Before I coaxed him into the car, before I got the papers signed, and before the lady who gave him to me went on this hyper anal retentive rant about how the breed is second only to God in value to man kind and how I better reconstruct my house to accommodate his every need or want, there was the fine art of picking him out.
He wasn’t our first choice, actually. This other dog named Funyun was. He was one of those tiger stripped ones. Brindle, they call it. I just thought he looked really cool, like car with a hot paint job, which was enough for me. He was younger, and more energetic, but he also took a really long, steamy piss on the carpet of the waiting room while we were saying goodbye, which put considerable doubt in the mind of my wife and I.
The second choice dog was actually a pair of dogs; brothers named Kit and Kirk. I wanted to adopt them because they say that a pair of greyhounds is actually like one dog since their energy level is so low. Also, I wanted to change the name of Kit to Spock because having a pair of two sleek, beautiful dogs named Kirk and Spock would make me the envy of all dog owners on the block, and you have to factor stuff like that in when you get a dog. Ultimately the wife and I decided not to get a pair since we were first timers and we didn’t want to over stretch ourselves. Also, because there would be a lot more poop to pick up, and no matter how cool their names were, walking around the neighborhood with sakes of Dog crap in Walmart bags isn’t cool.
The Dog we settled on was a big black one with a white spot on his chest named Manny, which was an abbreviation of his racing name, Inn Mann. He was the happiest dog of the bunch we spent time with, and he liked to play fetch, a trait I think everyone likes ins a dog. His coat was awful though, like a half shaved, wet rat. He’d come from the track and was malnourished and stressed out like a crack head. That was why his hair was all splotchy: food and stress. They said he’d look a lot better after some home cooking and long naps, but there was no guarantees. His ass was also bald— another common greyhound rescue trait—and might be forever. That made me wonder because walking a dog with a bald ass says a lot about it’s owner. I don’t know what, exactly, but probably something similar to what walking a baboon says about it’s owner. And I can’t think of anything good there. Though I did not enjoy watching his ass, I did enjoy watching him pounce on balls to stop them from rolling, then run them back to me collected in his mouth, then run away from me when I asked him to give the ball to me, then fight me like his life depended on not letting me jerk it free of his bite. He also liked people, led well on his leash, and disliked cats, which was good because the neighbor’s cat keeps sleeping on my out door furniture and leaving gobs of his hair behind. I would traint this dog to eat the cat, I thought, and then I would glue the cat’s hair to his bald ass. Sold.
I hated that his name was Manny however, because that made me think of that clown Manny Ramirez who hit a homerun off me in my first weeks as a big leaguer, and then went on and test positive for steroids. I would not be able to call my dog the name of a former competitor, especially not one of Ramirez’s ilk. It had to be changed or I would surely abuse the dog out of vindictive association. The wife and I decided on Xylo because I had a dream about it the night before we picked him up. I wanted to use a Z, as in Zylo, but the wife wanted and X, like Xylophone. The wife won, she always wins, though I secretly still call him Zylo im my mind.
But lets back up for a second because before I went to get the dog there was this deep fear of a massive life overhaul at the paw of the animal. I was afraid Xylo would come into the house, and beyond crapping in every corner, whizzing on every piece of furniture, and tearing through every scrap of free fabric, he would take my happy little obligation free life and pack it full of walks, let-outs, and Walmart poop sacks. I liked coming and going as I pleased. I liked not having to think of the Dog first in every thing I planed to do. Being married with no kids and no responsibilities is great. Sure, you don’t get any tax write offs, but you don’t have any diapers to change. As fun as it would be to have a dog, this would be like the first micro step to parenthood. I’d be responsible for this thing’s life for here on.
I went through the standard masculine rationales about owning it, crating it, alpha-ing it. I did the whole, “if this thing gets really sick, I’m just going to have it put down because there is no way I’m spending an ass load on a rescue. A thousand bucks; if it gets sicker than a grand, I’m sorry pup, I just can’t rationalize the expense when there is a whole kennel full of happy replacements.”
