Ivan Turgenev on the likeness of man and dog in his prose poem “The Dog”

There are two of us in the room: my dog and I. Outside, a terrible, frenzied storm is howling.
The dog sits before me, and looks me straight in the eyes.
And I, too, look into her eyes.
She seems to want to tell me something. She is dumb, she has no words, she does not understand herself, but I understand her.
I understand that at this moment the same feeling lives in her and in me, that there is no difference between us. We are identical; in each of us burns and shines the same trembling little flame.
Death will swoop down, and sweep its cold, broad wing across it…
And that is the end!
Who will then make out which flame it was that burned in each of us?
No! it is not an animal and a man who are exchanging glances…
It is two pairs of identical eyes fixed upon one another.
And in each of these pairs, in the animal and in the man, one and the same life huddles timidly against the other.

The Dog (a poem in prose), Ivan Turgenev