You Can Know a Man by How He Treats His Dog
My dog sleeps on the couch, shits outside, and doesn’t wear a collar. Let me elaborate.
The last time I had a dog, I was just sprouting hairs below the belt. Half lab, half dalmatian, we dubbed her a dalmador because labmation sounded, frankly, too fucking creepy. She was the kind of dog that people wrote stories about when they wrote about a boy and his dog. She chased rabbits, brought home squirrels, and got pissed when she realized medicine was hidden in the cheese. We’d moved from the sticks to the suburbs, and my sweet bitch of a dog Maggie was going fucking bonkers living in a fenced-in yard. She was used to disappearing at sun-up and coming home at sundown, or at moments in between if we called her. You can imagine her dismay when her seemingly boundless world was reduced to a sixteenth acre cluttered with a swingset and an above-ground pool. And you can imagine her confusion when her humans came into the yard once a week to collect her turds. We ended up giving her to our old neighbor in the sticks who was a geriatric pothead. If nothing else, we knew she’d eat well.
I always wanted another dog. But life has a way of keeping you busy and moving you around. I constantly worried about things like, how can I afford a dog while I’m in college? Who could look after it while I’m busy skipping classes and chasing skirt? Is it fair to have a dog when I can’t give it the best life possible?
These are the same questions women use to talk themselves out of having babies and into having dogs. And, frankly, I’m glad these women are talking themselves out of babies. I just feel for the dogs. They treat the dogs like shit. In fact, they treat them worse than shit. They treat their dogs like babies.
I had the good fortune of living for a decade or so (also known as my college years) in a quickly-becoming-not-so-quaint-but-still-quaint-enough-to-call-quaint beach community in San Diego. The “becoming not so quaint” bit was the surfers and burnouts getting priced out by yuppies and yoga pants. Sadly, yoga pants won. It was this turning tide that kept my dream of having a dog at bay.
In this becoming-not-so-quaint beach community, yoga pants trot merrily behind their pups with lead in hand, quickly ripping their pups away from whatever pleasant smell that captivates the pup’s attention long enough to interfere with “the walk.” See, the thing about “walking the dog” in the ‘burbs is that the walk is more about yoga pants than the dog. Look at me, I’m giving my dog exercise, she silently proclaims as the dog strains full-wheeze to hasten yoga pants’ own leisurely pace. Clearly, the dog would gleefully chew off its own head to escape the collar if only it were sure it would still be able to run.
You have to remember that a dog’s sense of smell is like a quadrillion times better than a human’s. The closest equivalent to the overwhelming excitement a dog feels when it gets outside is when a human reaches the Ben and Jerry’s window in the frozen foods section. A dog has got to take a moment to peruse. But yoga pants dictate that a dog only stops if it’s going to make. Then she gleefully tears a plastic, non-biodegradable bag from the roll of fifty she keeps attached to the lead and uses her bare hand protected only by this thin layer of polyethylene to collect the still-warm dropping of her concubine, as if to say, look at me, I’m keeping the neighborhood tidy. Cool, yoga pants. Y’know what that turd is after two days in the sun? Dirt. Y’know what that plastic is after two hundred years in the sun? Plastic.
And what’s with the fifty bags? It’s one walk.
It is my love of dogs, ladies and gentlemen, that kept me, for an entire decade, from having a dog. Once, while living in this becoming-not-so-quaint beach community, I took a girlfriend’s dog for a walk. Yes, I begrudgingly used a lead. But I walked that dog straight to Dog Beach — which is exactly what it sounds — and let that dog off the lead. That dog promptly found a nice undisturbed area of sand, squat, and presented to her kin a steaming pile of pride.
I, not one to disrupt the true nature of god’s kingdom, was compelled to leave it be. But I, a member of this community and a properly nervous Jew, was worried one of my neighbors might see me. Here’s the crux: I don’t touch shit. Not now, not ever.
A very relevant aside, my nephew at two years old once held in a poo for three hours while my sister was out only because he knew I wouldn’t change him if he were to make. Judge all you want. This isn’t about love. It’s about shit. And I don’t touch it.
So I found a yoga pants and I explained my situation. I told her that it was highly unlikely she’d be using all fifty of her bags that particular afternoon and it would be kind of her to do me a favor. She offered me a bag. I reiterated the bit about not touching shit. She appeared offended.
Now, I think I’ve done a good job of showing that women treat dogs worse than shit; they treat them like babies. This is the point where I get to lend women a little credit and say that, while they treat dogs worse than shit, they don’t treat dogs as bad as they treat other babies’ shit.
