Must Love Dogs

                It’s been quite a while since I wrote an essay for all my fabulous readers and I thought, “Hmm… here’s some bull crap I need to get off my chest. I know! I’ll make people read about it!”  The topic for today is the oft heard expression, mostly expressed by single women on dating websites, “Must Love Dogs”.

                I’m sick of this phrase and the implications of being villainized if I do not have an emotional affinity for dogs. Yeah, dogs are nice. They’re human beings longest evolutionary companion and we owe each other for the other’s survival for the thousands of years we roamed the planet together before setting ourselves up in walled cities. Dogs were security and protection against the harshness of the unforgiving cruelty of a long past era. So yeah, dogs are pretty cool in that respect.

                This does not mean I have to love your yapping little neurotic furball who insists on licking my face right after licking his own missing balls. Which you cruelly sliced off, Sicko.

                That’s right, I do not love dogs. I am that guy who is capable of saying that not loving dogs doesn’t make me a bad person. Judging people for not loving dogs makes you a bad person. I like dogs fine. I think they are amazing creatures and part of the amazing variations of life on Earth. They can be heroic, loyal, and sympathetic. But I mustn’t “Love” them.  I can think they are “just okay”, and still get though my morning coffee without crumbling into a pile of dog hating ash.

                I think this whole thing about being a terrible person if you didn’t love dogs started with a random comment Bill Murray might have said. “I'm suspicious of people who don't like dogs, but I trust a dog when it doesn't like a person.” I’m not even 100% he said that but I’m willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. I think dogs are a terrible judge of character. Hitler had a dog named Blondi. Hitler loved dogs. His love of dogs certainly did not excuse him of his insanity or crimes against humanity. I’m sure Hitler’s dog thought he was just the most awesome dog owner ever. Dogs do not have an inherent moral compass that makes them somehow a better judge of character.  Also, some dogs are just jerks, like people, who make judgments about people based on faulty preconceptions. So maybe the dog doesn’t like you, but maybe that dog just ate a lump of it’s own shit. So….

                The Ancient Romans loved dogs too and used them in packs to slaughter hundreds on the battlefields before they sent in the infantry to “mop up” after the gnashing horrors of their beloved war dogs. That term, war dogs, that’s where that comes from. Blood thirsty dogs ripping flesh from bone and then being praised by their Roman handlers. If I were a Celt or Barbarian, I’d have a healthy mistrust of dogs too.

                Yet, I am the bad guy for not fawning all over this mutated stumpy animal you have crapping and pissing in your yard. That’s right, human beings have transformed this animal, efficiently designed by nature, into a horror show of mutations through cross and selective breeding. I’m the bad guy though if I don’t want it sitting on the nice couch, or squeezing its head in between my lady and me while we’re trying to make out. If I tell the dog to go or lie down, my lady scowls at me like I’m the worst person ever to have existed or likely to ever exist.

                I will tolerate your dog. I’ll do that. I won’t be second fiddle to your dog though. Because, I don’t love your dog. Nature designed me to have opposable thumbs, not the dog, so I am the better mammal. The better mammal who chooses to love people, before he loves dogs.

I’m wondering if I should update my dating profile to include the phrase, “Must Love People”, and see what sort of reaction that draws? Although who am I kidding, no one reads dating profiles but me.

                So my dear readers, that’s my thought for today, let’s lay off the insistence that we “Must Love Dogs” for the sake of the dominant mammal on this planet. When human beings can love each other with the same uninhibited adoration dogs seem to have, then I’ll be okay with loving dogs. But for now, maybe let’s work on loving each other and less on pressuring others to love your dog.   

                -Author’s Note: Cruelty to animals is completely unacceptable and this essay is in no way an authorization or reason to be cruel to dogs, cats, or any of our four-legged friends. Don’t be a prick.