It was the movie “Hotel for Dogs” that sealed the deal. My kids had been asking for a dog for years, promising to take care of it, arguing how our family wouldn’t be complete until we had one. But after we rented that movie, in which humans can’t really find happiness without a canine pal, our kids became inconsolable in their dogless sorrow. Moaning, wailing — you’d have thought they severed an artery. Fine, we’ll get a dog. Yay, Dad!
Truth be told, I was almost as excited as they were. Dogs are a lot of work, but they can be delightful little balls of joy and fun as well, and who wouldn’t want more of that in the house? After some not very careful screening, we came across a dog online that needed a home: a little Yorkshire terrier that had bounced around a bit. We met with the latest owners at a Petco in the Minneapolis suburbs. Officially, we were there just to meet the dog and see if he was a good fit, but once the kids saw the thing, there was little doubt he was getting in our minivan.
As we drove, I successfully lobbied to name the dog Dave, since I’ve gotten along really well with every human I’ve known by that name. We brought him home, and the kids were over the moon with joy. Dave put up with all the handling, even the ham-fisted affections of the 1-year-old. He slept on my 8-year-old-son’s bed, just the way my boy had always dreamed. All was right.
Until the next day, when I came home from work, at which point the dog started barking his head off. He cowered; he growled. Same thing happened when I wrestled with the kids or chased them or even danced with them. (He may have had a point with my dancing.) I tried yelling at him to hush. I tried slipping him some bacon as I came in, and he barely accepted it, even though it’s bacon, and he’s a dog. He ate it, and then he barked at me some more.
On the one hand, it was kind of funny. But the dog’s hate/fear actually did kind of hurt my feelings. The one thing you expect from your dog is unconditional love and tail wags at the end of the day. There’s something kind of heartbreaking about coming home from work, from providing the income to make the house function, and being hated and feared when you walk in the door.
So I thought maybe he was beaten up by a man at some point, right? But male friends would come over, friends who look like me, and Dave would be fine. It was just me. My dog hated me.
Fortunately, I had one last card to play. There were health and safety reasons, concerns about the dog population, and I didn’t want to have to do it. And yet, there was one move that I could use on him that I didn’t think he could use on me: removal of testicles. Dave was not neutered when we adopted him, and I was confident that if this behavior was an alpha-male thing, well, a little scalpel work ought to take care of that nicely. The procedure took place on a Friday morning, and he was already home by the time I returned from work that afternoon. I parked out front and warily approached the front door. Holding my breath a bit, I turned the key.
I expected a certain amount of calmness to have set in after Dave’s procedure. I thought he’d be docile, a sort of cat-dog. Once inside the door, I paused to allow the realization of my arrival to spread through the house. Then the barking started. Loud, shrill, frightened, it came in the same familiar staccato bursts, even though Dave was still somewhat sedated and disoriented. It was like being verbally assaulted by some sort of sleepy incoherent hippie eunuch.
It has been a few weeks now since that procedure, and Dave has become a tad nicer to me in moments of calm, even seeking me out for belly rubs. But my dream of having a dog happy to see me at the end of the day — which is perhaps the single biggest responsibility in a dog’s job description — is destined to be unfulfilled. I think dog ownership, or cohabitation, really, teaches you a lesson no matter what. For most people that lesson is about the way love and simplicity and togetherness can provide respite from the slings and arrows of our human days. For me, it’s about accepting Dave for who he is. I’m sure he’d rather not fly into a dizzying rage whenever he sees me. Can’t be any fun for him. But he is who he is, just like all of us. I picked Dave’s name because it sounded human. I had no idea how prescient I was.
It’s a loving relationship, Dave’s and mine, but one in which one partner, without testicles, will always scream at the other, who has them, for no apparent reason.
