Chapter 2: The Beagle has landed
by Stephania Silveira Hines and Michael Hines
Repressing our desires with a bunch of practical stuff. That’s adult life. And when it comes to getting a dog, adulthood shatters our instincts to pieces.
“It’s too expensive. It’s too much hassle. It’s too much hair all over my leather sofa.”
I’m glad we were able to glide through this list of excuses. Because if we had listened to our grown-up inner voices, we would have never replied to that offer of a Beagle on Craigslist less than a month after moving to Los Angeles.
I always wanted a dog. But I was one of those children who were only allowed goldfish or cockatiels as pets. Moving to California was the opportunity to make my dream come true. And it was part of my plan to fully embrace West Coast clichés.
I counted the days until the mysterious man who was giving puppies away on Craigslist came into my living room and opened the crate where this tiny living thing, not much bigger than the palm of my hand, walked out.
My heart melted.
He was the cutest thing I’d ever seen in my life.
I wanted to cuddle him, to stroke him, to grab him, to love him. Boggle and I were going to be friends forever. I leaned down to give him a big welcome hug, expecting a delicious ear lick from my brand new baby.
Instead, he pooped on my feet.
And while I was cleaning the floor, he pooped again.
Then he bit me.
He then peed on my most expensive rug.
And then he whined all night. So much that Michael had to sleep on the floor next to his crate.
(Puppies, like babies, also calm down when they hear the sound of a heart beating.)
For the next few weeks, my days consisted of cleaning pees and poops.
Boggle defecated on every inch of our wooden floor. My Google search history became a collection of questions on how to potty train a Beagle. Little did I know I had just acquired the most stubborn breed of dog on the planet.
I took him to the vet to discover he had a series of worms and an ear infection. I spent a lot of money on medicine and vet fees.
If I had gotten this dog from a pet shop, I’d have gone back with my receipt asking for a refund.
It was a lot of responsibility and commitment. Enough to transform my whole lifestyle.
I couldn’t stay out more than 3 hours at a time, which is hard in LA where everything is miles away. Sometimes I’d come back home to find my cushions and shoes completely destroyed.
And I was not getting any sign that he loved me back. Not even a piece of bacon would buy me a cuddle. It was all puppy bites. And sometimes they hurt me a lot.
Cut to four months later.
In one of the rare occasions Michael and I were having a row over household stuff, he raised his voice to me. It was just one of Michael’s stressed moans, but Boggle, thinking that I could be in danger, growled at him. He roared as if I was Whitney Houston and he was my bodyguard.
After so much effort, I got proof that my dog loved me — to the point of protecting me from a whining husband.
The maths was simple. I gave up my time, my money and my nights out for that puppy. And eventually he gave me cuddles, his excitement to see me back from work, his attention when he forced me to go for a walk when the glorious LA days were over and I was feeling down. He gave me things that were much more valuable than time, money and nightlife.
Boggle made me realize that, in my life, I had never learned how to nurture anything.
I’m the youngest of 4 children. I had never been responsible for anyone. I had only looked after a goldfish. And to be honest, I let it slip through my hand and it fell in the toilet. All my Tamagotchis died in less than 2 days.
In my education, there were never any lessons about caring for people, about taking time to make siblings and friends feel loved and safe.
I learned algebra and geometry in school, but I didn’t learn that you need time and effort to build a strong relationship. I was one of these people who expected instant connection with other people. Growing up, I got disappointed many times thinking that I was going to marry guys after the third date. Or that drunk strangers I met on nights out were my best friends. At work, I never took time to mentor younger people. First, because I spent most of my time feeling insecure about my own performance. Second, because the ability to become a nurturer doesn’t come naturally. It’s a skill, like knitting or cooking.
The biggest West Coast cliche was that I moved LA to find a purpose in life. And Boggle made me discover that caring for others was the most fulfilling job I could do.