It sounded tough in my mind. I felt tough after thinking it. But I also thought this same thing about another dog we adopted for the grand total of 4 days from some humane society up the street. We couldn’t get the thing to stop crapping all over the house. It wouldn’t tinkle a drop outside but it would happily go inside its crate. It would also whine all night, tear up pillows, and bark at me until I let it out. Two minutes later it would bark until I let it back it. I wanted to beat that dog like I wanted to beat Manny Ramirez after taking me deep, but when I had to take it back to the kennel because things weren’t working out, I cried. I cried for a while, actually, because it’s sad to think that you failed, that you weren’t a good parent in your first little crack at it. And it sad to think that the dog might return to a sea of other dogs to never find another home to soil. I didn’t want that to happen again—neither extreme of infatuation or devastation.
There were other things I didn’t want to have happen, like doggie mind control. You know, when you start thinking about what the dog is thinking about. Every time it looks at the door is it trying to tell me that it wants to go out? Is it telling me that it was only a matter of time before it’s pissing on a laundry basket or crapping down an air return vent? And if I opened the door, would it know that it had trained me to open the door for it by looking pensively at the door and relying on my bowel movement paranoia? Damn, it was already in my head and I hadn’t even brought it in to the house yet.
Also, getting a dog makes you part of the dog owner community, and some of those people are pretty strange. There are some good folks out there, but then there is this crop of folks that talk about their dogs like they are children. They buy them special made doggie birthday cakes. They are fine with human beings starving to death as long as every furry four legged varmint gets a home, with a room, and a designer, gluten free cake. Saying phrases like, “rub their nose in it,” is like uttering Satan worship. “Do you use a choke chain?” They ask. “I have before, yes.” “You’re an evil bastard, what if someone used a choke chain on you?” “Well, seeing as you I don’t eat my own vomit, or lick my genitals, I don’t think I need one, yet.” “They should make humans wear to see what it feels like, they’re horrible creations.” Those are some scary people. And they could be living right next to you, watching how you handle your dog, judging you, holding their phones in one hand with the ASPCA on speed dial, ready to report you too the Dog Whisperer for an intervention. Either they’re telepathically linked to their dog, or they had a really bad relationship with an actual person, got their heart broke and now they need this sense of pure, loving, domination to fill the void. For them it was either get a dog, or dedicate their life to World of Warcraft. But, since dogs wont make fun of you when you take a bubble bath and cry to the sound of Josh Groban’s voice like a WoW clan will, the dog wins.
I also didn’t want to become my parents, or as I like to cal them, the other end of the spectrum. They’ve had dogs all their life, of all shapes and sizes; from those yappy terriers with Napoleon complexes, to happy-go-lucky labs that would hold the flashlight while you while you robbed the place. Mostly they had German Shepherds, which can be a really bossy, aggressive breed if you don’t give them some structure—I learned that on a Dog 101 YouTube video—and my parents did not believe in structure. The Shepherds ran the house during their occupation. They trained my folks. It was like a hippi compound for dogs. Free range living, no rules (for dogs anyway), doggie owned and doggie run. The dogs told my folks when to get up, when to let them out, when to feed them, what furniture was theirs, what spots on the floor were theirs, what clothes were theirs, what family members were theirs. If the vacuum cleaner frightened the dog, it was not used. If a leash impeded the dog, it was forgotten. The floors were covered in dog hair, dog biscuit crumbs, half eaten bones, chewed household goods, and sometimes, vomit. Poop was never scooped. The yard was a minefield of turds, of all shapes and sizes to coordinate with the dogs. In the wintertime, splotches of golden snow decorated the driveway like runway landing lights. And then, because dogs don’t always know best, some of them played chicken with cars on the street in front of the house and lost. But, easy come easy go. My parents never paid a cent for a dog in their life so they prided themselves on giving the animal a good life while it lasted. If one of theirs got sick, it was taken outside and put down the Old Yellar way— a bullet and a hole in the ground. I once told the cultist dog owners about did this and they wept and tore their clothes.
I learned from watching my parents not to let the dog train me, but it seemed impossible to a certain degree. And while I liked some of their rules, I didn’t want to be the latest initiate of what I recognized as dog owner cult. It was my hope that I could strike a rational balance. That I could form a no-psychotic, loose but not to loose, rewarding and synergistically satisfying relationship with the animal. I wanted to understand it, but not become one with it. I wanted to learn about how to maximize the owner/dog relationship with out making the dog the central pillar of my existence. In summation, I just wanted to be a man with good dog.
Could it ever be that simple?