![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/Images\/Bates_Magazine\/2007-fall\/other\/WEB-shankar-NC3G9865.jpg\")
Lavina Shankar and Phoebe, photographed in December 2005 on the historic Quad and, below, in the professor's Pettigrew Hall office.<\/p><\/div>\n
Ending her class, Shankar tried to skip out. But a student called out: \u201cWe haven\u2019t read the dog poem.\u201d Shankar paused. Could she refuse a student\u2019s desire to learn? Could she really not discuss, at that moment, this painful poem about a dog\u2019s unconditional love for humans?<\/p>\n
Years earlier, on a May afternoon in 1997, Shankar sat on the front steps of her Nichols Street apartment, deep in conflict. She and her husband, Rajiv, had just adopted Phoebe, and Shankar was scared of the animal. Actually, she\u2019d been scared of dogs most of her life, a fear accentuated by a negative childhood experience with a dog.<\/p>\n
Shankar thought her fears were conquered in graduate school, when she befriended a gentle dog belonging to a friend. But Phoebe was a big, boisterous German Shepherd mix. And just thinking about the dog\u2019s attempts to smooch her kept Shankar awake at night.<\/p>\n
There were two choices, said Rajiv: Keep the dog or return her immediately. Shankar grew up in Calcutta and recalled volunteering in Mother Teresa\u2019s orphanage as a teenager, where sometimes children were adopted and then returned. \u201cIt\u2019s the worst thing you can do to a baby,\u201d she says. That memory made up Shankar\u2019s mind. Phoebe would stay, and Shankar would choose to love her.<\/p>\n
From 1997 to 2006, Shankar went from fearing the animal to adoring her to being her primary caregiver during her chemotherapy treatments. \u201cBy the end, her love for Phoebe helped her get over her fears,\u201d says Lewiston veterinarian Ruth Burgess. \u201cI\u2019ve seen that so many times: You can do so much more than you think you can.\u201d<\/p>\n
Perhaps that sense of empowerment helped Shankar choose to discuss Tagore\u2019s \u201cRecovery 14\u201d on March 13, 2006. Her tears flowed, but in choosing to teach rather than flee, Shankar conquered her fear of Phoebe\u2019s death. She also faced another anxiety: that she might not be with her parents, in India, when they eventually pass away. \u201cHumans live on the edge of normalcy, never knowing what\u2019s around the corner,\u201d she says. \u201cWe must live as though it\u2019s not the last moment.\u201d<\/p>\n
During Phoebe\u2019s illness, Shankar decided she would repay the community \u2014 \u201chuman and non-human,\u201d she says \u2014 that taught her lessons about humanity, mortality, and spirituality. She began to construct a new Short Term course, \u201cFor the Love of Dogs,\u201d using literature and service-learning to examine the relationship and boundaries between humans and dogs.<\/p>\n
She began working on the course in early 2006. Texts came from enough perspectives \u2014 Flush by Virginia Woolf, Marley & Me by John Grogan, and The Companion Species Manifesto by Donna Haraway \u2014 to ensure the course\u2019s intellectual teeth. \u201cI didn\u2019t want this course to just be, \u2018Let\u2019s talk about our sad stories about our dogs,\u2019\u201d Shankar says. Analyzing texts from a new perspective, Shankar heightened her own awareness of familiar authors.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/Images\/Bates_Magazine\/2007-fall\/other\/WEB-Shankar2175.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
With help from veterinarian Burgess \u2014 and from a Harward Center for Community Partnerships grant \u2014 Shankar added service-learning opportunities, with the Androscoggin Humane Society, the Lewiston Veterinary Hospital, and My Wonderful Dog, a service-dog program.<\/p>\n
Shakespearean scholar Marjorie Garber, L.H.D. \u201906, whose book Dog Love was a central part of the course reading, says dogs, humans, and service-learning are a snug fit because the two species have a \u201ccommutable relationship. People love dogs; dogs love people. People serve dogs; dogs serve people,\u201d she says. \u201cReal-world interactions are increasingly important in today\u2019s colleges, so if dogs help cross this divide, that\u2019s commendable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shankar says the course\u2019s service-learning component honors the \u201cavenue of experience and emotion\u201d she and Rajiv traveled during Phoebe\u2019s treatment. New relationships with veterinarians, oncologists, kennel workers, and other dog lovers \u201ctipped the balance of what you think of as your community,\u201d she says. For example, a local limo driver, Bob Dackmine, who drives Shankar to the airport, phoned during the ordeal. \u201cBob called me,\u201d Shankar mused. \u201cMy best friends didn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shankar has created nine courses at Bates, but \u201cFor the Love of Dogs,\u201d which she taught in 2007, is the first to force her away from her disciplinary comfort zone of feminist theory and Asian American, South Asian, and modern British literature. The experience gives Shankar greater enthusiasm for exploring new scholarly areas. She also feels more connected to her students, less afraid of sharing life experiences, and more willing to learn from them and others. \u201cUsually, a teacher must appear omniscient to her students. But the experience with Phoebe made me unafraid of not knowing,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Taking a broader view, Shankar adds that \u201cthe freedom of a place like Bates allows faculty and students to examine their own lives and learn to live them better. This is the liberal arts education: learning for living, not merely learning to make a living.\u201d<\/p>\n
As Associate Professor of English Lavina Shankar taught her course in South…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":221,"featured_media":0,"parent":935,"menu_order":3,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_dimp_site_id":"","_dimp_override_contact":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"class_list":["post-976","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/221"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=976"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/976\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10744,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/976\/revisions\/10744"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/Images\/Bates_Magazine\/2007-fall\/other\/Heidi2441.jpg\")
Afterword:<\/strong> Following\u00a0Phoebe’s death, the Shankars adopted Heidi, shown at left with a student in Lavina’s “For the Love of Dogs” Short Term course last spring. “Phoebe will never be replaced, but she’ll live on in the\u00a0course,” she says.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"