I took so much joy in taking him to puppy classes and watching him developing new tricks, even if he was the worst in the classroom. I felt such a proud mamma the day he stole a corn cob from my plate, gobbled it down in one go and I got to the vet in time for them to expel it without surgery. And I have immense satisfaction knowing that he’s cosy in a warm house with food and water rather that being tortured in a cosmetic lab. Beagles are the most used dogs for animal testing because of their sweet and passive nature.
That new expertise I was crafting made me do things I had never thought about doing before. It made me enroll on a mentorship program to help young women to become writers. And a few years later, it made me realise that I wanted a child.
I’m lucky Boggle came into my life before I had a daughter. It would be much harder to practice the dynamics of unconditional love with a human being.
And my daughter is lucky she has a brother to practice the delightful skill of nurturing from very early on.
You see this dog? This soulful, pensive, cuddly Beagle?
There is no good reason for me to own him.
It’s stupid, in a world so full of people who can’t afford to eat a proper meal or sleep in a bed, to lavish time and money on a dog.
The typical case for the defence is that owning a dog is an emotional choice, but over the course of time dog owners, mostly Californian, have also summoned a range of ‘rational’ arguments about the benefits of owning a canine chum.
In order to tackle this line of thinking, I have gathered some of the key ones below for your delectation.
“Dogs cut down on food waste in the home”
Boggle doesn’t just reduce food waste, he also fulfils a similar role to a live-in nutritionist, dietician or personal trainer by removing sizeable amounts of food from our plates. Other areas of ‘edible’ waste that Boggle has reduced in our household include pairs of shoes, leather bags, books, favoured vinyl records, brand new carpets, soft furnishings and clothing belonging to household guests.
“Owning a dog will strengthen your empathy with animals and eventually turn you vegetarian”
In fact, having watched him eat various forms of shit in the street several times before, owning Boggle has occasionally made me not just want to be a vegetarian, but put me off food altogether. Watching this Circle of Life in action has indeed given me renewed regard for the animal kingdom.
“Dogs are cheap home security”
Boggle is not an effective guard dog or intruder deterrent: if you were to break into my house, steal everything I owned, murder me and kidnap my daughter and wife in the middle of the night, he would be okay with that provided you brought a new chew toy, steak offcut or perhaps a decent-sized marrow bone.
(Also he is extremely gentle-natured and will apologise if he nips you by licking your hand afterwards).
“Dogs owners get more exercise & are healthier than people without dogs”
Boggle’s eating habits mean he is of a build best described as ‘portly’. He has two gears: manic pursuit of either food or a thrown tennis ball, and idleness to the point of me needing to prod him to check that he isn’t dead, neither of which make him a good exercise partner.
In his defence, I now have extremely strong arm muscles and am pretty good at tug of war from dragging his stubborn carcass with me through the streets.
The only variations on the above are the times when he spots an urban fox, his genetic nemesis, loitering in our neighbourhood after dark. The moments when he bursts into life to give chase to his ancestral quarry are exhilarating, but they never last more than a few seconds.
“Dogs make great companions for children”
I often wonder, when he looks a little too closely at the baby daughter that has replaced him at the summit of my affections, how long Boggle would need to be left in the house with my newborn child before he would start to view her as potential foodstuff, and in what order he would go about eating her — perhaps a lick of the toes first, followed by a nibble of the feet and hands before moving onto the more tender flesh on her legs and arms.
I like to imagine that it might take weeks, maybe even months.
Then I remember the time the other day when I caught him eating a giant nutty turd in the street.
“Beagles are really clever and you can train them to do all sorts of useful things”
Boggle has mastered a limited range of commands, which are as follows:
Sit — Boggle will sit in the hope that you will give him food.
Now — Boggle will stop whatever he is doing and run to you in the hope that you will give him food.
Shake — Boggle will shake your hand with his paw in the hope that you will give him food.
