Pack of Two

by Caroline Knapp

  In fact, more than one third of all Americans live with dogs today—by most reliable estimates, that’s about 55 million dogs—and it’s safe to say that a good number of us don’t contain or compartmentalize our feelings nearly so effectively. Suspect though dog love may be in the public eye, Americans are in the midst of a veritable love affair with dogs: we’re spending more money on our dogs than ever before (the average owner can expect to shell out a minimum of $11,500 in the course of a dog’s life); we’re indulging them with an ever more elaborate range of goods and services (doggie day care, doggie summer camp, gold-plated Neiman Marcus doghouses); and in many respects we’re treating them far more like members of the human pack than like common household pets. Depending on which study you look at, anywhere from 87 to 99 percent of dog owners report that they see their dogs as family members, figures that are certainly borne out by behavior. The American Animal Hospital Association conducts an annual survey of pet owner attitudes. In 1995, 79 percent of respondents reported that they give their pets holiday or birthday presents. Thirty-three percent said they talk to their dogs on the phone or through an answering machine when they’re away. If they were stranded on a desert island and could pick only one companion, 57 percent of owners said they’d choose to be marooned with the dog rather than a human. A more telling number: the following year, 48 percent of female respondents reported that they relied more heavily on their pets than on their partners or family members for affection.

  I understand the temptation to pathologize such behavior, or at least to poke fun at it (dogs in birthday hats?), but I don’t believe that dog owners are unilaterally engaged in displacement, sublimation, or rampant anthropomorphism. Nor do I see this apparent depth of attachment as a sad commentary on contemporary human affairs. This is another common view, that people turn to pets for love and affection by default, because “real” (read: human) love and affection are so hard to come by in today’s fractured, isolated, alienating world. I think there is a kernel of truth to that—we live in lonely times, and dogs can go a long way toward alleviating loneliness—but I think the more important truth has to do not with modern culture but with dogs themselves, and with the remarkable, mysterious, often highly complicated dances that go on between individual dogs and their owners.

  That dance is about love. It’s about attachment that’s mutual and unambiguous and exceptionally private, and it’s about a kind of connection that’s virtually unknowable in human relationships because it’s essentially wordless. It’s not always a smooth and seamless dance, and it’s not always easy or graceful—love can be a conflicted, uncertain experience no matter what species it involves—but it is no less valid because one of the partners happens to move on four legs.

  “Love is love. I don’t care if it comes from humans or from animals: it’s the same feeling.” Paula, a forty-seven-year-old children’s book author who lives in Los Angeles with three Maltese dogs, said this to me with such simple candor the words stuck with me for days. She continued: “When I’m feeling bad or thinking about something I can’t handle, I pick up my dogs and it helps for that moment. It may not be the perfect relationship we all hope to have with a human, but it’s a relationship. And love is love.”

  Indeed. Just this morning, I came into the house after being out for an hour or so and found Lucille nestled in a corner of the sofa, her favorite spot when I’m away. She didn’t race across the room to greet me—she’s sufficiently accustomed to my comings and goings by now that she no longer feels compelled to fly to the door and hurl herself onto me as though I’ve just returned from the battlefield—but when I came into the room and approached her, her whole body seemed to tighten into a smile: the pointed ears drew flat back, the tail thumped against the sofa cushion, the eyes gleamed, the expression took on a depth and clarity that suggested, Happy; I am completely happy. A friend says her dog seems to wake up every morning with a thought balloon over her head that says, Yahoo! That was precisely the look: All is right with the world, it said, you are home. I crouched down by the sofa to scratch her chest and coo at her, and she hooked her front paw over my forearm. She gazed at me; I gazed back.

  I have had Lucille for close to three years, but moments like that, my heart fills in a way that still strikes me with its novelty and power. The colors come into sharp focus: attached, connected, joyful, us. I adore this dog, without apology. She has changed my life.