She looked at my girlfriend’s dog’s shit as though it might scar her permanently or cause her to lose instagram followers. But I needed closure in this situation, one, because more people were beginning to notice that our conversation piece had not been promptly collected, and two, because she was bangin’ hot and my girlfriend was really into girls. So I did what any reasonable man would to encourage a woman to forego her apprehension — I offered her money. Five dollars to be exact. She did exactly what you would expect — acted more offended. But, with a soothing application of logic, she succame. Or succumbed. But it really just sounds better as succame. I’d rather she succame.
Anyway, for five dollars and the reasonably deduced facts that, one, she’d be rather unhappy if the poo remained, two, she’s already okay with touching poo albeit with a thin shield of polyethylene, and three, she can use that five dollars to buy me a beer when our dogs have had their fun, she collected my girlfriend’s dog’s pride and disposed of it in a waste bin. And for those of you admonishing my tactics, yes, she used the fiver to buy me a beer.
But such a story cannot let me lose sight of the importance of treating a dog to the dignity of letting it roam where it pleases, the pleasure of finding its own food if it doesn’t like the cheap shit I buy, the self-value of not dying a virgin (most American dogs do, you realize). No, I remained steadfast petless as I watched my guy friends play along to lead laws so they could arrange doggy dates with the yoga pants in 2B.
It wasn’t until the fateful day in autumn of twenty-sixteen. I was going for a surf, or an uncomfortable swim with a bit of fiberglass as I often found it, when it happened. The singular event that set into motion the eventual mating with the best dog a man could know. “Mating” isn’t a good word. “Pairing” would be better. The singular event that set into motion the eventual pairing with the best dog a man could know. The singular event that led me to be able to say, “my dog sleeps on the couch, shits outside, and doesn’t wear a collar.”
It was like any other autumn day. Classes were in full swing. I had some religious reason for not being in class (C’mon, half-Irish, half-Jew? Like three-quarters of my year are religious holidays). I was half-trotting to the beach with the top half of my skinsuit hanging at my waist — two surfer trends I’ve never understood. We’re at four and three quarters if you’re keeping count; nineteen-fourths if you’re into improper fractions. The sun was shining. Palm trees were awkwardly wondering why they were in San Diego. No one seemed to notice. Then there she was. Her, with her high-waist shorts finally recovered from their bender in the eighties. Her, with her bleach-blond hair, though she swears it’s just highlights, she’s really a blond, honest. Her eyebrows disagree. Her, with her stroller and her lead. On her lead, the most adorable, milky cream-colored, blue-eyed little human toddler you ever saw. And in the stroller?
Oh yes. Your mind is telling you no. But my memory. My memory is telling you ye-e-es. Yes. A fucking dog. I about-faced quicker than a sailor with freshly printed divorce papers, went straight home, packed the important shit, set the rest on fire, broke up with the girlfriend (after one more tryst with the five-dollar-problem-solver), and moved thirty miles south to a wonderful little country called Mexico. Maybe you’ve heard of it.
Yes, in Mexico we treat dogs as they should be treated. With dignity and respect. We let them wander the streets. We let them keep their balls. When they grow too many in number we let a new Chinese restaurant move into the neighborhood. Some will have you believe that dogs only have the intellect of a toddler, not dissimilar to high-waist bleach-blond’s little human on a string, but I say nay! American dogs, yes, but that’s because American dogs are owned by yoga pants — or men domesticated by yoga pants — and aren’t treated with dignity and respect. They are treated worse than shit! How could they possibly outgrow the mind of a toddler? My dog, she’s a rescue. I rescued her from the tyranny of yoga pants so that she might sleep on a couch, shit outside, and not wear a collar.
She was confused at first. She didn’t understand why she was being sent outside while I was still at home. Because she’s a dog, I say! She didn’t understand why she didn’t have a bunch of jangly shit hanging around her throat anymore. Because she’s a dog, I say! She didn’t understand why a neighbor’s dog tried to bite her face off when she wandered into their yard. Because she’s a dog, I say! And now, now she’s smarter, wiser, more sophisticated than a toddler. My dog organizes the neighborhood watch! My dog lets me know which of my friends have cocaine! My dog fakes sick the morning after I have a woman over! Yes, my dog looks out for me, finds drugs for me, gets rid of women for me — my dog truly is man’s best friend!
Why is my dog man’s best friend, you may or may not ask but I am anyway asking for you. Because I am the man who treats her how she wants to be treated. I am the man who gives her freedom, no strings attached. I am the man who says, “Leave if you want to leave! Go if you want to go!” And my sweet bitch says “No! You need looking after. If I were to leave, you might replace me with a woman. And considering the way they treat dogs, I just couldn’t bear that happening to you.”
“Not Maggie” photo by Jadon Barnes
“Not girlfriend’s dog” photo by Billy Otiniano
“Same girl, different beer” photo by Lorenzo Nucci
“Street Dogs!” photo by Ryan Christodoulou
