[break]

M: How was that?
D: Great. Thanks for the biscuits and water, too.
M: Are you more comfortable here in the den?
D: Believe it or not I can still smell when someone had a nosebleed in here, but I’ve stopped sniffing that spot. That’s this room to me, though, an ancient nosebleed. I might probe the couch for Cheez-Its when we’re done.
M: Can I ask — licking hands? Every dog I know…
D: You may not know this, but hands are completely fascinating. Have you noticed — [extends front paw] — my front legs end the same way as my back. Wait, they do, don’t they? Yeah. Yeah, if I had hands, well, Old Yeller might have ended the other way around. No, I mean, it’s not quite like that, but — I have a mouth, to relate to the world I basically have teeth, a jaw, and a tongue. Paws are good for digging, some European dogs live in houses with door handles, but you really had us whipped when you started putting knobs on everything you use to go outside. I can’t look at a brass finish without feeling helpless. You know, maybe you have obstacles, impediments in your life that you struggle with — maybe you don’t meet the kind of girl that you’d like to, I don’t know, [ed: cheeky!] but if you have troubles they generally aren’t of the I can’t get outside by myself variety. If I see a stranger, though, or hear a sound, or smell something really amazing, I always know I’m probably not going to meet them, or smell it, or eat it. I bark, because I can and it drives you crazy, but I know I’m not going to get to it. It’s right there, literally at your fingertips, and you just watch Judge Judy and eat ice cream. For some dogs hands become a fetish, they literally start to worship them — and they probably get more rubdowns because of it. When I got past puppyhood I found it embarrassing, so I don’t lick anymore unless they’re coated with something delicious, and you think that’s gross but everyone does it to me. But yeah, I can understand why some dogs lick hands all the time.
M: Have you ever met a dog you think you could always want to be with?
D: … no easy answer for that.
M: No dog in the neighborhood?
D: If you want to get into it — dogs, wolves, don’t mate for life. Usually if dogs mate anymore, at least in my circles, it’s been arranged by their masters. I can’t, you know, I never will father puppies — sorry to be graphic but you brought it here — and humans are a lot like dogs, you know, families, packs. And a good family, you never worry about being the Alpha, I’ve never even thought about how to lead a pack. There are dogs I know who try to be Alpha, or I guess they experience a void in leadership, and they try to fill it in, but they aren’t happier than me. I’ve met them, and they’re not. You can always pick them out at the park, they’re tense and they try to dominate you. Tough for them at home, but even worse, they have to keep it up outside. I don’t try to play with them, there’s no give-and-take.
M: Would you rather live with dogs, though, if you had your choice?
D: I’ve answered that as well as I can, I think. I don’t worry about it. Man has war, and work, and wages and worries. Lions and bears have to hunt –
M: It sets you apart, then, you have this — occupational niche?
D: Yeah.
M: If you’re never challenged, though…you don’t miss, wonder, for lost potential?
D: These dilemmas — your question, not mine! What would my puppies look like, could I keep a pack intact, survive in the wild? Keep that up and I will need Prozac! I have a deep respect for the traditional relationship –
M: I guess that’s where I’m going with this, hasn’t that relationship changed? Dogs were valuable when they had work to do –
D: Poodles were guard dogs, Labradors went out on the hunt, but most breeds have been coming inside at night for hundreds of years — let me finish this thought, please — valuable when they had work? How many poems, songs, stories about dogs? It’s a confused history, isn’t it? Easy to view it through the lens of economics, I guess, but feelings, respect and compassion for one another — we don’t know which came first. Unique among all animals, this bond. What if a man without a fire needed warmth one night and a mother wolf brought him in? Why is it we can tell when you’re about to have a seizure? Something happened, not just once, but enough that now I wouldn’t be more comfortable with a wolf than you would be, or than I am with you. If you tell me I’m diminished, you don’t see my true nature. It’s more than the job I was bred for. I wouldn’t trade places with the wild dogs, they have the streets, they have hunger, they have short lives, mistrust, rabies, fear. Show me a dog who thinks that’s his “true nature” and I’ll gladly chew on his toys. And take any of his nice collars, too.
M: Speaking of collars — do you wanna go for a walk?
D: I see a patch of sun under the window with my name on it. Maybe next time.
M: Can I pet you?
D: Get me another biscuit.