Small, Medium, and Weird: Secrets To A Successful Relationship

I was asked today just how it was that I was so committed to my relationship of the last four, almost five years. What in the world, I was asked, made it so solid, so unshakeable, and was this kind of love and devotion possible for anyone to find or had I just been singled out by the universe for the best thing you could ever hope for next to calorie-free Ben and Jerry’s ice cream?

Big question, so I responded the only way I knew, which was to lay out the absolute, if odd, truth:

There was something about her face, probably the fact that you couldn’t see most of it, you could just barely make out the eyes beneath all that wild ash blonde and copper color ‘hair’, the nose perfectly and purposefully sticking out from between them, that won me over from that very first time I saw her. My heart melted like a stick of butter in a microwave, only faster. It wasn’t so much love at first sight, it was more my heart was taken hostage with the unspoken understanding that there would be no negotiations toward its release, period.

We’ve been together every moment since that day.

Oh, I know what you’re thinking: That’s not healthy. Even in a committed relationship, there should be some amount of personal space. You can’t be together every minute, you can’t share every experience together, you can’t make the only time you’re not together the time you’re working away at your job, and even then you’ve got her pictures plastered to your desk blotter and running as a slideshow on your computer monitor. That wouldn’t be right. That would be sort of…well, weird.

So call me weird (it wouldn’t, come to think of it, be the first time I’d heard it), that’s my relationship with my dog Basil. I can’t completely explain it so allow me to say if you don’t understand it, you’re not a true dog person.

You might be a Faux Dog Person (aka A Small Capacity Dog Person) and you probably are if you have a dog but it lives outdoors and sleeps in one of those all-weather, vinyl, indestructible and, in the eyes of your dog’s canine friends and neighbors, embarrassingly low budget ‘Dogloos’ into which you’ve shoved the bedspread you loved years ago but disregarded because it clashed with the new paint you put up in the master bedroom last spring, or even worse – a bale of hay you actually believe the dog would rather sleep on than your Sealy Posturepedic. Believe me, one ‘people year’ is equal to seven ‘dog years’. They’ve had a long time to get familiar with thread counts and they’re not fooled. Next time you’re forced to nap on a bale of hay, see for yourself how comfortable it’s not.

No, A faux dog person wouldn’t understand at all.

A Medium Capacity Dog Person would understand partially, but not completely. Medium Capacity Dog People are those who have a dog, and it may be allowed to enter the house and even to sleep in the house, but only upon it’s own designated dog ‘furniture’, stuffed faux lamb’s wool foam covered squares that are placed in strategic places such as wedged between an end table and a wall in the living room, or placed at the foot of the bed, on the floor, in one of the kids’ rooms. Medium Capacity Dog People buy the heavy plastic water bowls and food bowls you find at the grocery store for $2.99 and which coordinate with the colors of the laundry room, which the dog is supposed to consider a real ‘dining room’. For the record, the dog knows better and can tell a solid fluorescent light fixture from the ornate crystal chandelier that should properly be hanging over the table, if there was a table and there’s not, another dead giveaway. Medium Capacity Dog people go on family vacations and leave the dog behind, generally in the care of the canine equivalent of San Quentin or Alcatraz in its day, hopelessly mis-named something like, “Sunshine Kennels”, or “Dogcations”, where they’ll while away their own vacation days missing their people and becoming so sad they actually miss that prickly pile of hay and quickly fading bedspread. Finally, Medium Capacity Dog People buy dog food based on what’s on sale at Costco. As if it’s fun for the family’s most loyal and devoted member to re-adjust their gastrointestinal system every forty pound bag.

Then we have the High Capacity Dog Person, who has a dog, and the dog is allowed unencumbered use of both the outdoors and the house, subject to the dog’s whim of any given moment. The dog may sleep wherever the dog would like to sleep, including your side of the bed. No furniture is ‘off limits’; and shedding is not a problem, just a situation requiring an altered perspective: It is not an animal problem, it’s a vacuum problem. Simply obtain one which performs better and gets the fur off the sofa. High Capacity Dog People read the ingredient listing on the dog food bag with the same intense scrutiny the Gluten-intolerant person reads ingredients on anything carrying them. Price is not a concern, the concern is that the primary ingredient entail ‘real beef/chicken/fish’ and not – under any circumstance, ‘animal by-products’ or corn in any form. The High Capacity Dog Person will go on a vacation, but only if the trustworthy, well vetted Dog Sitter, whom they will prodigiously overpay, is available to assume care of the dog and remain equally available for regular, sometimes hourly, cell phone calls ‘just to check in’.

The High Capacity Dog Person comes closest to understanding the phenomenon of my relationship, but isn’t quite truly there yet. To truly comprehend, one must be what I am myself:

The Weird Dog Person.

Weird Dog People share most of the same traits as High Capacity Dog Person, it’s just that those traits are now on steroids. Weird Dog People will purchase a home with a lovely French door off the master bedroom leading to the deck and backyard. They will admire its fabulous view and immediately have it replaced by a standard door offering no view at all but a structure that will accommodate the installation of a ‘Doggy Door’ which gives the dog complete freedom of choice in whether it is indoors or out. Weird Dog People not only allow their dogs to be on the furniture, they actually purchase furniture with the dog in mind, foregoing anything fabric-covered in favor of leather which is not only fur-proof, but more to the dog’s liking. A Weird Dog Person would completely understand my impromptu Saturday afternoon junket to PetSmart, in the midst of a spring blizzard, with all the car windows down so that the dog, whose walk had been cut short due to her paws getting cold in the snow, needed a favorite activity in its stead and nothing says dog joy like hanging your head out the window of a moving vehicle. Weird Dog People not only sleep with the dog in their bed, they find it difficult to sleep if the dog breaks routine and moves to the couch, a situation which causes the Weird Dog Person to leave the bed at two, sometimes three in the morning in order to retrieve the dog and lug it back to the bed where it belongs. Weird Dog People understand thoroughly that a dog’s mouth has more natural antibiotics than ten pallets of Neosporin and therefore is always welcome on a dinner plate or saucepan before it’s placed in the dishwasher. Weird Dog People get it that a dog’s intelligence is far beyond the average person’s, and that dogs absolutely comprehend everything you say to them, not just a few words like ‘sit’, and ‘stay’, and ‘shake’, words which are so simple and ridiculous that when the dog doesn’t respond to them it’s only because they get lost in an intelligence so vast and are, strangely, incomprehensible to them. What is comprehensible to them are those long talks you have after work, recounting every detail of your day, and your running commentary about whatever HBO movie or special you’re watching together on TV. The Weird Dog Person isn’t interested in any vacation location that won’t allow the dog, as well.

I could go on….but if you were going to understand it, you did before you reached the last paragraph. And besides, the dog looks like she wants to take a walk, and I don’t want to keep her waiting.