Your life, my life, dog's life (original) (raw)
footpad tenderness for a loved one
January 4 2013, 18:40
Dear Mischa,
You know that I love you. The human-dog bond is its own very special thing (even if I am, just perhaps, very slightly more canine than the average human), but there are aspects of our relationship which parallel various human-to-human relationships. I take pleasure your quiet company as I would that of a close friend of many years; I cuddle with you and kiss you on the ears and face much as I might a lover. Finally, I care for your well-being as if you were a child.
And you need me to. Though you may be splendid in your predatory instincts, you wouldn't last a day in this modern environment with its trains and cars and dog-proof doors. Sometimes I think of how you might fare if you had to fare for yourself alone, and the thought brings me a chill of horror. If our house burned down, I wouldn't be more than mightily annoyed, but if it burned down with you in it then I'd be tortured by the thought of your last moments. If pandemic flu strikes, then I can take my precautions and my chances, but I blench at the prospect of you left alone in an empty house with no Humans to care for you.
I was recently listening to an episode of the beautiful radio show, This American Life, which described the fate of some of the tens of thousands of American household pets that were volunteered by their owners to serve the US Army in the Pacific in World War Two. The favoured breeds included (German) Shepherds, Doberpeople, Huskies and... and Malamutes, and the mention of your breed gave me a sudden pang of realisation that you could have been sent to war—you, my lovely, gentle, peaceful, equable sled-dog, with no more experience of violence than beating up that vile little Labrador who lives down the road. Then the narrator described finding photographs of dogs who'd been trained to wear explosive backpacks and run into enemy bunkers...
I console myself with the thought that you'd make a simply appalling kamikaze dog. Your food drive isn't strong enough, your ambling desultory gait would be too easy for people to shoot at, and you'd probably decide you simply weren't interested in going into that smelly little hovel full of things going bang. You're also so handsome and sweet that not even an Army bureaucrat could condone blowing you up.
No, probably what would have happened, is, you'd have been sent to Alaska to pull sleds, your handlers would have fallen as much in love with you as I am, you'd have discovered the joys of doing what you were bred for, and you'd hear the Call of the Wild, find your John Thornton, and accompany him to a placid retirement in the wilds.
But here we are, in the next millennium, on the outskirts of a small town in Germany. You're eight years old now, a strong healthy happy dog in his serene middle years. I know you can't live forever, or even for especially long. I'm used to that idea. But I really—with all my heart—I want you to live pleasurably, to age contentedly, and to die in peace at what, for you, will be a ripe count of years.
I can't promise you that for certain. For all we know, there's an asteroid out there with our ecosystem written on it. There may be upheavals, there may be economic collapse, there may be chaos and terror and starvation. It's entirely conceivable that there'll come a time when there's no food for you, or we can't afford your medical care. But one way or another, through trial or tribulation, I trust we can arrange things so that, in years to come, we can look back and say: yours was anything but a dog's life.
Love,
me.