  FANTASY DOG

  THE PUPPY—Lucille at ten weeks—is stalking an ant. She creeps along the edge of the fence on my patio, head tucked low, neck stretched forward, her step delicate and calculated and silent. I can’t see the ant so I’m not exactly sure what she’s doing, but I can see the intensity of her focus. She stops, her gaze fixed at something about two feet ahead of her, and then her body tenses, and then she pounces: lunges forward, lands, and stops, front paws planted on the brick, hindquarters raised, little curl of a tail swishing behind her.

  I watch this, and I smile. Smile and smile and smile. In the course of two weeks, this creature has crawled into a corner of my heart and gotten lodged there, permanent occupancy. I look at her and sometimes I have to clench my teeth to keep from grabbing her and squishing her, she so delights me. Where did you come from? I gaze at her, wondering this. How did I end up with you?

  Good questions; I’m still asking them today. I stumbled into the world of dogs with major blinders on, just kind of woke up one day with this animal in my house. This is not an exaggeration, either—I’ve acquired toasters with more deliberation than I acquired Lucille. One fantasy, one animal shelter, fifty bucks, puppy. In retrospect, I’m also astonished by this: I’m not by nature a spontaneous person, and I’m certainly not a rash one, so the idea that I’d just go out one afternoon and come home with a live animal seems completely out of character. But fate has an uncanny way of giving you what you need, presenting you with the right lessons at the precise moment you’re ready to learn them. At the time I needed to learn a lot—about connection and closeness and safety—and something deep inside whispered, A dog, you need a dog, and I was lucky enough, or open enough, to listen.

  A few weeks before I got Lucille, I’d been sitting at a table outside a café in Cambridge with my friend Susan, watching a trio of people and a dog at a nearby table. The dog was sweet-looking in a mangy way, a medium-size mixed breed with intelligent eyes, and he sat next to his owner with that patient, contented look that some dogs seem to wear all the time: ears relaxed, eyes bright, mouth partway open in a mild pant that looked like a smile. At one point the dog stood up and started to wander away from the table. The owner whistled lightly, and the dog stopped, looked over his shoulder, then trotted back to the table and rested his head on the owner’s knee. The owner gave him a soft pat, then returned to his coffee. The two looked utterly at home together, man and dog.

  I watched this with vague envy, the way I might watch a couple holding hands. “I want a dog,” I said to Susan, nodding in the pair’s direction. “I’m thinking about getting a dog.”

  This was the first time I’d said the words aloud, although in the days and weeks before I got Lucille, I’d been aware that dog thoughts had been circling in the back of my mind: dog fantasies, a kind of low-grade puppy lust.

  A dog. I grew up with dogs, first a lovely, loyal, beautifully behaved Norwegian elkhound named Tom, who died when I was in high school, and then a lovely, utterly disloyal, terribly behaved elkhound named Toby, who died when I was thirty, just a few years before my parents’ deaths. Elkhounds are a burly breed with thick black and gray coats, curly tails, and wolfish faces; they’re charming dogs, intelligent and lively, but they belonged primarily to my mother, and I rather took them for granted as a kid—nice dogs, friendly, and largely peripheral to me. Still, when you’re raised in the presence of dogs, you tend to align yourself with them in some fundamental internal way. Studies by James Serpell, professor of animal welfare at the University of Pennsylvania, suggest that people exhibit a fair am
ount of species loyalty when it comes to acquiring pets: if you grew up with a dog, you’re likely to end up with a dog yourself as an adult, while if you grew up with cats, you’re more likely to stick with felines. This, at least in part, is what turns us into “dog people” or “cat people,” and the phenomenon certainly applied to me: I grew up simply assuming that at some point I’d end up with a dog of my own.

