I have nothing against dogs, but people with dogs have the same oddities as people with kids

In the yard next to our house where the children were galloping about, I felt the sun’s rays 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 her, madam?’

I opened my eyes and saw my daughters standing next to a woman with a pack of dogs. I knew her well, a well-known figure in the village, a pleasant person, bouffant-haired, blond and slender, a little friend in a long afghan coat, who seemed even smaller because of her dogs. There were three of them: a kind of bulldog and two middle-aged men, of whom at least one must have been rescued from a Greek or Roman street. She had told me in previous meetings of her plans to take everything with her to Spain, the sun and the house and the piece of land, what more could a person need, but it did not happen, troubles, Spanish things, she looked at her with a look she knew.

Well, I didn’t know that at all, because I can’t imagine spending my days on a dusty piece of the Spanish hinterland, let alone having three dogs around me, because I don’t get along much with those animals. For those who are now growling in my haste: I have nothing against dogs, but people who have dogs have the same oddity as people who have children, and that is that they think others love them just as much. How often are you held hostage to stories about puppy training, and how often do you listen politely to the development of an animal you don’t know?

This language too, it’s the owner of this, Mama, it sniffs and it cuddles and it yeah, you’re a sweet dog, aren’t you, you’re a sweet mama’s dog, it crates and begs and soars, and just like you think: Whoa, I can’t go on any longer, and then they start Speaking of the running field in the park, wow, how are all those dogs playing with each other over there! Even the meeting is no longer possible without the presence of the dog.

I want to be easy going in cases like this, yeah dude, take it with you, but then the animal in question must have been bred, and let’s face it, the comparison with kids comes in handy here, which is sometimes lacking. And so I quietly think, while such an animal devours cat food and then carefully licks my hands: I don’t want my drool in my house, I don’t want him to sniff my crotch or jump on me, and I’m already not at all served to ease all the dilutions, Doesn’t do anything. No, that should have been added, my mother used to say, because I didn’t get it from a stranger.

So I was training, out there in the sun in the yard next to our house, while those three dogs, Adel, let all my daughters’ attention take care of them. “Look at those little legs,” I said to the woman, as we watched Frida, shrieking, growled after the smallest dog. The woman nodded. “Yeah, what would it be, 12k, something like that.” I nodded, not quite sure, we haven’t been to the counseling office for a while.

Then she said with a smile: “He walks with everyone.”

I kept quiet, well, that wasn’t too bad actually.

“Well, she’s only young, of course, isn’t she,” she said.

In the silence that followed, I felt it coming. “Although you have to count seven times in dog years, of course.”

I say people with dogs who only take care of themselves, have something in common with people who have kids.