In the square next to our house where the children were scootering I felt the sun burning on my skin, and just when I thought: if only I were an animal, I heard my 7-year-old daughter ask: ‘Can we pet them, ma’am? ‘
I opened my eyes and saw my daughters standing next to a woman with a pack of dogs. I knew her well, well-known figure in the village, nice person, hair pulled up, blond and petite, a little girlfriend in a long Afghan coat, who seemed even smaller because of her dogs. There were three of them: a bulldog of sorts and two medium-sized, at least one of whom must have been rescued from a Greek or Romanian street. At previous meetings she had told me about her plans to take the whole thing with her to Spain, sun and a cottage and a piece of land, what more could a person need, but it hadn’t happened, hassle, Spanish stuff, she had looked at it with a look of you-know-it.
Well, I didn’t know it at all, because I can’t imagine spending my days on a dusty piece of Spanish hinterland, let alone with three dogs around me, because I don’t have that much with those animals. For those who are now growling in my calf: I have nothing against dogs, but people with dogs have the same anomaly as people with children, and that is that they think others like theirs just as much. How often are you held hostage by stories about puppy training, how often are you politely listening to the progression of an animal you don’t know?
That language too, it’s owner this, mommy that, it’s sniffing and it’s cuddling and it’s yes, you’re a beautiful dog aren’t you, you’re mama’s beautiful dog, it’s crates and begging and mounting blown, and just like you thinks: stop, I can’t go on any longer, then they start talking about that one run-off field in the park, wonderful, how those dogs all play with each other there! Even meeting up is no longer possible without the dog coming along.
I want to be easy in such cases, yes dude, take it with you, but then the animal in question must have been raised, and let’s face it, the comparison with children also comes in handy here, which is sometimes lacking. And so I quietly think, while such an animal gobbles up the cat food and THEN licks my hand CAREFULLY: I don’t want that drooling in my house, I don’t want it sniffing my crotch or jumping up on me, and I’m already not at all served by the extenuation of all extenuations, he doesn’t do anything. No, that had to be added, my mother would say, because I didn’t get it from a stranger.
So that’s how I was practicing, there in the sun on the square next to our house, while those three dogs, fair is fair, kindly let all the attention OF MY DAUGHTERS come over them. “Look at those little legs,” I said to the woman, as we watched Frida, crowing, honk after the smallest dog. The woman nodded. ‘Yes, what will she be, 12 kilos, something like that.’ I nodded, I wasn’t exactly sure, we hadn’t been to the consultation office for a while.
Then she said with a smile, “He walks with everyone.”
I kept silent, well, that wasn’t too bad actually.
She: “Well, of course she’s just a youngster, isn’t she.”
In the silence that followed I felt it coming. ‘Although you have to count times seven in dog years, of course.’
I say that, people with dogs are only concerned with themselves, they have that in common with people with children.
