This is an upcoming book by Susana Monso, and I found it both interesting and enlightening. Here is an excerpt:
This fixation on the face suggests that Firuláis’ initial motivation was likely not to eat his human, but rather that this behavior began as an attempt to get him to react. Our face is the part of our body that our canine friends pay the most attention to, because it is essential for understanding our emotions and communicating with us. Therefore, it is to be expected that Firuláis, after seeing his goalkeeper motionless after the shot, started trying to get a reaction from him by elbowing him in the face with his muzzle. In the absence of a response, and to calm down or out of simple frustration, he could have started licking, nibbling, and once the blood was drawn, the temptation to take a little could have been overwhelming. In other words, it is likely that Firuláis’s love for his guardian and his anxiety over his lack of response are at the origin of his behavior.
Talk about “modeling this”! Comparative edition of thanatology, of course. You can pre-order here.
