls, and we became inseparable. So much so that when Karen O’Connell (now a DawnWatch board member) and Patrick McDonnell of Mutts invited me to the opening performance of Patrick’s play about Jane Goodall, at the Kennedy Center in D.C., Winky Smalls was my date.

I had met Dr Jane once before, but despite having lived surrounded by celebrities in Pacific Palisades for decades, and counted numerous animal-friendly actorvists as friends, I was so starstruck upon meeting her I could barely put a sentence together. I embarrassed both of us.

At the reception after the play, I got a second chance when Winky and I went up to our hero, who crouched down immediately to greet him. My sweet but utterly standoffish dog marched up and gave her a kiss on the cheek. If I hadn’t caught it on camera, nobody who knows his personality would believe it happened. And if I hadn’t posted the video back in 2019, they’d be forgiven for guessing AI was the secret to the uncharacteristic greeting.

Emboldened by Winky and Jane’s bond, this time I got to chat with my hero for a few minutes, before she was called off to make her welcome address, which began with:

“I’m just so pleased and honored to see all of you here, and so especially pleased that there’s a dog here!”

That dog had never greeted a human the way he had Jane Goodall and has never done so since. My little Buddha, who is kindness canineified, has always struck me as what new age folks call an old soul. Watching him greet Dr Jane was like watching two old souls reunite on this go-round.

On death and legacy

Dr Jane noted in a recent interview that she believed in such things – that there was “something” after death. With Winky almost eleven and slowing down fast, the thought of losing him is unbearable. But since Dr Jane surprised those who loved her by beating him to the rainbow bridge, at least when his time comes I can urge him to run across it and find the only human he ever greeted upon first meeting, at least in this life, with a kiss.

I bet every animal would have done the same if they’d been given the chance. Jane Goodall was a force of good like no other in our broken world.

I close this column with part of a video interview designed to be seen after she died, in which she says that was the role she felt she had been sent here to play, and a song by Stevie Nicks saying much the same: “There are angels here on Earth, sent by God… Up against the world.” And, with much love, a trailer and link to an utterly engrossing documentary about an angel named Jane

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