But I do like babies...

My experience with dogs who abuse substances

At the top of my Hinge profile I tell potential lovers that I don’t care about their dog. This is to skip the period of feigned interest in which breed they own or their dog’s uninteresting mannerisms they’re always so keen to tell you about (“she ALWAYS barks at my shadow, isn’t that funny?!”) I don’t wish dogs any harm, but I do wish they wouldn’t jump on my nice pants.

This soft dislike of dogs is because I have abysmal luck with them. I have been bitten, pissed on, and even more egregiously, sometimes they get more attention than me. But even further, I seem to solely attract dogs with substance abuse issues.

When I was 9, on Christmas morning, my parents put a dachshund on our doorstep with a red ribbon around its neck. We called him Pippin, after that short, babbling idiot from Lord of the Rings. Pippin followed me everywhere and even slept under my sheets. Just a few weeks after getting him, I was laying on the ground letting him lick my face and my mom asked what I was doing from the other room.  “Just makin LOVE to my puppy,” I responded. She explained I shouldn’t say that.

One night, while watching LOST, the ultimately-disappointing-yet-fuel-for-my-sexual-awakening thriller series on NBC, Pippin slid off the couch with his tongue hanging out. He then stood up, stumbled a few steps, and fell over again. I started crying and my mom took him to his bed. We began pray for him (too much to unpack there) as my dad, a gun owner, muttered from the corner “Susan, it’s time. Take Benjamin inside.” And so I still ask today, what the fuck were you gonna do Dad? It’s like you were already planning on shooting the family dog before he even got sick.

Narrowly avoiding the firing line, we took Pippin to the Vet ER who, for $700, told us they had no idea what was wrong with him. He was fine the next morning.  

The next day, as my dad was walking through the laundry room, he nearly slipped in a puddle of Chardonnay, leaking from the shitty reserve box my parents unbiblically kept for the later stages of parties. It turns out Pippin was INEBRIATED and THANK GOD he didn’t get behind the wheel that night, despite his insisting. We would eventually lose Pippin to his addiction, or rather, his proclivity for biting dinner guests. My parents sent him to a dachshund sanctuary (where I assume he was shot), but they insist today it was a real-life place for aggressive dachshunds to live out their days in peace. I like to think of it as some sort of in-patient rehab for Pippin, where he’s oil painting and doing a lot of self-work. Pippin, if you’re reading this, I wish you well.

Recently, I had an even more traumatic experience with a dog on substances. A few months ago, I made friends with a cool gay couple and we were still in friendship honeymoon stage (they still laughed at my jokes and hadn’t seen all my shirts yet.) Hellbent on solidifying the friendship, I insisted I dog sit for them over Labor Day.

Aside from a few indoor bowel accidents (mostly that of the dogs), I was doing a fine job. On the last night, two friends came over for drinks, and then we left for dinner at a nearby restaurant. A few hours later we returned to one of the dogs wailing like a woman in labor. He was falling on his back as if the ceiling was caving in, and then farting as he ran in circles.

Realizing something was wrong, I looked around and noticed my friend’s bag was on the floor, next to an open package of psilocybin-laced chocolate. It turns out the dog had eaten around 2 grams of a potent strain of magic mushrooms. This Irish setter was presently seeing the face of Jesus Christ himself and dealing with the ensuing chocolate-related digestive issues.

For $600, the veterinarian told us he just needed to ride the trip out. We joked that the mushrooms were making the dog self-aware and that he was reckoning with his canine existence, crushed by the weight of existential dread and really really bad gas (the two prongs of my existence).  

I shamefully called his owners, ruining the last evening of their vacation. The next morning, I cleaned the house top to bottom, set out quiche, flowers, and champagne. And to top it off, for some reason, I thought it would be funny to buy a cake with icing on the top that read “I’m sorry I almost killed your dog :/“. This was, in retrospect, absolutely too soon for this joke as they passively said “oh that’s funny” and then went straight to the dog to make sure it was ok. I profusely apologized and high tailed it out of there probably never to see them again.

It’s clear dogs are not really in the cards for me, past a light pet on the back (if I have to) and the occasional time I hold a lab puppy (I’m not a monster). And for this, I know I would be ostracized from society, were it not for a clever fix. Whenever I tell people I don’t like dogs, I always reassure “but I do like babies.”