I’M NOT A DOG PERSON

Please send hate mail asap

Santino and I attempting “Blue Steel” - Los Angeles 2009

Daisy was my first love.

Now before you get too excited, Daisy was a human female.

She was different from the other girls. She was more care-free, more wild. She seemed to dance to her own tune. She never ventured out in public, without two perfectly symmetrical pigtails, and somehow always seemed to have a little bit of dirt on her freckled cheeks, which alongside the blue checks on her dress, made her crystal blue eyes glisten, especially when she smiled; revealing that adorable gap between her front teeth.

Whenever I saw her, my attention would meander from my tasks at hand, as I watched her sketching on the corner of a page, dreamily looking out of the window, or standing separately from the crowd and engaging in her favorite activity of people watching. I would notice her smiling when others would laugh, even when they were on the other side of the room. Other people’s joy made her happy.

She wasn’t someone who was incessantly talking, or craving attention. She skirted around the edges of different groups of friends, happily joining in when appropriate, but equally as happy to watch from afar, and even more content in the company of herself and her thoughts.

Her beauty, and the affect that she had over me, would lead to short-term bloodshed and long-term compassion.

The bloodshed, mentioned above, was caused by my desire to kiss her. Unfortunately, I never had the courage to make any sort of move on her, and so I was destined to rot my life away in the dreaded friend zone.

Then, one fateful spring day, an opportunity arose, which would result in an amorous embrace with my beloved. This prospect was given life, when Sarah and William, two friends of ours, suggested a game of Kiss-Chase. A simple ruse wherein the males and females would take turns in chasing each other, and upon catching their prey, the vanquished would be subjected to a kiss by the captor.  

The game commenced, with the females acting as birds of prey, and the males taking on the roles of the hunted, and I skillfully positioned myself in Daisy’s line of sight.

The game was afoot!

I should mention at this point, in case it wasn’t clear, that Daisy and I were both five years old, and classmates in nursery school in UK. Also, for normal boys and girls of that age, to be kissed by a member of the opposite sex was a fate worse than death. “Disgusting! Gross! and Yeeeuch!” would have been the usual response to the idea of any embrace of this sort.  

I was a fast runner and could easily outrun Daisy, so I placed my hands in my pockets and swerved left and right, to lessen my speed, allowing her to gradually catch up with me, whilst still maintaining the illusion that I was running at full capacity.

I could hear Daisy’s footsteps catching up to me, and I looked around to see her fingertips reaching out to my shoulder. My heart skipped a beat, with the knowledge that, in about five seconds, she would have caught me, and we would be locked in an embrace that would no doubt lead to marriage and a brown station wagon. (That was the picture of idyllic marriage for me at the time.)

As her fingers ebbed closer to my collar, fate reached in with her cruel hand, making sure to untie one of my shoelaces.

I was suddenly aloft, flying over the ground, with my hands still buried deep within my tight pockets, making it impossible for me to reach out and cushion the landing, as I face-planted the gravel surface and slid across the playground.

After what seemed like minutes, the searing pain suddenly made itself known, and I let out a bloodcurdling scream, before turning around towards Daisy. Upon seeing my face, my beloved screamed even louder, covering her mouth, at the sight of my face which had cheese-grated its way across the gravel, embedding shards of small stone within my torn and bloodied skin.

I was immediately carried to the nurse by my teacher, Miss Everly, (who I was also in love with, and had the week before, built up the courage to tell her that she was beautiful, but without any success at achieving matrimony.)

The nurse gingerly excavated gravel for my face, until my mother arrived, equally horrified at the sight of her son, with six large Band-Aids, across his face.

…………

But Daisy also taught me compassion.

A few months later, still unmarried to Daisy, (and Miss Everly); I was in the playground, when one of the children discovered a large ant’s nest near the swings.

As we gathered to marvel at this mini metropolis beneath our feet, Charlie ran over.

Charlie was a rather rambunctious boy, who always managed to arrive in the morning with two socks on, and yet, without fail, would always go home with only one. He also skillfully managed to maintain a constant snot bubble from one of his nostrils, which inflated and deflated with each inhalation.

