Every dog has its person
Our beloved canine friends are evidence of how much we want to do love well
Inevitably, when a dog dies, someone trying to offer perspective, and maybe relief, will say something like “Hey, it was just a dog.” But to that dog’s grieving human there is no “just” about it.
I will concede that a dog isn’t the same as a person. I am, of course, my dog’s owner, part of a two-person team in charge of her licence, training, vaccinations, eye exams, nail trims and occasional anal-gland expressions. She has a life away from me, with dog walkers, with pals at the park, and with the squirrels and raccoons in the backyard we bought for her (it came with the house), but it’s my name on her prescriptions, and my credit card on file at doggy daycare, the vet, the pet store with the best toys. Dogs are considered good practice for babies, but, look, you can take a baby to a restaurant, or to the grocery store — what a dog is actually “good practice” for is structuring your life into three-hour increments, because that’s how long you’re allowed to be out in the world before you have to go home, so your dog can pee.
A dog’s relationship with a person, its person, makes opting into the responsibility, the cost, the thudding and complete end of spontaneity, the grim February-morning walks, the ambient pong that fills a house (no matter how often you wash the dog, the toys, the filthy, barnacle-esque dog beds), the general absurdity of the work of having a dog, seem perfectly reasonable.
My husband Simon calls our dog “Feelings Wolf,” although she’s really called Jem, which I named her after the protagonist’s brother in To Kill a Mockingbird, keeping a promise I made to my first dog, Scout. Jem is almost two, some mystery of black Lab, Boxer, Beagle and Doberman (maybe?), as moody and emotional as I am, and as sweet as the lambs she likes to eat, as sausages or chops, whatever’s available. Jem communicates using her tail, her fur, her barks and groans; when she wants comfort, she circles and lands hard on top of legs, or sneaks closer and closer, like she’s on a first date, until her head comes to nuzzle into a shoulder. When she senses that one of her people needs her love, she puts her face on a leg or an arm and looks up, ready for you. She’s never wrong.
That work of human relationships is beautiful and valuable but also, I’m so exhausted. By life, by all of it. “It’s all a lot,” I thought to myself, as my iPhone dings with a text from a friend that says “It’s just a lot.” A relationship with a dog isn’t so much “less than” as it is “other”: a break from the machinations of relationships with other people, because she isn’t a person, and because the relationship uniquely depends on touch, gesture and motion; tone and mood and energy; absent of language and negotiations and expectations beyond a walk, and a treat. Dogs, and people among dogs, are only ever in the moment, because of a dog’s way with empathy (fundamental; endless; pure); and because a dog’s environment has to be constantly monitored, for grapes (dog poison) or a piece of resting tenderloin (dog heaven); and because a dog’s daily needs are boring (sniff walks), gross (turd collection) and expensive (everything), but mandatory, a series of moving meditations.
I know that this dog is never going to actually talk to me, in English. When I say something like, “We’re best friends, and I know that you know, I’m just reminding you” and she keeps looking at me, silent and wiggling, I remember that while we have a dynamic as specific as what I have with any person, my job is to care for her, and hers is to be cared for. The care and the cuddles feel equal to each other — and Jem is as soft as a stuffie, a world-class cuddler — but they’re not. We are only caring to care, caring for something that can’t care back the same way. There is no better evidence than “dogs” for how much we want to do love well, as an enterprise, as an end. Which is why, next month, I’m getting another one.
Kate Carraway posts at katecarraway.com. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram @KateCarraway and “like” her Facebook fan page at facebook.com/KateCarrawayWriting. Her column appears Tuesday.
There is no better evidence than “dogs” for how much we want to do love well. Which is why, next month, I’m getting another one