[The dreaded dog has become a reality and author Stuart Cohen experiences firsthand the daily pleasures of a canine presence. This is part three of four installments. Don’t miss the exciting conclusion tomorrow. SB SM]

Chapter 11

I don’t actually hate the animal. I hate the animal’s presence in my home. The distaste, while extreme, is not personal.

When people ask why I dislike the dog so much, I answer that there are many costs and no benefits. That is shocking to dog lovers who consider loyal companionship and a wet nose wonderful benefits indeed.

Dog lovers have a sense of sympathetic shared existence with their pets. I have that sense with people, generally even people I’ve never met or who are very different. Dog lovers appreciate the animal’s eagerness to be in relationship with humans. They find a wagging tail almost irresistible attached to an ally that never talks back, criticizes or rejects them. Their dogs provide respite from worldly worries and difficult people.

I find no reward in being licked, panted at or rubbed up against by a dog. Having my crotch smelled does not appeal to me. Being jumped on by an eager pet is unpleasant. Those who talk about the “unconditional love” they supposedly get from dogs have, in my view, a warped understanding of what love is.

Dogs are loyal to those who feed them. Anyone who seeks a dog’s loyalty need simply feed it for a while. When our neighbor’s son came by on a visit to see the dog he had once owned, the dog barely acknowledged him because all the food had come from our house for some time.

Dogs do seem to be interested in people beyond simply as a food source. Wife’s dog will sit at her feet when she’s reading or watching television. This is meaningful and satisfying to Wife. I don’t get how an animal breathing near your feet provides emotional gratification but it does. She considers it a “relationship.” She says when I’m away overnight she feels better for having another “beating heart” in the house. Do fish have hearts?

The dog’s preferred places to rest in the house are strategic locations at nodes in the human traffic pattern, meant to induce more frequent human contact. This means the dog is in the way a lot. I’ve stepped over it, around it, nudged it with my foot to move, but it doesn’t change.

Wife talks to the dog all the time. Since the dog is unable to rise to the conversation level of people, Wife’s chatter often drops to the conversation level of the dog. The highest level of conversation is when she asks it if it would like to go out to urinate. She never has to point out when it’s time to eat. Most of my conversation with the dog has been to say, “Get out of the way.”

I am not cruel to the dog. I only hit it a few times and only then in direct response to bad behavior, trash dumping and such. I thought that was the way you were supposed to provide negative reinforcement for specific violations. I’ve never kicked the dog or even really been tempted to. I just want it to not be here.

I have stepped on the dog from time to time, but always inadvertently and generally at night. It’s black. Both of us are unhappy when that happens.

A dog has its dominant or submissive personality styles, and this dog learned quickly to be submissive around me. It avoids me in the house, thank you. Sometimes when it sees me coming it backs away quickly which I appreciate. Is this considered one of the satisfactions of having a dog? If so, maybe there is one.

Chapter 12

Wife tells me that this is an extremely easy-going, low maintenance dog. But it’s a dog. Dogs are high-maintenance animals. Unlike cats or hamsters or fish, dogs need to go out. You need to feed them every day, twice. Without human company they get bored and more likely to get into mischief in the house.

This has been an altogether bored dog. With no work to do, infrequent walks, and company only when one of the female owners feels like it, the dog has spent virtually its entire life in our house lying around, waiting for someone to engage.

Barking is another matter. We’ve had a lot of barking. Though Wife tells me this dog does not bark excessively, it barks.

It barks when it’s inside and wants to go out. It barks when it’s outside and wants to come in, especially when forgotten out there and left for a while. It barks at night for who knows what reason. When the doorbell rings, it barks enthusiastically and rushes to the door to frighten whoever is standing there. It used to bark madly when it saw another animal outside through the glass doors, though lately it doesn’t see well enough to notice. And sometimes, for no apparent reason, it just barks.

In earlier years, when dog would sit near Wife as she was wrapped up in some activity such as reading or making bead necklaces, we had a family joke of sorts that went like this: “Bark.” “SHRIEEEK!” Wife startles easily, and a random bark at close quarters was enough to set her off. It was funny to the person in the next room.

Dog snoring became a concern in the evening when one of us was trying to concentrate, such as when reading a book. The dog stirred in its sleep as if dreaming (of what?) and snored loudly. On hot summer nights the problem was very loud panting. Dogs cool themselves by panting and the hotter it was the more it needed to cool itself. Panting became a frequent annoyance in the warm months.

Warm weather also brought a sharp increase in the pungent smell of dog. Wife has a keen sense of smell for odors such mildew or car exhaust and complains about them long before I can detect them. Somehow, she didn’t or wouldn’t notice the rank smell of dog in our home. When I called it to her attention, tactfully or otherwise, she would hurry to spray the room with doggie deodorizer that masked the smell for a few minutes. Opening the windows helped little, and an electric fan on the floor just pushed the smell around.

When the dog found the floor or its dog bed inadequate to its desired level of comfort, it took to sleeping on the living room sofas at night and during the day when nobody was looking. Humans who sat on the sofa thereafter found themselves surrounded by the smell. We had to put chairs on the sofas, like German tank traps blocking the beaches of Normandy on D-Day, to break that habit.

