Sometimes I wonder if people with dogs aren’t happier because they can easily release the day’s frustrations by yelling at them. “DAISY! DAISY, NO!!!” The dogless among us spill coffee on the cuff of our sweater and spend the rest of the day quietly irritable. But when you have a dog, and the dog does something bad, you get to channel any unrelated annoyance onto her. “DAISY, NO!! DON’T LICK THAT! NO LICK!!!” When dogs bark, people scream even louder for them to stop.
I don’t understand this approach. Isn’t the point to produce less noise? It’s like treating a sunburn with more sun. A dog is a petting bag yes, but it is also an emotional punching bag for the aches and pains of daily life.
When asked the question, “dogs or cats?” I usually answer by saying I prefer coffee over tea. I’m not a dog person and I’m not a cat person, nor am I any kind of animal person, which means I’m barely human. What’s my favorite animal? Probably stuffed (teddy bear, not deer head) or service (smart, chill). If I could be any animal what would I be? Party, every time. This doesn’t mean that I hate animals or that I don’t appreciate their ecological significance - I wouldn’t be alive and writing this if it weren’t for bees (thanks, bees!) but I just don’t hold the same adoration for animals as other people seem to. I enjoy watching the odd chickadee visit the feeder but I’m not gonna be like “Omgg!!!! A baby antelope!!!!!”
My second grade teacher was a 4’9” nun, beloved because she was our size. She had a pet frog in the classroom named Tilly, who was huge, the size of a man’s hand, and the color of phlegm as a cold is worsening. Tilly spent her day suspended in dirty water and only moved when a student poked down a pellet of food with a pencil. She was hideous and I loved her. The week before Christmas, Sister announced that the first student who showed up to class on Friday morning could take her home for break. Having always wanted a pet, I set my alarm and was first in line the next day. When I unveiled her after school in the van, sloshing around in her liquid, my siblings were horrified. They tore her to shreds, and worse, tore me to shreds for wanting her. It was hard to remember why I ever had, as she bloatily stared through the glass with the expression of a wet piece of bread. Each morning for the next two weeks, my brothers built a wall of cereal boxes around her so they wouldn’t have to look at her while they ate. By the New Year, having failed to defend her, I joined their ranks. “Here, eat your pellet, you white piece of poo,” I jeered, to laughs at least.
You have not lived unless you’ve put beanie babies on a ceiling fan and turned it on. In third grade, my friend and I loaded up her ceiling fan and expectantly flipped the switch, only to incite pandemonium as her normally very gentle golden retriever got too excited by a flying Holiday Teddy and bit my friend on the scalp. I looked from the teeth marks to the innocent look on Buddy’s face and realized - we’d created a monster. All three of us whimpered from the realization.
I was always envious of my friends with dogs. It didn’t matter that I was afraid of them but only that dogs were one more thing in a long list of what my friends had that I didn’t (e.g., more than four beanie babies, food that was individually wrapped, ability to drink 7-up without having vomited, etc.). Dogs acted unpredictably and seemed to see straight through me, which made me both shy around them and terrified of them. Just like a boy around a girl. Even now, whenever I meet a dog I act like I’m meeting a grandmother who doesn’t speak English. “Oh, hi. Hello.”
Nothing will ever match the impending doom I felt as a dog bounded down the basement stairs the morning of a sleepover. I’d first hear the dog scratching at the door and the mother recklessly opening it. As the dog’s manic footsteps grew louder, my heart rate increased to a level unhealthy for a child. Oh no oh no oh no. As the dog made landfall, my friend OF COURSE didn’t wake up. She may have mumbled a “Milo, no” as Milo stepped directly on her neck, but she didn’t say boo when Milo came for my curls. He’d get a shocking, sloppy mouthful and I’d just lay there, terrified, praying for invisibility and to die quickly. Because I didn’t own a dog I didn’t not just know how to 1) love a dog, but 2) reprimand a dog. How does one interact with something so foreign? In high school I had to get the attention of a girl who exclusively went by a nickname. To have to call someone by a nickname who you’ve never spoken to is one of life’s greatest trials.
If people treated each other like pets the world would be a better place. In a perfect world, humans would evolve to grow tails in order to become more lovable. Why? It is easier for people to love pets than to like people. Similar to how it’s easier to love Beyoncé than to like oneself. But alas, if people had tails, women’s would have to be hairless. They’d have to be just skin. There would be a section in Sephora devoted to tail products. This newsletter would be about tail care. Molly’s Tipz on Tailz. Tell me I’m wrong.
As of the last month, I am no longer dogless. My husband and I have a mini dachshund named Pepper. In the before times, I didn’t want a dog because I was afraid - of their randomness, their claws, and their sickening need to be dewormed. But I was also afraid to love something that would likely die before I did. Isn’t that romantic? On our fourth day together, at seven weeks old, Pepper was sleeping on my lap as I thought, if anything happens to him I shan’t go on. It brought on a memory I’d had from years and years ago. A very tall, very old man was sitting on a park bench with a dachshund puppy. “Her name is Princess,” he said, staring at her fondly. “I got her after my wife passed away.” Life is sad, so we might as well have a little dog for just us, and for the girl at the sleepover who needs rousing from a treat-induced coma.