What up, human?

I am not a dog person.

This does not mean that I don’t like dogs. Dogs are just fine. Nice enough, I guess, with that commendable quality of loyalty that so few people even possess. I can even learn to love certain dogs, if they’re mine (like the mutt named Emily I had as a kid) or if they belong to someone I love (Oh, Billy, who knew I’d ever let you lick my feet so thoroughly with that warm, scratchy, smelly tongue? Rest in Peace…). But as a general rule, I find dogs annoying, smelly, needy, troublesome and too damn big (unless they’re the small dogs, in which case why the fuck have a dog when you could just have a guinea pig in your purse?)

This means I don’t have a whole lot of contact with dogs. I don’t allow them in my car. When my dog-owner friends come around, sometimes I’ll pet ‘em and sometimes I won’t, but I’ll never get down on the ground and roll around with them. And though my former roommate is a professional dog walker, I never once went with him on a job.

So it was with some trepidation that I took on my dog-sitting job last weekend. I met Savannah, a beautiful black medium-sized dog with a friendly disposition, ahead of time. And I liked her. I scratched her head while I talked to her interesting, friendly owners. I didn’t mind when she jumped up on me. I figured this would be a piece of cake.

But when I came back a few days later to be alone with her, I realized something: I don’t know how to walk a dog. I don't know what to do when she bites into a tube of sausage so moldy it looks like newspaper and won't let go. Or when she finds a stale doughnut in a bush and swallows it whole. I don't know if I'm supposed to let her off her collar and play ball in the park, like the other dog owners who clearly love their dogs more than I love mine, or if that is a surefire way to get her in some dog-on-dog fight (as Savannah loves humans, but not other dogs). I don't know which roads in Golden Gate park are dog friendly, or whether it's okay to walk Savannah along Haight.

Of course, I eventually figured it all out. Even got good at it. Even started fantasizing about having my own dog someday (but one genetically engineered not to shit).

But on those first few walks when I was all nervous and awkward, somewhere between being on a first date and taking my first babysitting gig, I couldn't get over the feeling that every time Savannah looked at me, she was saying with her eyes,

“You fucking amateur."

Comments

[el mazer]

The first date analogy is good. Dogs are fine, but it is super weird to pick up some other things poo, and funny how much you can obsess about whether the walk was long enough, how much ball tossing is enough. Though i hope to god none of these specific quandaries come up on any first date.