My Dog Hates Me
And it’s killing me inside
--
When a woman with six cat tattoos first insisted that we get a dog, I was unenthusiastic. Our apartment is small, and being the less consistently employed of the two of us, I would have to be the one to take care of the little bastard. Also, I was the only one with dog ownership experience: I grew up with an Australian Shepherd, and my brother unloaded a Beagle mutt puppy on me when I moved home after college. The latter would have turned out better trained if she was actually raised by wolves, so I just didn’t have much interest in taking another crack at that journey while we were still in a yardless one-bedroom.
I was only humoring my girlfriend Zeena when I went along to a dog adoption meet in Brooklyn, run by a charity that rescues dogs from being eaten by Koreans. I went primarily to make a lot of cracker-ass smart remarks about that premise, which I thoroughly enjoyed doing, but I had no interest in leaving with a dog. The store in question was beset with a Brooklyn brunch mob scene, so there was no chance of us getting one anyway.
Nevertheless, my beloved had fallen in love with the concept of dog ownership, seduced by their sweet nature and those dewy goddamn eyes, and she demanded that we go to some vet’s office in the Village to meet a seven year-old Pomeranian, allegedly named “Lucy.” I played up some mild gastric distress as a bout of diarrhea to get out of going, in the hopes of sandbagging the dog idea and stalling its momentum.
Naturally, that didn’t work, so another meeting was arranged with just the dog and me. When I asked Zeena why she wasn’t going, she said that she had already gone and she actually has a job. She then went on to add that the dog apparently had issues with men in the past, so the vet fostering Lucy wanted to make sure that Lucy was cool with me before we went through with the adoption. I enthusiastically agreed, as I would be walking into that vet’s office with a ready excuse to shoot down the idea: I’d go, spend a few minutes with the wee bitch, and report back that she didn’t like me.
