I Thought I Was a Dog Person

I’ve spent my whole life assuming that I was a dog person. This is not just because of my abiding distaste for cats, who seem to believe that their agenda is somehow more important than my own, but because I’ve always liked dogs and enjoy playing with them whenever they're around. I had no idea that I was actually just an “other peoples’ dogs person.”



You know how when you go to a friend’s house and have a lot of fun playing with their kids, teaching them to appreciate a fine single-malt Scotch or how to properly align the site of a pellet gun before shooting the neighbor’s window? It’s not until you have a kid of your own that you realize just how much work they are, and only then do you find out that your hospital has no return policy at all. None!

So why do I bring this up now? Because I’m dog-sitting for a family while they are out of town. Until the moment that I became responsible for this dog, I liked him just fine. Now he is the bane of my existence. There’s not a thing wrong with him other than his tendency to howl whenever I enter or leave the house and his uncanny ability to find and devour any human food products in the house. Seriously, I could duct-tape a hot dog to the ceiling and he will either sprout wings or find a way to affix suction cups to his paws.

But that’s not what bothers me about him – it’s the fact that he won’t leave my side for a single damn second! It’s so annoying! He follows me when I go get the mail. He follows me when I rinse out his water bowl. He follows me when I try to have my special private time in the upstairs bathroom. I finally understand what my ex-girlfriend was complaining about! Well, parts of it.



Actually, my brief time with this dog (I’ll call him Snoopy, to protect Shiloh’s identity) has taught me so much about how to mess up a relationship that I’m pretty sure I’ll actually end up liking him by the time his owners come back. Since Shiloh –I mean Snoopy!- won’t leave me the hell alone, I never want to be around him. If he were capable of understanding even the most basic concepts of Mystery’s PUA seminar (which I’ve never spent $3500 to attend at the downtown Radisson and then ended up having to leave early because of an unfortunate misunderstanding during the “kino” assignment), he would know that he should actually “neg” me -or say something negative about me- if he wants me to like being around him. Rather than lying down on my feet when I sit on the couch, he should be asking me if I’ve either put on weight or just started washing my shirts in hot water. I would totally respond to that, and not just because the dog has suddenly acquired the ability to talk.

So now I’m eager to try out my newfound relationship skillz on some unsuspecting bitch (What? That’s what Shiloh calls them!) to see if they work better than what I've been doing, which is to call them incessantly until they change their phone number and secretly move out of their apartment and into that new building down on Folsom and 27th. Why won't you love me, Arlene?! For some reason, the laydeez don't seem to respond well to that strategy, so I'm going to play the ignoring game from now on to see if that helps. If it doesn’t work, then I'm going to start working on that whole butt-sniffing approach. I have a good feeling about that one.