When the smell got strong enough, Wife used to take the dog to a pet bathing place for deodorizing. It would return smell free with a red ribbon tied to its collar. The dog’s advancing age and its diminished ability to leap into a car has made Wife unwilling to inconvenience it by taking it to be washed. She tried washing it herself with a bucket and hose in the back yard a few times. The dog could not understand why after a washing it was not let in the house during drying time and barked and barked.

Lately, as the dog has gotten very old, loud panting has become standard. It pants loudly almost all the time. I have a nice, comfortable reading chair with good light that I’ve had to give up because the panting is so loud. I’ve tried to shoo the dog into another room, but it always returns to a particular patch of rug, usually just where people want to walk when entering or leaving the room, and pants.

Chapter 13

Dogshit is a brutal fact of life. Some owners take their dog on walks and dutifully pick up every dogshit event in a baggie. Wife’s dog has always run out into the back yard and done its business where it wanted to. For the most part it has been good about holding it in until the door can be opened so it can run outside. When it squats, tail pointed up means pee, tail pointed down means shit.

Following the dog out to pick up after it has never been a priority for anyone. We could occasionally get Daughter #1 to do it, but mostly it falls to Wife, who simply forgets most of the time. A dozen or more once-a-day droppings in the yard at a time is not unusual. I hate stepping in it. I hate leaving it out there for the guy who mows the lawn to step in, though he does not complain. Wife doesn’t like it when I remind her to pick up the dogshit because she feels guilty so easily. What I don’t understand is, if she loves the dog so much, why doesn’t she love it enough to clean up after it?

Lately as the dog has aged, it can’t handle the four stairs down to the back yard. It now goes out through the garage to the front where the lawn matters more to me. That means more dogshit in the front and the driveway, where we can run it over and spread it around.

After years of hating have a dog in our home even piles of dogshit don’t disgust me as they used to anymore. I wish she’d pick them up.

Chapter 14

Wife is not physically very strong. That leaves me to hike around large bags of dry dog food so that she doesn’t hurt herself. As dog has aged, Wife has gotten sentimental enough to start buying more expensive and presumably tastier canned dog food, which is also heavy when you buy it by the case at Costco. She has suffered from sore neck and back, and I don’t want her to do herself damage handling large quantities of doggie dinner. That would give me one more reason to resent it.

For years she used to prepare its food in its bowl on the floor, but recent back pain made it more convenient to do so up off the floor. She chose a kitchen counter where she could mix the dry and wet food. Seeing this happen on the counters where we put our food, in a dirty bowl from the floor, turned my stomach. She eventually found a spot on a bench near the entry to concoct these animal meals. Now that the dog does not finish every meal right away, there are half-eaten bowls of revolting dog mush to look at each time one passes by.

The water bowl, next to the food bowl, has usually been adequate to satisfy the dog’s thirst. My one and only concession to dog care has been, on occasion, to fill an empty water bowl, especially in warm weather. As I said, I’m not cruel. There have been times when dog has clearly visited the toilet for a drink. You can tell by the black hairs on the porcelain rim.

Wife has one plant next to the dining table that sits in water rather than soil. Dog consistently laps out of the vase, though the water is surely stagnant. Maybe it tastes better. Does a dog care how water tastes? It also eats the soil out of plants. Seriously, the large dracena’s roots are all exposed because dog has removed the soil from the pot. Even the vet couldn’t tell us why. When I refilled it with potting soil, dog emptied it again. One of the small things I look forward to post dog is being able to maintain the plants properly.

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More tomorrow !!

[full disclosure, Stuart’s hair is a little more grey these days. SB SM]

About the Author

Semi-curmudgeon Stuart Cohen has been accused of taking himself too seriously. But not lately. After graduating from Yale in the chaotic spring of 1970 he went skiing. The next year he enrolled in trade school to learn the craft of photography. He spent 25 years as a commercial and editorial photographer and actually made a living at it. Along the way he took up writing and wrote three consumer books on photography for major publishers. He also wrote extensively in the photography trade press on industry trends and ethical issues.

Since leaving photography he has been the head of a symphony orchestra, synagogue president, non-profit board member of various organizations and basketball coach to 12 – 14 year olds. His more recent and most important books include The Seventh System: The Thinking Person’s Guide to the Human Emotional System.  https://www.seventhsystem.net/ , and a Positive Psychology book, Happier Tomorrow, Happier Today, Happier Right Now, 24 Proven Keys to a More Satisfying Life https//HappierX3.com You should check them out.

He is divorced, and remarried to a woman to a woman who hates cats. He now lives in Santa Fe and enjoys hiking and snowshoeing in the mountains.

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Living for Nearly Damn Ever with the #%@&*! Dog

Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2012 by Stuart Cohen. All rights reserved.
ISBN-13: 978-0-9833077-1-6
Cover photo of dog courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net
Please do not steal any part of this book, especially since it can be downloaded free.
Any quotes must be attributed. Please make sure you spell #%@&*! correctly.
Contact the author/publisher via email: sc@aya.yale.edu
Published by Mezuries, P.O. Box 1271, Marblehead, MA 01945

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