Leave It — If said repeatedly, Boggle will stop trying to eat whatever edible object he has found on the floor in the hope that you will give him better food instead.
What are you eating? — Boggle will start to chew whatever he is eating two to three times as fast in the hope that he will finish it before you stop him.
It seems unlikely that this will allow him to win at Crufts any time soon, although he is extremely good at manipulating weak-minded humans into giving him food.
“Beagles are scent hounds and can be trained to sniff things out”
Beagles are, apparently, useful in detecting trace elements of cocaine on drug mules, termites and other pests in building timbers, and finding truffles buried deep underground.
Boggle’s sense of smell is also a finely-tuned piece of equipment — there have been several times in the last few months where I’ve seen the distressed quiver of his wet nose and known that someone several miles upwind has farted — but unless you’re looking for fried chicken leftovers in gutters or the exact inch of pavement where someone spilled takeaway curry several weeks ago, he is not the dog for you.
“If you want to be a writer, dogs are a great companion against solitude”
Boggle is not a canine literary muse. When I am trying to write he frequently interrupts me by making whining sounds and demanding I feed him. When he is especially hungry or needy, he will place his paw on my arm to interrupt me and make sure that I’m not ignoring him.
“Owners resemble their pets, so your dog makes a statement about who you are”
My dog is stubborn, flatulent, and overweight.
“Dogs are great for picking up members of the opposite sex”
I am married, and this advantage is also available to my wife, and so Boggle’s presence in the house is a form of nuclear deterrent, where peace is the alternative to the mutually assured marital destruction that would result from either of capitalizing on his potential as a weapon of mass seduction. It does, at least, explain why my wife is always so insistent that she would get sole custody in the event of a divorce.
Boggle does have a proven uplift effect when included in my friends’ dating profiles, a fact that I have yet to monetize but intend to very soon.
“No-one will ever love you like a dog”
I would prefer not to reflect too deeply on this.
Having eliminated all other superfluous arguments, I will now unveil the Canine Theory of Everything, The Key Reason to Own A Dog.
Dogs making putting up with other humans easier.
When life becomes a bit much, there are people that meditate and do therapy, people who take drugs and drink too much. I Beagle.
I like to believe that Boggle is as sensitive to my mood as he is to the sound or smell of any item of food being opened within a mile radius of him.
Unlike most humans, Boggle makes no intrusive enquiries about my mental or psychological wellbeing, does not attempt to give me useful advice, and never offered me any empty motivational platitudes or assurances that my terminally-ill mother and father-in-law were going to be ‘alright’.
He is just there, and when things have been tough I sit with his head resting on my lap and stroke his ears, and imagine that somehow he can sense that all is not right with me, that he understands when I am tired of human beings, including myself, and want to retreat into the silent companionship that only a dog can offer.
A dog — any dog, this dog, my dog — offers us the wonderful illusion that someone knows us, understands us, and feels what we feel, without us ever having to suffer the painful correction that is almost always the result of humans opening their mouths to speak.
If our friendships and close relationships are sometimes a disappointment because we always expect too much of people, companionship with a dog offers a pleasingly low bar which they will almost always, however fat and lethargic they might be, somehow manage to heave themselves over.
Likewise, a house with a dog in it is one where you are always sufficient, where the feelings of inadequacy and failure that can follow us through life fall away in the face of a creature who cares only if we can feed them, play with them, or just sit with them.
As I write this, with Boggle asleep on my lap, paw twitching in what generally indicates he is enjoying some canine equivalent of a wet dream involving a marrow bone, I feel very little shame in saying that I love my dog in a way that doesn’t stand up to any sort of close scrutiny.
So yes, he’s fat, he’s greedy, occasionally he eats street turd, and no, none of the rational arguments about why you should have a dog seem to apply to this particular Beagle.
But very few of my human friendships seem to stand up to close scrutiny or rational interrogation any more either, and yet they’re still the things that make life worth living.
Why should my relationship with a dog be so very different?
