My girlfriend is always bugging me about getting a dog. She picks out names and breeds and plans adventures we’ll go on. When I say that the only way we can get a dog is if one knocks on our door and asks to be let in, she gets a dreamy look in her eyes.
It’s not that we can’t have dogs; I just don’t want one. We live in a one-bedroom with barely enough space for our shoes, much less another resident. Plus, if we got a dog, I would be forced to carry its feces around in plastic bags. While my colleague Sean Nelson tells me that they warm the hand nicely on cold winter days, really, I’d rather wear gloves.
I grew up in a dog family. And while we loved all the dogs we had, we treated them more like plants than companions; we feed, watered, and sheltered them, but that was pretty much it. Two decades ago, this was normal, at least where we lived in the rural Southeast. No one I knew actually walked their dog. You just opened the front door and hoped they didn’t get hit by a car.
