I tell my dogs I love them all the time — but I never say it to my boyfriend...
TODAY, on Valentine’s Day, I’ll defrost my beloved their favourite meal, chicken and green tripe, and stuff some rabbits’ ears in a buffalo horn for them to wrestle with and then I will go out for dinner without them.
There will be no rose petals and champagne and definitely no cheap, itchy, red and black lacy lingerie you have to constantly pull from your derriere. Those days are gone. I’m 54 now. Romantic love is preserved for my dogs. I have a boyfriend, but we are not a romantic pair. We both, however, really love our two dogs.
Am I weird and emotionally defective? If I am, I am not alone. A survey by pet-sitting company Rover came out last week counting the ways we show love to our pets and how we believe they show it back.
It’s not a big survey, just 1,000 dog owners aged 18-65. But I found this little glimpse into other dog owners’ lives a bit of a relief. It revealed that four in ten owners say, ‘I love you’ more frequently to their dog than to their human partner. Who are the creepy 60 per cent majority that announce their love to their partners, husbands, wives and lovers more frequently than their darling doggos? Are they soft in the head?
In my household of two adult humans and two rescued Spanish hunting dogs, almost all the loving words uttered by humans are directed towards a species other than their own.
Sometimes my boyfriend and I will communicate our feelings to each other, but I can guarantee you it won’t have quite the warmth, spontaneity nor sincerity of those regular sweet nothings and tender kisses that land on our two hounds.
WHEN one of my best friends, Nick, died a few years ago my boyfriend said something like, ‘Oh, that’s sad’ and then went to bed. So I sat in my study with the dog and wept. Dogs are so good like that. They can’t lend you a tenner when you are skint. But they are always there.
The popular ways to communicate affection to our dogs, according to the survey, include 44 per cent who say ‘physical touch’, including belly rubs (79 per cent), cuddling (75 per cent), spooning in bed, (13 per cent) and even kissing them on the lips (11 per cent).
I felt pretty good about the last stat because I don’t do this.
I spend enough time with them to know what they eat and how they keep their backsides clean.
My dogs are with me all the time, and, I am not at all sorry to say, the recipients of my day-today, hour-to-hour, minute-tominute affection. Of course I tell them I love them over and over.
When I am chopping onions in the kitchen, there’s something about the way they both lie there watching over me, staring, trusting, familiar, beautiful and perfect (and waiting for a tasty morsel), I have to break away from my dreary domestic task to kiss the top of their heads and tell them they’re beautiful, good girls and that I love them.
And then possibly follow that up with, ‘Yes, I love you so much.’ If we are training and they surprise me by performing something well, I don’t just give them a treat. Oh no, I lavish them with praise and tell them I am proud of them and love them for being so good. I wonder if I should try that with the man too?
I assumed that as a barren spinster, I was perhaps filling a gap in my life with dogs, like the caricature of the lonely cat lady.
When I wrote a book about the love story of my first dog, a rescue lurcher called Wolfy who died two years ago, the most brutal trolling I received went, ‘You’re going to die lonely in a pool of your own p*** in a miserable old people’s home.’ The implication being that not having kids and loving a dog instead meant a miserable old age.
Ooh, that hurt. The fact that the thought still stalks the corridors of my memory suggests I think investing so much love in my dogs is perhaps unwise.
But a life without another human in my domestic universe I can countenance. Quite a few menopausal friends have sworn off marrying again, and a few of those describe themselves as ‘Post Men’ — nothing to do with oestrogen, no, it means they’re just bloody done with the gender that leaves the loo seat up. I know a few widows and without doubt some are merry.
IHAVEN’T reached that point, but I do occasionally consider those old crones of myth that live at the edge of the forest and think, I’d be up for that if I could swap the black cat for a scruffy mutt.
I’m not a fool. My dogs are not teddies or babies. They’re animals, and need to be treated correctly. What’s the point in telling your dog you love them if you don’t give them what they need? This is walks, play, training, mud, good food, company, a safe place to rest and their doggy dignity (no silly outfits!).
I think dogs love us and they tell us by howling with joy when we come through the door. They come into our beds and snuggle closely up against our sleeping bodies. Though that may be a sign less of love and more of the central heating going off.