Sdtrk: ‘Heaven sent’ by Josef K

A couple of nights ago, I’d dreamt I was at a Doll Parliament* in upper Ontario, where the hosts had two Rottweilers. At some point I was leaving the livingroom to step outside for a smoke — a Djarum, naturally — and the dogs, as they tend to do, got startled, and they each leapt at me and clamped onto my ears. Both of the hosts had to remove them (one host per dog), but unfortunately I lost my ears… I remember seeing one of them, neatly removed and unmangled, lying face-up on the blue pile carpeting. It’s almost as if they detached, which really was the most amusing thing under the circumstances.

There aren’t a lot of people who will dig this post, but I have a confession: overall, I’m not really keen on dogs. They’re fine from a great distance away, but I am not a dog person. I don’t really like how dogs possess an unending torrent of nervous, excitable, and unpredictable energy. To be fair, I prefer to not be around humans who are like that for long periods of time, either, but at least if you tell a person ‘hey, let’s… bring it down a notch,’ they’ll understand you, which is more than I can say for dogs. But as someone who prefers his environs to be quiet 95% of the time, having to put up with the sounds of running, or jumping, or scampering, let alone barking, is not my idea of a good time.

More pressing of a dislike for me is that dogs tend to be filthy most of the time. It’s understandable; these are creatures that glean a lot of information through what they can smell, but to those of us who are semi-recovering germophobes, they’re frankly kinda disgusting. Constantly rolling around in dirt and mud, all that shedding, rooting through rubbish face-first — and then licking your face — all that peeing and pooping, sticking their noses up other dogs’ bums, the leg-humping… I don’t need to go on; you’ve encountered a dog or two, I’m sure, so you’re familiar with their work. Their behaviour puts me in mind of that blurb The Onion ran a few years ago, ‘Area Dog’s Rock Bottom Same As His Peak‘. That’s not satire, that’s fact. To me, outside stops at our front door (well, the foyer), whereas to a dog, the world is their room, and those differences between us are irreconcilable.

Now I understand that genetically speaking, dogs are territorial, and when humans domesticated them, trained them to be protective of their owners’ territory, but all I’m saying is that they don’t have to be aggressive and in a constant state of high alert at all times, especially if whatever dog has seen you several times previously; it’s not as if you’re a stranger. I mean, I was raised christian, for example, and during the late Eighties, I became an atheist, which I still am to this day. All I’m saying to dogs is that they can change if they want to. Consider being less aggressive and loud, dogs. Give it some thought.

Although I know it’s largely steeped in nonsense, I think there’s a bit of something to the line of thinking that ‘dogs and dog people are extraverts, while cats and cat people are introverts’. Yeah, it’s a broad brush, and you don’t have to take much time to poke numerous holes in that theory, but despite the fact that there are calm dogs and excitable cats, I broadly see it applying. Generally speaking, dogs are eager to please (except when you tell them to stop barking), whereas cats do what they bloody well like when they bloody well like it. I’m reminded of a joke: a person with a dog and a cat has a stick, and they throw it into the distance and tell the dog to fetch it, which the dog does. The person does this a few more times with the same result. At some point, they throw the stick and tell the cat to go fetch, at which the cat responds ‘If you want the stick so badly, why do you keep throwing it away in the first place?’
But dogs are more open in their behaviour and presentation — again, generally speaking — while cats are more enigmatic and furtive in theirs, instances of zoomies aside. Apropos of nothing, much like a strikingly high number of people of his generation and demographic growing up in the Southern US, my father hated cats, as he didn’t trust them. He wasn’t keen on their inscrutable and complex nature, much as he wasn’t too keen on people that he didn’t view as straightforward and easy-to-understand. That’ll be yet another reason why he and I ultimately didn’t get on!
It’s funny: before mum had me, she and my father had a chow for a number of years. Are they called chows, or chow-chows?? Nevertheless, I didn’t ask them too much about said chow, due to the fact that it was a dog and not an animal I was more interested in, but I always thought it was really jarring for my father to have had this obedient animal for years, then to have a wilful son who fell far short of his ludicrous expectations. I think there’s a lesson there for all of us.

I should stress here that I don’t hate dogs! They’re animals, so they should be protected and deserve love, as in their own loud and graceless way, they constantly show unconditional love to the humans they live with. I just feel that dogs are too much for someone like me to deal with, as they’re walking embodiments of overstimulation. Which is fine! For dog aficionados, not me, that is.
In fact, as I don’t want to end this entry on a downer, allow me to list my favourite makes and models of dog:

the Corgi: a wee shoebox with a head and li’l legs

the Husky: admittedly I’m probably drawn to huskies due to their monochromatic colour scheme

the Pomeranian: they always seem very happy to be wherever they’re at, plus they’re great for dusting surfaces

the Shiba Inu: I liked ’em long before Doge was a thing

the Scottish terrier: remarkable eyebrow, moustache, and beard combo

and the AIBO ERS-220: designed by legendary mecha designer Shouji Kawamori, very friendly, sleek, and futuristic

Finally, in the interest of full disclosure, we actually have a dog here at Deafening silence Towers! She came with the place when we moved in, but Tsukihime renamed her Salty, as in ‘she’s a salty bitch’. Zero shedding and doesn’t bark! As far as dogs go, you’re doin’ alright, Salty

I told her ‘Stay!’ once back in September of 2023, and she hasn’t moved since.
Good girl!

*In case you’re unfamiliar with the term: I used to get together with a couple of other local area iDollators in informal gatherings that we referred to as Doll Congresses, like during the second Michigan Doll Congress, for example. Whenever we got together round at a fellow iDollators home in Ontario, Canada, we called it a Doll Parliament, obviously