Reading an article in “The Atlantic” about how having children has a negative impact on happiness, but how happiness isn’t the only thing that matters makes me think about my dogs.
I’m eating my breakfast as I read and the dogs are sitting next to me staring at my plate. Daisy, the older one, is dribbling saliva onto the floor which I will step in when I get up to take my plate to the kitchen.
I don’t remember how children had a limiting impact on my life, but these dogs have seen me make a lot of sacrifices.
I’m thinking about this as I put the milk back into the fridge and see the piece of roast beef that I set aside before Sunday lunch so that I could use it for their treats this week.
The night before, as Daisy settled down for a sleep, the puppy rushed towards her and climbed on top, biting her ears.
Daisy looked at me with a long suffering kind of, “Was it your idea to get this idiot?” look on her face.
“I feel sorry for Daisy,” I say.
“Why do you feel sorry for her?” My daughter asks
“She’s had a hard life.”
I know as soon as the words come out that it’s complete nonsense.
“No, what I mean is that she had a hard start. She couldn’t see properly.”
“She didn’t know any different though did she? Then you spent thousands of pounds on an ophthalmologist and literally gave her the gift of sight.”
“Partial sight,” I say.
It’s true though, I have put an inordinate amount of love into these animals to the extent that I sometimes wonder what it’s all about.
My dentist was telling me recently that she’d like to get a dog, especially as her children are getting older and aren’t so enthusiastic about greeting her when she comes home.
“My son still rushes up and throws his arms around me when I get in,” she tells me.
“How old is your son?”
“He’s 8.”
“Yes, mine don’t hug me enthusiastically these days, especially if they’ve got a hangover.”
The dogs, on the other hand, do, especially if I’m carrying a bit of dried sprat.
Philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer suggested that we love dogs so much because we recognise they’re better than us.
They are masters of living in the present, they demand very little in exchange for contentment, and can lick their own genitals. Schopenhauer didn’t make that last point but I imagine he was similarly impressed with it.
Dogs are also a reminder of the inequality in relationships where they, endlessly faithful and giving, do not always receive the same treatment from their human companions.
I’ve often told my family that I see Daisy as a reincarnation of my old rescue dog, Toby to whom I did not always display the level of patience he needed and deserved.
In my mind, Daisy was sent to test me, and perhaps I see her as an object of all the repentance I feel I am due to pay rather than sporadic impatience with a past difficult rescue dog.
The consequence of all this though is that I consider their needs above all others, including my own most of the time.
I turn down most invitations so as to avoid leaving them alone.
Lockdown was probably a greater gift for me than for them because I often think they look relieved when I put my coat on and toss them a guilt-ridden biscuit as I go through the door shouting,
“Won’t be long.”
Perhaps worst of all, I have no intention of changing it because I have found myself talented at being disconnected.
Possibly though, it creates difficulties that I am not consciously aware of as I become increasingly distant from, well, most things.
Recently I have been having a lot of anxiety dreams where I’m sitting in the toilet thinking that the doors are closed but then realising that everyone passing by can see in and is laughing at me.
In the dreams I feel alone, isolated, and like an outlier.
Then I wake up unable to move my legs and, in a moment of panic, realise that it’s only because Daisy is lying on them.
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