The best of the dog days

Dyslexics sometimes get my atheism confused and accuse me of being anti-dog. I was raised in an environment so unfriendly toward dogs that I wasn’t even allowed to listen to Snoop Dogg, an environment in which dogs were shamed for their stinky breath.

Then I broke the shackles of my upbringing and babysat a magnificent german shepherd named Griffin for the duration of last year. He made me realise a life without a dog is a life unlived.

Sadly, at the end of the year, I had to hand him back to his owner.

Boy-oh-good-boy was I sad and gloomy. My mate was gone. I was needy as all heck. Who wanted a pat each morning? Who wanted to come with me on every single adventure?

Not my wife. She hardly ever wanted pats.

So we adopted another dog, much different from the last.

World meet Graham, an 8-year-old Japanese spitz, scared of sticks, balls, pussycats. His hobbies include cuddles, sleeping and pats. He loooooves cuddles. He’s a needy dog.

Needy dog, meet needy man. Graham’s different from Griffin. Griffin was a bully like me. I’d hold him down by the throat, spend an afternoon rasslin’, get my arm in those powerful jaws and dare him to challenge me as alpha. We’d go to the dog park and laugh at the wimpy dogs with pencil necks and dweeby haircuts.

Graham . . . not so much. I tried rough-housing with him once but he just curled into a floofy hedgehog ball and whimpered.

I try to tell Graham to stick up for himself. But just the other day a dog a quarter his size had a go at him and all he did was scream a human-like scream and cry human-like tears.

Graham likes my wife more than me. He likes women more than men. He’s a smart dog.

When I try to get him to come on super-funexcellent-adventures, he regards me with a weary side-eye. ‘‘No thanks pal.’’

Thankfully, over this past week we’ve had more time together.

I’ve been helping Graham create a strong online presence (@passthepooch – Instagram, Twitter and Tik-tok) and he’s been telling me canine history.

Graham tells me the past week has seen the great leap into its Third Age. First there were wolves. Some time later, a clever mutt managed to enter the human realm and eat dinner instead of being eaten for dinner. Later still, humans felt bad that they were at work all day. They came home to their dogs to say ‘‘sorry’’.

Four hundred years from now, when dogs are teaching their pups history, this time will be remembered and retold as a golden time. The time when every dog was happy.

Because people talk about how their dog loves this or that activity. The beach, fetch, hide-andseek. When what dogs love most is spending time with their humans. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing, so long as you’re doing it together.

I see dogs out with old people whose pace is glacial (glacially forward, not retreating like today’s glaciers) and they’re first-equal for the ‘‘happiest dog in the world’’ award.

You can imagine future dogs around a future campfire. ‘‘Legend has it that the people got guilty about how they were always leaving us behind. One day they just stayed at home. Some of us got four or five walks a day, every day. If you felt like a pat, you got a pat. There were more pats than any good boy could handle. Ahhhh . . . all those years ago.’’

‘‘Max, are you talking dog years?’’

‘‘I dunno; dog years, schmog years. The point is it was a long time ago and it was the best of times to be a dog.’’