Dogs & Friendships I,II,III & Are Dogs Babies?
(The answer is no, and that we are under no illusion that they are.)
Day 5 of launch week!
4 little pieces of writing (truth not fiction):
The Thrill Of An Argument (or Please Don't Tell Me You're Buying A Dog)
I felt a bit sick, like when you’re on the precipice of saying something irretrievable. Something that might - ultimately – result in the breakdown of your relationship, the blowing apart of your world – or a small part of it, at least. A bit sick and adrenalin fuelled too, fired up; white wine does that to me, I shouldn’t drink it. Go high, you go low. Go positive, you go negative. Better stay on a base line. White wine makes me enthusiastic, animated, euphoric. Following this: feisty, disgruntled, confrontational. Granted, it had been a tricky year and I was overly sensitive on the issue of procuring dogs. I’d been living in Serbia where speying / neutering campaigns are not as prevalent as they ought to be and litters of tiny pups are dumped with alarming regularity. I’d got a bit involved in dog rescue (never a good idea for an empath) and understandably (I would say), I was rather anti Buying A Dog.
This particular friend – one of my best – is amongst the smartest people I know. She blazes through life with ease and originality. Her spelling is appalling as is her handwriting but those are literally the only two bad things I can say about her. She holds head honcho positions at top multinationals with ridiculous ease. She's an over-achiever in all fields and balances out her massive career with being an amazing mum, daughter, friend, cook, homemaker, artist, sportista, philanthropist. She's a glamourpuss when required or desired but can scruff about like a tramp almost as well as I can, which is saying something. She's the best company for mooching Soho doing irreverent boozing and having meandering philosophical conversations in any old drinking den. She's truly open-minded and curious and accepting and tolerant and (but?) does none of that virtual signalling nonsense. She's the one person with whom I can be intellectually completely free, explore any given topic without fear of judgement or attack.
Except that right then, my eyes glittering with disgust, I didn’t find her marvellous. I found her arrogant, annoying and aggravating; insensitive, inflammatory and irksome. She’d made the mistake of telling me – blithely, casually – that she was going to buy a dog. She wanted a specific breed, she said, grandiosely I thought, but when I questioned her, she admitted that she didn’t know which. I found this utterly ludicrous and told her so in no uncertain terms. After all we've always been completely honest with each other. I thought she was bullshitting and told her so in no uncertain terms. If she wasn’t already passionate about a particular breed for a particular reason, what was wrong with a mixed breed? I honestly didn’t get it. We argued back and forth, the novelty of not being on the same side for the first time ever exhilarating, heady. I felt like I was on a rollercoaster - at the same time as I longed to stay on, I was also desperate to get off.
It was a horrible evening. I hated arguing with her and felt jangly until we saw each other again and cleared the air. We joke about it now. She claims I’ve put her off ever getting a dog - any dog, that since that evening she’s too terrified to do it, or to do it ‘wrongly’. I don’t believe that for a second though - she’s not at all the type of person to roll over and I check her house for a clandestine cockerpoo every time I go over.
Are Dogs Babies?
A particular article I read a while back upset and angered me, along with a whole raft of other people. It was emotionally unintelligent piece of writing by an otherwise emotionally intelligent female, an acquaintance of mine and a lovely person. At the time she was a fresh out of hospital doting first time mother and in it, she was mocking puppy coddling. It hit a raw nerve for a whole raft of people, some of whom were mothers of new-borns themselves, some – like me – who didn't have children. There was an implication in the piece that some people seem to think puppies are babies that felt scornful and derisive.