  Perhaps because I was never charged with taking care of the dogs as a kid, I also had lots of ideals about them, a passel of bright images about what living with a dog might be like. Never mind the way Toby used to torture my mother by escaping from our yard at every available opportunity and hightailing it to the local Dunkin’ Donuts, where he’d loiter and beg for tidbits; never mind the times he’d disappear at our summer house on Martha’s Vineyard, often returning days later with little notes tied to his collar. (“Your dog showed up at our cocktail party; we gave him a drink and sent him on his way.”) I remembered, instead, the way Toby used to make my parents laugh. (They always got a chuckle out of those notes, the annoyance factor aside.) I remembered the way Tom would lie by the fire during the evening cocktail hour and stare at my dad, whom he adored. I remembered the way my mother, a markedly undemonstrative woman most of the time, used to reach down and pet the dog, scratch his chest until he zoned out with contentment, eyes at half mast. My associations had to do with loyalty and companionship, with affection and nurturance, with simple tactile joys.

  My fantasies, meanwhile, had to do with attachment, and with longings that felt both inchoate and vast. At the time of that coffee with Susan, my future was looming before me like a dictionary definition of uncertainty. I was still somewhat dazed from my three-year bout with loss: orphaned and raw and fearful, struggling to figure out how to have a life without being drunk all the time. In the midst of that task, the external elements of my life were in flux, increasingly unsettled and ill formed. Earlier that week, I’d put the finishing touches on the manuscript for my last book, a memoir of my experience with alcholism, and then, days later, I’d quit my full-time job, a position at a newspaper in Boston I’d held for seven years. So I was poised at the edge of the abyss labeled “self-employment,” absolutely unsure how I’d fill my days. My personal life felt just as open-ended and even more daunting. I was deeply ambivalent about my then-boyfriend, a man of uncommon kindness and generosity named Michael. We’d been together for five years, and he’d seen me through the worst times—the deaths, the decision to quit drinking—and I still couldn’t for the life of me figure out what to do with him, whether to marry him or up and run. A month before I got Lucille, we’d gone looking at houses for sale, fantasizing about creating a home together. I’d stand there in a big old Victorian in Cambridge, and I’d imagine us cooking spaghetti in the kitchen, or tending to the yard. And I’d also think: Is this place big enough so that I can be way over here and he can be way over there? For our entire relationship, I’d been keeping Michael in a box, and I held the only key: I was the gatekeeper of intimacy, in charge of deciding how close he got, how many nights a week we spent together, how often we had sex. This was beginning to make both of us nuts: the manipulation of distance and the imbalance of power and the sense that time was moving forward while our relationship stood still, and I’d slouch into my therapist’s office week after week and howl about my ambivalence. I can’t do this anymore; I can’t leave him, I can’t stay; tell me what to do.

  I couldn’t talk to my twin sister about this, which distressed me greatly, she being my closest family member and the other key figure in my life. In the midst of all my indecision, she’d left her husband, fallen in love with another man, and was talking about moving to a new part of the state, and every time I talked to her, I had the feeling that she’d taken off and landed on some new planet, without leaving behind directions. Our conversations felt stilted and disconnected: we’d talk on the phone, and she’d seem utterly absorbed in her new relationship, and every time we hung up, I’d be aware of a sensation that’s dogged me since childhood, that she’d surged forward in her life and left me behind.

  So life had this unmoored quality, full of voids and barely acknowledged yearnings, and if I’d made a list of things I wanted desperately at the time, it would have included the most elusive items. Love without ambivalence. Family members who won’t leave. Intimacy that’s not scary, that doesn’t require a lot of anesthesia.

  I suppose that’s why the sight of that man and his dog appealed to me so: it spoke to that list, ticked off promises of possibility. A warm, uncomplicated connection. A singular attachment. Ease on a leash. I sat and watched. I wanted what they had. And so I said it aloud: “I’m thinking about getting a dog.”

  Susan is a very intuitive person who understands that I have difficulty with the concept of indulgence. She looked at the dog and his owner, then looked back at me. Her eyes lit up a bit, as though I’d hit upon something inexplicably perfect. “A dog,” she said, turning the word over. “I like it. Caroline and her dog.”

