So We Got a Dog

For those who know me, it probably comes as something of a shock that I would count myself as the owner of any pet larger or less disposable than a goldfish. I, myself, am still sort of surprised. About a month ago, I finally caved to years of pressure from my wife and kids, who all seemed to want nothing more out of life than a canine companion.

I had been quite vocal of my general dislike of the idea of pets in general. People often mistook this for some sort of anti-animal sentiment. This was a strange sort of conclusion to draw as, for me anyway, there was always a clear distinction; I love animals, but was less keen on owning one and having it live in my house with me.

And honestly, I was pretty dead set against getting a dog, which seemed to be the top choice of my family unit in terms of companion creatures. Owning a pet always seemed to me to be an unnecessary extra expense. It felt like a counter-intuitive waste of resources. It also provided another fairly large point of entry for dirt and all manner of bacterial intruders to lay siege to my already besieged homestead. Going on a trip out of town would have an extra level of logistics as we would have to either make arrangements for someone to look after the thing, or make room in the car to take them with us.

Until a couple months ago, I was pretty adamant about never getting a dog. It seemed that there was no logical reason to get one, and every reason not to. As somebody who generally avoids drama in his day-to-day life, I have an appreciation for operational simplicity in the domestic arena. Unnecessary complications are, by definition, easily avoidable wrenches in the inner workings of an otherwise smooth-running machine.

So why the sudden change of heart?

Honestly, I'm still trying to reconcile this myself.

Maybe it was seeing a friend going through losing a family member who meant everything to her, and getting into one of those "life's too short" mindsets that can bubble to the surface from that kind of brew. Maybe if the world ended tomorrow, I didn't want my family to face the end deprived of something they really wanted and me to feel guilty for having deprived them.

Maybe I'm just going soft in my old age. A moment of weakness as my wife came to me showing me pictures on her phone (again!) or some dog or another she found that would be the perfect pet, don't you think, look how beautiful she is, wouldn't she be perfect, the kids would love her, please? I'm only a man, after all, and the erosion of willpower over time is not entirely unheard of.

Maybe it's because, like everyone else, I have a lot of principles, and stand by none of them. That's a little extreme and a lot cynical, but you get what I'm saying. Getting a pet obviously isn't an ethical breach of any kind on my part, but it a compromise of my own convictions that I can't quite justify in terms of the internal logic that I've developed and (generally) adhered to over the course of three decades and change.

Maybe it was feeling guilty for keeping my wife from pursuing one of her interests as she had allowed me to pursue mine. With all of the movies and video games and Star Wars collectibles (definitely not toys) I've bought over the years as part of my hobbies, what right did I have to prevent my wife from spending her hard-earned cash on her own interests?

Maybe it was a bit of all of the above. Or none of it.

I remember feeling some kind of emotional and cognitive wall come down one evening with my wife, and her exuberance at welcoming a puppy into our house carried the process inexorably forward. That one crack in the damn released a deluge that led us to the newest addition to the family: Marceline, a shepherd mix (with what is anybody's guess) that we somehow chose out of a seemingly neverending smorgasbord of canine companions waiting for a home.

I did have some conditions, though, when the Search for Spot officially began. If we were going to get a dog, it would have to be a rescue dog. I figured it was a good stipulation to make in terms of ethical pet ownership: giving a home to a creature that desperately needed a second (or sometimes third or fourth) chance.

I also had to have some say in the look of the dog. I didn't want some little poodle or pug running around. I wanted something that looked like it could in some discernible way trace its roots back to its lupine ancestors. Maybe it was a superficial and arbitrary criterion by which to judge a new "family member," but when you get to choose, you get to choose how you choose.

Marceline was the first dog we considered applying for and, obviously, the one we ended up with after briefly applying for another dog while Marceline's status was up in the air. She caught our eye immediately; just by looking at her, you could tell she came from hardy stock. She was what Niagara Dog Rescue classified as a "medium sized" dog, but looked like she wouldn't take shit off of anybody.

The kids, of course, were simply overjoyed that they would be joining a lot of their fellow classmates in becoming a pet-owning family. A lot of my wife's family owns one or (in several cases a lot) more dogs, and I guess we were kind of the odd ones out. We kept them involved throughout the whole process, getting their opinion on what dogs they like. You know, make them feel like they actually had a say in the whole affair.

The one area where my wife and I did adhere to the democratic process was in choosing a name. Many were put forward from all parties involved; that list was narrowed down over the course of a couple weeks of discussion at the family dinner table. Eventually, the name "Marceline" won out, the name inspired by Marceline the Vampire Queen from the animated show Adventure Time (which you need to check out if you haven't already).

When the day finally came, it was raining (of course), but the hour and a half trip to pick her up seemed to fly by. Before we knew it, we were in the parking lot of some random gas station getting this new dog int our car and grabbing all of the associated paperwork. I know the whole gas station parking lot thing seems kind of shady when taken out of context, but the Niagara Dog Rescue is an organization that is fuelled entirely by the energy of volunteers, and as such apparently doesn't have dedicated facility but relies on a series of foster families that take the rescued animals into their homes temporarily until more permanent arrangements can be made. Or maybe we got suckered into some kind of crazy, black market dog trafficking ring run by the Russian mob. The only thing I'm sure of is that history will vindicate me in the end either way.

 So now we have this dog. Just shy of eleven months old, she's really a puppy, and once she seemed to settle in and the fear and anxiety dissipated, this became glaringly apparent. Full of energy and with a penchant for chewing shoes, Marceline is nothing if not engaging. As far as puppies go, especially rescue dogs, we have nothing really to complain about behaviour-wise. My wife still checks the website periodically, and unfortunately a lot of the dogs that were adopted on the same day we got Marceline are back on the list for adoption. (There's a two week "trial" period that allows you to return the dog to the organization should it end up not being a good fit for your family.) A lot of these dogs are abused, leading to behavioural problems, which makes it difficult to find families that are good fits. It's a pretty vicious cycle, and honestly, something I never gave much thought to before.

I don't know whether Marceline was the exception or the rule, but we're stuck with her now, or she's stuck with us, or we're stuck with each other. My wife is happy. The kids are happy. The dog is happy. I guess I'm happy too then. It's tough not to be taken in when you're lying there watching TV after a long day at work, too worn out to do much of anything except stare at the old idiot box, and this creature hops up beside you and falls asleep snuggled up against you without a sound.

 I don't know if I still fully understand the appeal of owning a pet. I guess life's short, though. And a dog's life is even shorter. Might as well make the most out of them all.