The thing I want to set straight is this: People who have dogs do not think they are babies! Even when they are puppies. Even when they (the people) don’t have babies. Dogs are not babies. We get that. Or at least the vast majority of us who are not actually bonkers do. We don’t need or want them to be babies. They have entirely different qualities, aside from both being – depending on your perspective and generally speaking – pretty cute. Even those of us who have not procreated not through choice do not somehow imagine that our dogs are babies. And we also do not need to be pitied because we love our dogs too much. Some people who have babies love their dogs just as much as we do, and some love them even more. For a lot of us, our love for dogs predates and will outlast our desire to have babies. The idea that we think our dogs are babies is ludicrous. Yes, some people call them fur-babies, but those same people have probably given their husband / partner / best friend a silly, sentimental and entirely non-sensical moniker too.
Do we anthropomorphise them? Of course we do. There goes the arrogance of humans again. But we still love our dogs for exactly what they are. They are not a baby replacement. Sometimes, babies are not needed or wanted – and dogs are. Often, the reverse is true. It’s a free world. And for the record yes, we absolutely do, in the main, consider them to be an integral part of our families.
The intensity of care a human needs to show its baby in order to thrive (or even survive, to be fair) is far greater than that which is needed to bring up a puppy. Puppies do not demand heroicly wakeful nights, they do not engender the sleep deprivation and self-sacrifice induced near insanity I have seen a lot of new mothers run close to. Animal young is generally far, far more self-sufficient from a far earlier age than human young, who remains helpless and vulnerable for several years (one might argue, indefinitely). A six month old dog will happily hike miles, gloriously naked, undemanding, joyful throughout – and then flop down and sleep like the dead for 10 hours. A six month old baby, less so.
Dogs do not shower you in reflected glory when they hit milestones (riding a bike, traversing a slope on skis for the first time, playing Fur Elise on the piano), they are quite frankly more likely not to hit any noteworthy milestones whatsoever but rather to show you up in public in some goofy, well-meaning way. Dogs (I can’t comment on babies) give their love abundantly, selflessly, consistently. They do, also, let you down in that they die after all too brief a time – they will not stick around to look after you in your dotage (although to be fair there’s no guarantee that offspring will either). They never learn to speak, and unless you are some sort of Anna Breytenbach you will never really know what they’re thinking. They’ll basically never ‘grow up’ and turn into a smart little mini-you, however much training you put in. The most you can hope for is an admiring comment about their happiness level or fine behaviour or skills from a fellow dog walker or two (which, by the way, will mean the world, so always remember to say it out loud if you think it).
Does it really matter though that dogs can’t talk, that they will not progress beyond their Peter Pan selves? Perhaps not. Dogs bring pure, unadulterated joy, and are relatively undemanding – we who live with them are blessed to share our lives with them. Ricky Gervais says he feels that dogs are like Air, or Land, in that they’re so essential that they ought to be loved by everyone, not just the individual. If you love dogs, you’ll get this and it will make you smile knowingly. If you don’t, you won’t, you’ll roll your eyes and maybe smile that cynical, superior smile of an anthropocentrist who thinks s/he knows better. But rest assured, you’re missing a slice of the finest pie in life.
Five Little Words
‘I don’t really like dogs’
They say that certain moments change your life. Hearing these words come out of the mouth of one of my hither to that point best friends felt like such a moment. The worst was that she didn’t realise the full enormity of what she’d said, that she might equally have taken a sledgehammer to my stomach. I should have known this nasty little proclivity about her, but I hadn’t, not categorically, not specifically. Perhaps I’d stuck my head in the sand, refused to see it out of my love for her. For the very first time in a sixteen year friendship I stared at her, at a total loss for what to say. I wanted to scream ‘WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DON’T LIKE DOGS?? EVERYONE LIKES DOGS, YOU ODDBALL!!!!!!’ but of course, being British – polite, repressed and gerally non-confrontational (unless fuelled by white wine) - I didn't. I shut my mouth, which had fallen open in amazement, and I looked away, hurt and trying not to show it, unstabilised and trying to buy time. I was actively trying not to react, trying to not react. It didn't matter though, there was no awkwardness. She wasn't expecting a response, she'd already moved on. It wasn't a big thing for her, just a mild statement of fact; an observation, a throwaway remark.
