Dispatches from Babyville: Dog Days

I am not a “dog person.” I take about as much interest in a dog on the street as I would in a mailbox, or a bus. Depending on its appearance and comportment, I might admire or disdain it, but I would not take any particular pleasure in seeing it and would definitely not feel the urge to touch it. I have nothing in particular against dogs, just as I have nothing against mailboxes or buses. I’ve always been glad they exist, and I’ve also been glad they exist outside of my place of residence. 

Like so many things, this would not be a problem were I not a mother – more specifically, a mother of “dog people.” My eldest, known in these parts as Primo, inherited my neutral position on dogs but my daughter, Seconda, has displayed a magnetic pull to any and all quadropeds since she was ambulatory, an obsession which is proof positive of the power of nature over nurture. When her little sister Terza was born, the Pro-Puppy Lobby Seconda had been running solo doubled in size. 

For years, my husband David – also not a “dog person” – and I united forces to successfully fight back the dog-lovers, whose commitment to the cause intensified with each passing year. Diversionary tactics worked best. 

“You know what’s even better than a dog?” David and I would say, on our way to the pet store near our apartment. At which point, we’d attempt to convince our daughters that the pet we were acquiring would satisfy their primal longing for a canine sidekick. We adopted a hermit crab, a goldfish, a replacement goldfish (because Seconda loved the first one so much she took it out of the fishbowl to cuddle it), a beta fish, a replacement beta fish (because who knew there was more than one kind of fish food?), an acquatic frog, an additional aquatic frog (because the first one was “lonely”), a hamster, a replacmeent hamster (because, even when they live to be 100 that’s only 2.5 human years),amd a replacement hamster again (see previous note about rodent lifespan).

For thirteen long years, I waged a war of attrition (while maintaining a zoo of diminuitive animals). That I lost this war will come as no surprise to anyone who has ever met a child, much less a teenager. There is no winning a war of attrition with them. They have the vigor of youth on their side. They are indefatigable – especially when the prize they are battling for is one they regard as utterly indispensable to existence, as basic a necessity as food, water and shelter, and one you regard as an inconvenience. 

Then, too, there was the pandemic, which offered the Pro-Puppy side an unfair advantage. The sadness I felt at watching my children’s worlds get dismantled within a matter of days – everything cancelled, every friend shrinking into digital form – was so intense, I would have figured out a way to keep a pony in our tiny Park Slope apartment if they’d have asked in the spring of 2020. 

There was an afternoon I’ll never forget, within the first month of quarantine, when Terza, who was eight, sat at the kitchen counter and asked me the question she’d been asking for weeks, “When is this going to be over, Mommy?” But, after weeks of telling her some version of “soon,” which was what I’d believed, I could only say, “I don’t know.” She asked again, “When? When is it going to end?” And, again, I replied, “I don’t know.” We went on in this way, back and forth, for what felt like hours but was probably only ten minutes. My daughter sobbed and yelled and begged me to tell her when life would go back to normal, and I came up brutally empty-handed. I didn’t know. I didn’t know anything.

That night, after she’d finally succumbed to sleep, I said to David, “We need to get a dog.” 

“I know,” he replied, resigned. Without even discussing it, it had already been decided. 

I know this is a phenomenon that happened in homes all across New York City, and beyond in 2020 and 2021. What I don’t know is whether other “not dog people” encountered the same surprise I did when they finally caved and acquired that canine sidekick their kid had been begging for. 

What took me aback was the fact that something I dreaded has brought me untold happiness – joy, even – and a kind of easy companionship that I have never known. I am fully aware that I am the last person on the planet of Earth to get this memo. That dogs are companionable is about as well-keot a secret as the fact that New York bagels are the nonpareil of boiled breadstuffs, and babies never sleep. Still, for me, this has been a discovery. I was so busy worrying about who would walk the dog and feed the dog and pick up after the dog and train the dog and how would we pay for the dog and what if the dog barked too much and bothered our neighbors, that I never stopped to consider that in addition to making my kids happy, the dog might make me happy too. It never occurred to me that when I came home from work or an errand or even from throwing out the garbage, the dog would lose his ever-loving mind with jubilation over the fact that I continued to exist. I never thought about how ceaselessly hilarious it would be to watch the dog tilt his head in response to a high-pitched sound, as if he’s utterly perplexed, like someone just asked what he’d do to stop climate change and he is carefully considering his reply. I never stopped to consider that a person is far from a codified and immutable thing, like a statue or a tattoo, but, instead, something ever-changing.

“Remember how you used to hate dogs?” Seconda likes to ask me when we are curled up on the couch at night, with our pup snuggled right in between us, calm and cozy. 

“I never hated dogs,” I reply. “I just wasn’t a dog person.”

“And now you are.” She shoots me a “told-you-so” look. 

“Who knows?” I reply. “All I know is life is surprising. And that’s part of the fun.” 

“All I know is you are lucky you have me,” she replies as she kisses the top of our snoozing dog’s head. “Aren’t you glad I kept pestering you?”

“Oh yes,” I tell her. “I often think of how grateful I am that you are a stubborn, professional-grade pest.”

But the truth is, I am glad.

She was right.