Meghan Cox Gurdon
Who needs a dog?
By: Meghan Cox Gurdon
Examiner Columnist
July 9, 2009
“Bowwowow! Rararararraggh!”
“We’re home!”
“There you are! Good dogs! Hi Archie! Hi Annie! Hi Bill!”
“C’mon, guys, c’mere—“
“Wait, look out!”
“Oh, yuck. Oh, who did that? Bad dogs!”
“What? What?”
“Don’t step in it, silly!”
“Step in what?”
For years, I’ve been standing athwart the prospect of dog ownership yelling, “Stop!” Until this week, I could wave at my family only the usual ignorant non-dog-owning list of objections: That dogs are expensive; that they require feeding and walking and grooming and training and shots; that in most cases those who swear that they will care for the creatures (children) never turn out to be the ones who actually do the work (mothers).
But now – ha! – I have life experience, for we have been spending the past week as guests in a home where dogs are nearly as numerous as people. Thus to my rehearsed and unconvincing list of objections, I can add the indisputable coup de grace: Dogs are unbelievably gross.
Tread on an oriental carpet and you may find, camouflaged by the swirling pattern, some terrible assortment of what at first glance appears to be a little heap of wine corks. Step heedlessly on to a wood-floored hallway at night and your besocked foot may land in a ghastly puddle of something warm. Send children running out into the garden and – ick! – they need hosing off before you can let them in again.
In a household with three dogs there seems no end to the variety of liquids, solids, and gases that the animals can produce, though surely there must be.
Moreover, dogs are noisy in a way expressive of deep neurosis.
“Ding!” goes the toaster.
“Rararghgharah!” the animals cry, their nails skittering on the floor as they scramble to the kitchen.
A knock sounds at the front door.
“Bowowowowow!” bark the dogs, racing to devour intruders from whom they instantly shrink. For these dogs – the pets of our kind hosts – are small and fluffy. They are not the steam-breathed behemoths beloved of our friends in Washington. They’re not substantial enough to knock you down or stick their noses in body parts you consider private. They’re too small to invade the garbage. They don’t hunt or guide and in no way could they be considered “guard” dogs, except in their capacity to make a racket.
These three bits of frisking fluff have, in short, over the past week, handed me every bit of first-hand evidence I need to persuade my family that having dogs around is needlessly burdensome and malodorous. Who needs ‘em?
Who needs the mess and the expense and the nuisance? Who needs the damp patches on the carpet and the dead spots on the grass and the sudden disappearance of a stick of butter that someone left out on the table --- followed by retching sounds that indicate where the stick of butter went?
Who needs a dog like tiny Annie, who is curled up softly on the sofa beside me, exuding doggie warmth, as I type these words? Who needs little Archie, who is snoozing by the door, vigilant against trespassers even in sleep? Who needs feathery Bill the Rescue Dog, whose panicked ferocity is slowly, under the patient love of his owners, mellowing into docility?
Yes, and who needs animals that dance with happiness when you walk in the door and who rush just as joyfully to romp with the children on the lawn? Not to mention the whole adoring-gaze thing: I mean, who needs that?
I thought that spending a week in a dog-centric household would cure the children of their desire for a pet. I knew it would confirm me in my refusal to let some hairy, stinky animal demand a share of my time and treasure.
And I was wrong. Oh, no. Now what?
Examiner columnist Meghan Cox Gurdon is a former foreign correspondent and a regular contributor to the books pages of The Wall Street Journal. Her Examiner column appears on Thursdays.
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