Dogs, Dogs, Dogs

Why do we let animals live in our houses?

Sgt. Pepper

This week, in addition to our fourteen-year-old Cockapoo, Sgt. Pepper, we are caring for two much younger, much more energetic Black Labradors. They’re good dogs, generally. It’s just that our family and our dog and our house are small and these Labs are…not. Add to that the gates we’ve erected to keep them out of certain rooms where they may find Lego or more valuable things to devour, and our small space is feeling that much smaller.

When we first looked at this house, over six years ago now, our friend and realtor John, who is over six feet tall, had to duck as he passed through the charming brick arch that leads to the back door. He knew instantly — and so did we — that we’d found our home. I’ve always thought a house should reflect its owners. Our’s did from the start, and with all the renovations we’ve done in the intervening years, it feels even more like us today.

Well, maybe not today. Today, specifically, it feels more like a makeshift kennel. As I type this, I’m surrounded. One Lab is on the rug at my feet. Sarge prefers the hardwood floor by the couch, and the other Lab lies just above him, curled up on our couch. I don’t think they’re supposed to be on the furniture, but some things aren’t worth the fight — choose your battles, is something I believe.

Several times over the past few days — like this morning when the Labs were barking for their breakfast at 5:00 AM — I’ve wondered why we do this. Why do we share our homes with animals? It seems that the point of a house is to keep what is wild outside. And yet here we are.

Growing up, we had cats. I was born into a home already occupied by Zeffy, my parents’ black cat. When she died over a decade later, we brought home two white and gray Persian cats. They were like the cats in the Fancy Feast cat food commercial. Owning them made me feel rich, and I loved them enough to tolerate the white hairs they shed everywhere. Still, to this day, I never wear black. A funny thing happened, though, when I went away to college and returned for a holiday break — I was allergic to the cats.

And I’m allergic to dogs, too. Not Sarge, though; being a poodle mix, he’s hypoallergenic. He also doesn’t shed, which is something I never appreciated so much as I do now in this house quickly becoming covered in black hairs, the inverse of those white hairs from my childhood. Fortunately, I don’t wear white, either.

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I’ve recently been re-reading passages from a book I loved, but read spread across too long a stretch of time to feel like I have a good sense of its whole, God, Human, Animal, Machine: Technology, Metaphor, and the Search for Meaning by Meghan O’Gieblyn. It is a book that feels, in many ways, made for me and, I suspect, for many of you. The sprawling title and subtitle gives a clue, but what it doesn’t tell you is that O’Gieblyn grew up evangelical and attended Bible college. She no longer believes, but absolutely filters the world through a post-evangelical lens.

In the first essay in the book, “Image,” she describes receiving a robotic dog in the mail. It was called Aibo and when it arrived months after she requested it from Sony so that she could write about it, she had almost forgotten that she’d asked for it. At first skeptical, she comes to appreciate Aibo’s companionship, even as her husband is creeped out by the robopup. He eventually tells her to send it back when he becomes paranoid that the camera in its nose is not just for navigation, but for spying on them.

Aibo serves as a jumping off point for a lovely and long essay in which O’Gieblyn’s real purpose is to think about the many metaphors we create for consciousness. She thinks about premodern metaphors like the soul and modern ones like AI. “All perception is metaphor,” she writes, paraphrasing Wittgenstein.

Ultimately, she concedes to her husband that Aibo has to go. In reflecting on their time together, she concludes that perhaps a friend of hers was right: “I had nothing to care for, nothing of life in the house, and so I’d become emotionally stunted, manipulated into caring for this simulation of life.”

What I wouldn’t have given for a mere simulation of life earlier this morning. But all is relatively calm right now — Sarge is barking quietly in his sleep, no doubt chasing a dream squirrel, and the other two are also at rest — the big one joined the littler one on the couch, where she is resting her head on my daughter’s pillow. I would make her move if it wasn’t so adorable. I have to remember to wash it before Nell gets home.

Still, my nose and eyes are itching, the Zyrtec I took early this morning is losing its battle against all the allergens floating through the air. Unlike O’Gieblyn, I have plenty here to care for and thus perhaps I can deduce that I am not in any danger of becoming emotionally stunted. Silver lining.

Why do we do this? Why do we welcome animals into our homes? I suppose there are many reasons, but as I sit here surrounded by these needy creatures and listening to the sound of their breathing — and occasional sleep-barking — blend in with the piano music I’m playing to create calm, I feel something of a sense of harmony. There is life in this house. The Labradors, the Cockapoo, and me.

The Labs