I was recently, as in right now, looking at footage of our beloved pet dogs and it has got me thinking. I love my dog , I really do, not in the gratuitous kind of way, but in the way that one can share moments in time with another, when you realise that they are just as interested in keeping you happy as you them, again not in a gratuitous way! I guess that is a problem though, how do you express your love of a canine companion without either coming off like a dog fcker or some sort of soft headed freako? Well I say fck it, just say it like it is. I have had a few dogs over the years and when things have been shit in my life I knew that I could talk to them and get some comfort from having them close. As I have gotten older this hasn’t changed, I still talk to my dog, I still like having him near, not only when things have turned to shit, but also when things are good. I now have a son and he has grown up with my dog and as they have both aged together I know that not only has he gotten strength from the four legged friend, but that also he provides affection back. It is a strange thing, we drink cow’s milk, we keep dogs as pets, we are really quite a fcked up species.
The hard thing is seeing them age and knowing that they will soon either need to be euthanised or will simply expire on their own. This not only brings us to think on our own mortality, it also helps us to teach our kids about death. Again this is pretty weird, as no longer is life and death a daily occurrence for us, as our meat is packaged and chilled for our convenience, perhaps if we still hunted it wouldn’t be so much of a shock and a hard thing to deal with, maybe it still would. All I know is that when my current dog expires, well I will be gutted, he has been with me through a hell of a lot and at times I have cried with him and at other moments I have shouted out in celebration. When his time comes I hope I can be strong enough to do the right thing by him. I will always remember the good times we shared and then I will think about replacing him, if only all our relationships could be so well managed.
