In The Doghouse

Confession: Indefensible as it is I am not a dog-lover. Is there a word for people like me? Canine-misogynist? Dogophobic? No, I looked it up and my crime is so heinous there is no word to describe me. It's more than criminal, it's faintly subversive. 

 

I could blame it all on my mother, how she had a fear of animals. Fear morphed into indifference with me. I’m not about to pet a pit-bull or even take my chances with Dobermans I don’t know, but otherwise I just try to ignore most of them. Chihuahuas, to me, are large insects. great Danes, small horses. Poodles are too manicured. I do have a fondness for Irish setters. prince Charles cavaliers are soft and furry but nervous wrecks. Airedales have a certain appeal and dachshunds are sort of adorable if you have a fondness for hot dogs. Dalmatians and Labradors are handsome and beagles are the essences of melancholia. But I can live my remaining days without any of them. 

 In my life Part One I even put up with a dog, a sheltie named Chelsea; a pint-sized collie with the instincts but without the smarts. I think we had her for about five years. If I went into our pool she thought I was a sheep and raced around the perimeter herding me. In the Valley heat Chelsea would exhaust herself to near collapse being obedient to her ancestral genes. After a while I learned to keep her indoors and listen to her persistent barking. She was not my best friend; not even in the top twenty. 

I should add that, as an act of redemption, my three daughters all love animals which number seven beloved cats. I doubt if that will get me past heaven’s gate. I know that seeing-eye and hearing-ear dogs are heroic, that police dogs sniff out drug-smugglers, some even detect land-mines. Lassie was practically human. Yes, I know dogs do noble deeds in hospices, some fetch newspapers and slippers and Frisbees and yet…. Members of their species also snarl, slobber and smell….even the aforementioned. 

Another objection I admit to is the way dog-owners bark at their dogs, shouting orders or reprimands like the parent I never was. I find the superior/inferior relationship disturbing. Civility was something I tried to model without becoming General Patton. As an apartment-dweller in my early years I never felt deprived. Nor did I ever see the need to defend or even wonder much about the four-legged world. They simply weren’t allowed and now living again in an apartment building for the past 28 years the issue is settled for us. 

So why do I feel so defensive about all this, I hear you ask. Maybe because dog-loving is one of those behaviors that defines normalcy and I barely qualify as it is. There is also the suspicion that my mother’s legacy lives within me. Not so much a fear but an unwillingness to confront the irrational. Animals cannot easily be reasoned with though I’m reminded how Flannery O’Connor first got into the newspaper by training a chicken to walk backwards. Dogs are probably the most intelligent quadrupeds but there is still, in me, that vestigial reptilian brain I’ve not yet fully embraced.

Having said all this I sense what I've missed in relationship to pets in general. A deep emotional attachment, extended compassion and companionship.