Charlie took one look at the ants and screamed, KILL THEM! before jumping up and down on the insect’s enclave, stamping out anything that moved.

Other children, like obedient soldiers, hypnotized by the power of life and death, immediately followed suit. I watched the battle unfold, unsure of what to do, until I glanced over at Daisy, who had climbed up onto the swing set with a look of pure indignation.

Stop, killing them! She shouted. They are God’s creatures!

This vision of my own personal Joan of arc, lit a firework in my half formed brain. My beloved was fighting to save those in need! She was battling for the oppressed! And I found myself echoing her cries for clemency.

They are God’s creatures! I cried, Stop it!

Somehow, her voice, fused with mine, shook most of the children from their blind killing spree, leaving Charlie heaving on his own as he chased some surviving ants into the grass.

I felt good.

Somehow it felt so much better to protect the ants, rather than squashing them. After that day, inspired by my first love, I began to see all creatures on this earth as important, and worthy of my protection and respect.

………….

So am I an animal person? On a macro level, yes.

I’m vegan. I respect all life. So much so, that my wife and children laugh at me when I catch mosquitoes in my room and release them outside the window, instead of squishing them with a magazine.

But am I specifically a dog person? No.

Growing up, we were never what one would define as a dog family. Sure, a few furry friends existed within our walls from time to time, but they were never what I classified as a full-time member of the family. My siblings may have different perspectives.

Growing up and maintaining my nomadic DNA, which meant traveling light, I never understood the idea of engaging with a creature that I would have to care for; unless it was a wife, or child. I didn’t want the burden, hassle, or responsibility of someone, or rather some-thing, that would not eventually evolve into being a self-feeding, self-caring, self-pooping, and self-sufficient creature.

……………….

Then I met my wife, Giada; and she came with her four legged husband, Santino, in tow.

Giada and Santino

Santino was a three year-old Havanese, and with him, and my blossoming relationship with Giada, I was introduced to the adventure of having a dog in the city.

The daily multi outings, around the block, rain or shine, the dodging of trash, rats, and puddles. The picking up of faeces, whether solid or liquid. The annoyance of watching him poop, turn around, and then walk right through it, with brown oozing through his paws and onto his furry boots.

The eating of something on the streets, that made him crap all over the building lobby, in front of the superintendent. The fact that he would walk around the block, releasing precisely zero droplets of urine, but then unload a gallon on the kitchen floor as soon as we returned home.

Then there is the knowledge that if you do invest love and time into this being, it will, without fail, hurt you in the end, simply with their demise.

I just never understood it. Dogs can’t talk back to you and you never know if they have any idea of what you are saying. One day they will understand you perfectly and come, as soon as you ask. The next day they will look at you mockingly, as if you had started talking Chinese to them, as you beg them to walk back from the road, out of a puddle of mud, come in from the rain, or to not run off, as you’re trying to get the kids into the car.

They will stand under your feet when you are cooking, causing you to spill hot oil over yourself and you can’t get angry and explain the logic of your argument, because they don’t speak human. So what’s the deal? What’s this obsessive infatuation with dogs?

But I digress. Back to Santino.

He and I were, from the beginning, at odds with each other. I was an unwelcome suitor, threatening the balance of his perfect marriage, and he had no qualms about showing it.

When Giada would come over to my apartment for a night, she would bring Santino. As soon as the human heavy petting began, Santino would start incessantly barking, jumping up and trying to separate us with his fifteen pound frame. Giada kept gently pushing him away, until he finally relented, by leaving us in the living room, kissing on the couch, whilst he trotted into my bedroom and laid a steaming pipe on my shag pile rug. (Yes, I was a bachelor, and shag pile was de rigour.)

He would saunter back into the living room and curl up on the couch next to us, waiting contentedly for us to move the proceedings into the bedroom, where his tepid gift awaited.

Santino and I, pretending to get on for the sake of the photo

After six months, I knew what my intentions were with Giada, and I took Santino out for our often forced, and awkward, evening stroll.

I stopped on the corner of Mercer and West 4th Street, and leant up against an NYU building.

Santino stopped and looked up at me, as if to say, Ugh. What now?