  As it turns out, my fantasies were utterly typical, as classic as they come. Ask ten people why they want a dog, or why they got one, and you will get ten variations on the same theme: dog equals love. More to the point, dog equals a very specific brand of love: a warm-and-fuzzy variety, pure and simple, low-maintenance and relatively risk free. A dog will return us to more idyllic times, to summer afternoons we spent romping with the family dog as children. A dog will do for us what Lassie did for Timmy, provide constancy and protection and solace, our very own saint in the backyard. A dog will curl at our feet and gaze up at us adoringly, will fetch our paper in the morning and our slippers come nightfall, will serve us and love us without question or demand. This is Walt Disney love, rose-colored and light and tender, and the wish for it lurks within every human soul, the dog owner’s being no exception.

  People tend to be surprisingly vague when they talk about why they decided to get a dog—I’ve been struck by this countless times. You’ll ask, “Why a dog?” and “Why then? Why did you get a dog at that particular time in your life?” and you’ll often get a highly generic response, or a pragmatic one. A mother of two boys echoes the parental refrain when she tells me, “We got the dog for the kids.” A retired schoolteacher in Washington cites the fitness-and-activity rationale: “I wanted a pet that would get me outdoors, give me a reason to get out of the house for walks.” In interviews dozens of dog owners in varying categories—single women, single men, married couples—trotted out variations of an even less specific theme: I don’t know, I just like dogs. I grew up with dogs and I always wanted one.

  Those are all valid, perfectly reasonable responses—dogs can be great playmates for children; dogs will get you out of the house for walks; dogs are, or at least can be, eminently likable—but I think people tend to be vague because getting a dog can be such an intensely personal matter, all tied up with that Disney ideal, and the very personal fantasies and yearnings that lurk behind it. Even the most pragmatic rationales contain deeper hopes. The family dog offers the promise of stability: the house in the suburbs, the picket fence, the golden retriever in the back of the station wagon. The outdoor dog offers the promise of fidelity and companionship: the trusted Lab trotting by your side. The statement “I grew up with dogs” suggests a longing for the purity and innocence of childhood bonds, a wish for simpler times and less cluttered relationships. Dogs strike deep chords in us, ones that are bolstered by the individual experiences of childhood, by the culture at large, and by history. Humans have lived with dogs for fourteen thousand years, after all, and our ideals about them are deeply rooted, bred into the dog-loving portion of the population as surely as the instinct to chase prey has been bred into hounds. We’ve rhapsodized about dogs in literature and poetry, filled centuries worth of canvases with images of his nobility and strength, celebrated his loyalty and steadfastness in film; from Odysseus’ Argus, who waited longer than Penelope, to the long-distance loyalty of Lassie, we have exalte
d the dog for attributes all too often absent from human affairs.

  We have done so, moreover, with remarkable consistency, our ideals about what dogs are like and what they can provide remaining more or less the same for centuries. Times when I wonder if my feelings for Lucille are over the top, when I question whether my affection for her is somehow excessive, I remind myself of the volumes that have been written about dogs, of the persistence and constancy of their place in our lives. In an 1862 letter to a friend, poet Emily Dickinson summed up in two quick sentences the precise qualities of trust and camaraderie the modern dog owner so values and enjoys: “You ask of my companions. Hills, sir, and the sundown, and a dog large as myself that my father gave me. They are better than human beings because they know but do not tell.” In 1930 Thomas Mann published A Man and His Dog, a 258-page love letter to his hound dog, a “wondrous soul” named Bashan, which captures, among other things, the joy a human feels at the sight of a dog bounding through the woods, “sagacious, vigiliant, impressive, with all his faculties in a radiant intensification.” In 1940 French psychiatrist Marie Bonaparte published Topsy, a tribute to her chow chow, whom she describes in terms as loving and familial as any you will hear today: ‘Topsy is my friend,” she wrote, “my friend, who, in this, different from my grown-up children, does not ask to leave me…. Topsy lives and breathes in a radius ten yards around me, and cries to rejoin me as soon as I move a few steps away from her. Dogs are children that do not grow up, that do not depart.”