Later, when I revisited it in my mind, the dawning of a realisation came – that she'd merely been honest, and that I ought to respect that and to continue to love her despite what was, in my eyes, a gaping deficiency in moral character. This same friend doesn’t like foxes and I struggle with that one too. Like drinking tea, considering a chance encounter with a fox magical is a trait I find unable to extricate from moral fortitude and decency. My husband, a man of great moral fortitude, decency and compassion – particularly when it comes to animals and nature - doesn’t drink tea. I found it disturbing at first, but I learnt to live with it. He’s not British, and that's how I manage to reconcile myself with this disturbing quirk in him. In fact, in time, I've become more of a (rabid?) coffee drinker than a (laid back?) tea drinker. Interesting, that and probably something I need to examine more closely.
I’ll confess, to my shame, that those five little words, amongst other things, have affected our friendship. I’m dog mad, admittedly. Over the top, by normal standards. I realise intellectually that I have to learn to accept and appreciate that not everyone feels the same, and that maybe that’s ok. I need to learn not to vilify in my head people who don’t unquestioningly adore every dog that walks the earth, that it doesn’t necessarily make them a worse person – or me (and my dog tribe) better ones. That dogs may not be the be all and end all, that the fact that I think they are pure goodness in living form doesn't have to be acknowledged or accepted by everyone, nor they so revered. I struggle with it, to be honest, and it doesn't help that again and again my theory that all the best people are 'dog people' is validated over and over in new people I meet. But I try.
Dogs are a fundamental part of our world, though, aren't they? Surely - you can't not like them, can you? They are company without banging on about their own agendas, a non-judgemental and impartial listener, a loving and infectiously joyful entity. They are selfish in only very small ways, pushing only to get more cuddles or joy rather than out of any despicable motivation. Their presence is both soothing and energising. The care and company of them validates us, and they serve to highlight a fact we should never forget – that to be alive on this wonderful planet is a gift we shouldn't squander; that we should celebrate what we have rather than ruminate over what we don't. A dog may have a pretty miserable and boring existence for 23 hours out of 24 and it will still damn well make the best of that hour; they won't churn and stew and grumble that they have suffered and lived sub-optimally for 23 as a human inevitably would. We are, a lot of us, whiners despite having comparitively way more enrichment and agency in our lives. Dogs give far more of themselves than they take and require very little to be grateful. They have no qualms about displaying their unadulterated happiness, they are cool in that they don't feel the need to try to be cool.
So I don't try that hard though, if I'm honest. Five little words, enough to shift a world on its axis. How you feel about dogs (if not tea) for me speaks volumes.
True Friendship
When I was nine, I got a dog. My best friend – now and still – was scared of dogs. She’d been bitten by one quite badly as a toddler, so it was eminently understandable. But she – never one to let things get in her way, always one to make the best of things – took it with gumption. What I love about her is that she, scared though she was, immediately set her own concerns aside and threw herself, bravely, into my delight – and by the time Tess (a stout black and white corgy / husky / collie cross that had allegedly been a border collie puppy) grew up, she loved her almost as much as I did.
This would already have been commendable, but since Tess wasn’t the most singularly adorable dog ever, it was even more so. She yapped, a lot, so much so that one of our other friends (a cat lover but not a dog lover) wanted to sellotape her mouth closed one evening when we were getting drunk at my house. It goes without saying that my friend and I stopped him, all squealing outrage, and he wasn’t allowed to darken either of our doorsteps for quite some time.
This friend – Kate – went on to marry a lovely chap who is dog mad, whose parents are vegetarians and have half an animal sanctuary at home, whose sister is an animal behaviourist. When we got a puppy she was one of only two people who thought to buy us a dog gift, I was touched. They came to London when their second son was only just walking - we went to Kensington gardens and her sons threw sticks for my puppy, all delightedly having a great time. That’s friendship.