I believe I’ve mentioned this topic in passing, but I’ve never really talked about it at length. Well, the subject came up the other day. My mom had a rather unusual item on her Christmas list. It was a book by some dog trainer guy about training dogs. Evidently she saw this person on TV and was impressed, and so wanted to read up on his technique. Fair enough. Then she added, “oh, and Dad is talking about getting a dog.”

Fantastic.

I don’t like animals in general, but I like pets even less because they are not only animals, but animals with which you must interact. My siblings have had guinea pigs a number of times as we were growing up. Eventually I just said that I don’t want anything to do with it. I don’t want to care for it, and in return, I don’t pet it.

Whenever I tell other people that I don’t like dogs, they always give me this look that is half pity, half shock, with a dash of disbelief and a few sprinkles of anger to keep things spicy. From what I’ve seen, it seems that even people who don’t have dogs still like dogs. They’re a man’s best friend and all that. This may have been true—back in the year 800 when dogs were useful tools. In my modern day to day life, I have absolutely no reason to have a dog—few people do—and I find that it makes no economic sense. Actually, it makes no sense, period. Forget economic. Why would I want the hassle of training, walking, picking the crap up from, grooming, keeping healthy, feeding, and otherwise taking care of a creature which will do nothing but interfere with my personal space, mess up my things, and generally just be a pain?

When I was a preteen or early teenager I saw that one movie about the big, disgusting dog called Beethoven. That is, both the dog and the movie were called Beethoven and, much to my dismay, it didn’t actually have anything to do with the composer—who was an important guy in the historical and cultural sense—except that they ripped off his music for use in this utterly retarded movie. Anyway, when I first saw this movie, I remembered thinking about how unrealistic the father character was. If you haven’t seen it, basically, the family gets a dog—one of those huge, slobbery dogs with an IQ of 4—and the family thinks this is actually a good idea. The dad hates it, of course, because he is one of those stock movie dad characters.

(Footnote: other stock movie dads include the deadbeat dad with a heart of gold who returns after not seeing his kids for fifteen years, and actually turns out to be a nice guy, unlike real deadbeat dads who are, well, deadbeats; also the comic relief dad who’s just there to mess thing up so the wife can give him that “tsk, men” look and the kids can whine in their high kid voices, “Daaaaad” and the music can play a wah-wah sound effect and everyone laughs; and also there’s the dad who is an upstanding business man who has an artsy, right-brained hippy of a son and they can’t stand each other until the end when they suddenly understand the other’s lifestyle because this is Hollywood and the producers demanded a happy ending.)

So the dad in Beethoven is the uptight business-like dad who does not believe in capital-F Fun and does not want a dog shattering his twenty-four place setting set of bone china that he had imported from Italy—no matter that this is boatloads of Fun. In other words, he’s much like me. The problem is, of course, that he’s not actually like me. You see, the dad actually puts up with the dog long enough that the “bad guy” (who’s also an uptight business man, except he doesn’t have a dog, so you know he’s bad) starts doing bad things. I don’t remember specifically; he was going to bulldoze someone’s house to make way for a new hyperspace bypass or something. Anyway, Beethoven (the dog, not the composer), saves the day when, I guess, he tackles the guy? Something like that. And then at the end, even though the dad still “hates” him, he really doesn’t because the dog was such a good tackler. It’s standard Hollywood dreck.

This is probably the most highly unrealistic character of a “dad”, ever. You see, if he really were that hateful of dogs to begin with, he would do what I would do when forced into the same situation. I would haul out my finest 12-gauge and blow the dog’s head off before the first commercial break. This would make a bloody mess, but at least it would only make this mess once whereas if the dog was still alive, it would be making slobbery messes every half hour which would necessitate the dad cleaning up—because for some reason in movies, dads always do an enormous amount of housework.

Yes, I really do hate dogs this much. Fortunately for the dogs, I don’t think this is legal.

To make matters worse, dogs know I don’t like them—they all know. And so anytime I go to visit someone who has a dog, the dog goes out of its way to be extra special happy when I show up. Even normally well behaved dogs go nuts when they see me, and jump all over me and generally just be incredibly annoying and energetic. Then the owner will always say something stupid like, “oh, he’s just being friendly,” as if this is some sort of excuse that will placate me in the face of this furry terror.

The worst thing is that it’s not just dogs, but animals of all sorts which gravitate to me. Cats do this all the time. I’ve had people say about their cat things such as—this actually happened—”oh, she’s a really anti-social cat. She never hangs around people,” only to have the cat sit on my feet like four seconds later. Then the cat owner will exclaim how amazing that is because they’ve never seen their cat do that to anyone, ever, and I’ll mumble back about how it happens to me all the freakin’ time and I hate it. Not to mention I’m allergic to cats, so that makes it even worse yet. It’s happened with horses; it’s happened with my brother’s guinea pigs.

I wish I could trade my animal magnetism with someone else who doesn’t have any and wants it. I’m sure I could find someone like this who has a talent I’d rather have, like the ability to sing in tune. That’s a fair trade, I think: animal magnetism for singing. Anyone want to take me up on this?

All that to say that if my dad actually does get a dog, that’ll be the straw that breaks, as they say, the camel’s back. That will move me out of the house in short order. Although, truth be told, I hope to be out before the dog arrives.

-Ted