I took out a Marlboro light, lit it and tried to intimidate my competition with my smoking prowess, which consisted of squinting eyes, furrowed brow and exhaling smoke through my larger than average nostrils.

Santino, I said out loud. We have a problem.

He kept his eyes directly on me, unflinching, daring me to blink before he did.

Now, I love Giada and you love Giada, I said. It’s just the way it is. I’m not going anywhere, so I suggest a truce, where we both love the same woman and we try to get along the best we can. What do you say?

Santino blinked.

Done, I said.

Sufficed to say, we did maintain a truce, and managed to create not only a partnership, but a deep and loving bond. As marriage took place and our lives grew, he and I dutifully slipped down the priority list, when child No. 1, and No. 2 came along, and the two of us old gentleman got into her own groove.

Somehow he knew where I was going to be in the house at the strangest of times. Every morning at 430am, as I tried to life-hack my way to a healthier version of myself, I would do a two hour routine of exercises, breathing and meditation in the basement. Somehow Santino always appeared in the room at exactly the moment that I started my meditation, hopping into my lap and zoning out with me for the following twenty three minutes.

At the ripe old age of seventeen, my wife wrapped Santino up in his favorite blanket and held him in her arms on the couch, continuously for three days, as his body shut down.

I was working in England the day that he passed, and as many people feel when they are apart from their loved ones who have died, I felt an immense guilt; a heaviness of not saying goodbye. A weight, of him thinking that I’d abandoned him, in his last days.

My guilt lingered long enough, that after a year and a half, my family and I went to the local adoption center to find a new dog, and I found myself in tears of guilt that I was betraying Santino, with the idea of replacing him.

We did, after a few more months, rescue a dog from Rescue City. A snow white poodle who, from day one, wanted nothing to do with me.

Day one, fresh out of the rescue center.

She would play with the kids and cuddle with my wife, but if I went too close to her, her tail would go down and she would immediately back into a corner. If the kids were playing with her outside and I tried to join in, she would run away. When I hugged my sons, she would come up and push their legs with her paw, trying to protect them by pushing them away from me.

One day, a contractor came to do some work at the house and noticed the dog’s reaction to me, and him.

I had a rescue horse like that, he said. Your dog must have been mistreated by a male figure, maybe one who looks like you in some way. My horse never let me hug her until the day she died, he continued. Give your dog time.

And so again, I found myself talking to a four legged creature, on the steps of my house.

There’s no rush, I said, gently. When you are ready Girl, I’m here. I’m not going to push it.

Three weeks later, I woke up early, in order to give myself a lengthier than usual birthday meditation. Towards the end of my session, I heard footsteps coming into the living room. I peeked out of one eye, to see her slowly climb onto the sofa next to me, with her paw close to my hand.

I kept my eyes closed and gently lifted my hand onto her paw.  She sniffed it, licked it and then put her other paw on top of my hand. 

We stayed there for a while before one of my sons bounded in, screaming birthday greetings.

Ever since then, her and I will have a morning make-out session, where she licks my stubbly chin, and I scratch her back. When I hug my wife or my kids, she is convinced that she needs to be involved and stands on her hind legs, with her front legs on my back, unable to wrap her legs around us all.

Is she smiling? I don’t know. Her tiny tail wags at certain times and doesn’t at other times, when I expect it to. I will still never fully understand the obsession with dogs, simply because I don’t understand dogs.

Having only grown up with people, maybe I’m expecting too much from this canine relationship. Maybe it is exactly, what it is meant to be; an indescribable symbiotic existence, where the benefits I receive are not meant to be translated to others by mere letters on a page. Maybe the benefits are more spiritual or energetic in nature.

Maybe when she’s running around in the garden, and laying in the bushes, she is harvesting energy from the ground, which she then distributes to each of us family members, as she strolls around the house, letting us all stroke her. Where we think we are giving her a loving stroke, in fact, she is the one delivering positive ions to us, spreading her energy or even her love.

Maybe we need her, more than she needs us?

So am I a dog person now? No.

But then again, I was never a marrying person, (Read “WHY I NEVER WANTED TO GET MARRIED”)

Yet here I sit, unashamedly up to my eyeballs in love with my wife - and now, again, falling in love with my dog.

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