In case you missed it:
Ringing your friend’s doorbell at the age of nine is already a little scary, but when her Doberman is going apeshit on the other side, begging to lick you something bad, there’s an additional layer of dread. Somehow you can hear the Mom smiling on the other side as she walks to open the door. Before you can summon back your own Mom, the dog has made full contact and is clawing at your neck, jangling the buckles of your overalls and just generally treating all of his senses to your little person. “Oh, he’s just sayin’ hi!!” laughs the Mom. “Then why is a chunk of my calf missing?”
A girl at school had both a pool and a Great Dane. When she invited me over I really had to weigh the risks. On the one hand, I’d get to wear my new tankini and sit on a pool noodle like a seahorse. On the other hand, I might return home without a head.
I would not currently own a dog if my spouse didn’t love them. He loves them so much that he married me, a woman with a dog name (Maggies will understand). It was therefore only natural that Pepper waddle into our lives. The morning of the day we got him, we got a call from our 87-year-old neighbor and closest friend in a 20 mile radius. He’d gotten into a fight down by the river. Would we head over and look for his cell phone? Absolutely. We waded around in the water for 15 minutes until Hall found it wedged between a couple rocks. A small crowd had gathered by this point and everyone cheered. I did too, even though I wanted to be the one to find it. I believe we all just want to be the one to find it, to help. To be flown into New York on an all expenses paid trip for a two minute interview on Good Morning America. I would push someone off a cliff and rappel to their rescue for this chance.
On the drive to South Carolina to get Pepper, we stopped at a PetSmart for supplies. The only time I’d ever been to one was in high school, when my friends were looking for the perfect dog bed to watch tv in. PetSmart is not a nice place. It smells like litter and hair, and like the other -marts, makes you feel bad for everyone inside, yourself included. I hope you experience happiness one day, you wish, bestowing the sentiment upon each head with the tenderness of a mourner at the palace, offering flowers for Diana.
I worriedly asked Hall if being in a PetSmart is what it feels like to own a dog and he responded with something along the lines of, “What are you talking about, that makes no sense you idiot.”
Earlier in the day we’d driven through Culver’s and I’d made the grave mistake of getting a Salted Caramel Pumpkin Concrete Mixer. :( I didn’t realize just how grave this mistake was until we were checking out at PetSmart and my stomach began some concrete mixing of its own. The one good thing about PetSmart is that it’s not uncommon for it to share a parking lot with Target. Target is great because it has everything you need - kitchenware, clothing, and multiple stalls. I began the trek over but made no apparent progress - these big-box strip malls are like the Vegas Strip in that the buildings look really close but each one is actually 2 miles apart. I gingerly sidled across the asphalt as my discomfort became more and more terrifying. It was not the first time in my life I wondered, What if I don’t make it?, but it was the first time I’d thought that to the backdrop of a man playing Smooth Criminal on an electric accordion hooked up to a loudspeaker. He was wearing a bedazzled bowler hat. Thanks to the subwoofer, I felt the bass directly in my bowels. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, but I enjoy having diarrhea at home because it means I’m not having it anywhere else.
NSFW:
We did not adopt our dog. We bought it with money. Dirty, Paypal money. Adopting a dog is a wonderful thing to do and I wish I had the strength of character to invest in a creature not guaranteed to be smaller than a loaf of bread. But before you light me on fire, let me justify the alternate route.
You can buy a dog from people who need the money (in our case, a retired teacher and her disabled husband living on an old farm). Do they need to make dogs to sell? No. But do bakers need to make cakes for us to buy and pilates instructors need to make online content for us to half ass during our lunch break? No also.
There are a number of other animals that could be adopted so why discriminate? You could adopt a raccoon. If you really cared about animals you’d bring in a raccoon and let it eat your trash.
Vanity. I haven’t evolved to appreciate dogs’ personalities over their looks. I believe they should fit my old and unchallenged idea of cute. I am the teenage boy with the Farah Fawcett poster in his room (or whatever her contemporary equivalent would be...Abigail Breslin?) (Only a chill Mom would allow her son to have a poster of a woman in his room. If my fifteen-year old son had a poster of a woman in his room I would…lol never allow it.) So yes, shamefully it’s beauty over brains for me. If I could give my dachshund plastic surgery, I would. How cute would it be if his legs were even shorter, so short that they didn’t function for walking and I had to pull him around on a skateboard?
Buying a dog is the gateway drug to adopting one. This is my first pet so give me two seconds to enjoy him before I get addicted and can’t help but go for the bottom shelf stuff.
We pulled up to the farm in the early evening, and I felt like Julia Roberts in Runaway Bride. Was it too late to change my mind? Could I really go through with this and become a dog owner? Start trivializing human connection for this supposed superior form and begin regularly using the word “poop”? A few minutes later, a little black and tan football ran up to me, tail wagging, and convinced me that yes, I could. I would marry this dog. He would be my forever friend, and I his forever footman. When we left, with Pepper calmly snuggled into my shoulder, the mom dachshund jumped around in fear and confusion and I swear I saw a tear in her eye. I felt terrible for taking her son, and still sometimes do. As much as I hope she doesn’t think about and wonder if she should text Pepper, it pains me to think of her forgetting him, which is far more likely. I have to remind myself that pets are not people, despite the battle cries from the dog obsessed and the name of this one store in Idaho called “Pets Are People Too”. Fitting for a place whose motto should be “Idaho is a state too.”