On Being A Dog Person

I don’t trust people who don’t like dogs.

I also don’t trust people whom dogs don’t like.

Of course, my dog loves, loves, LOVES everybody.

So, she’s no help.

If you were to break into my house, the only risk you’d run is getting licked on, or preferably in, the mouth.

When a guy came recently to fix something, he had to get down on the floor and crawl into a cabinet to get to some wiring. I walked in to find Lola, our dog, in there with him, tail wagging. She was licking his face.

When I called her away, apologizing, he said it was OK. He actually sounded like he meant it. Which is when I knew he was a nice guy, Lola’s breath in there must have been fierce.

I often think of Philip Pullman’s Dark Materials trilogy. Because Lola acts an awful lot like my daemon. In Pullman’s story, every character has a daemon, a creature who is always with them, who is actually part of them, somehow.

Lola follows me everywhere. She is, right now, in fact, lying a few feet from me, steadily watching my face. Not sure why she finds my doings so interesting. Not sure what she makes of my doings at all.

And if you look at having a dog, in a bean-counter kind of way, it makes no sense. They don’t serve a purpose. And they can be a pain in the ass. Stealing the food off the table. Getting into the garbage. Needing to be walked. Needing to be picked up after. Going to the vet, the groomer, to be boarded when you’re away. Some shed fiercely. Others drool.

Still … I am so happy to have her around.