Dog people

There are dog people, and then there are the rest.  My brother, my son-in-law, and my daughter are dog people.  We can easily be distinguished from the rest of the world by our homes, and I don't mean the rousing greeting offered by our hairy pals.

Our houses are different.  From the minute you step into my house via the front door, you notice two dog beds placed around the entrance, one of which is in a huge dog crate--Lusso and TootSweet vie for crate space, since TootSweet loves a crate.  It doesn't matter to me that these are the first things people notice.  The beds are only moved if we are having some kind of major event with a cast of thousands, such as Beto's birthday party, mainly to protect the dogs, not the guests.

Sometimes our houses smell, too, although not often--usually only when a wet dog has come in from outdoors. 

In the kitchen, under the bar/countertop, two sets of raised bowls for food and water and two bins for dogfood grace the area.  As a dog person, I don't find anything repulsive in sharing my kitchen with my four-legged friends.  The bowls and the bins are kept clean (no mean feat with a Spinone) and the dogs like to eat breakfast when we are having coffee. 

And of course, the permanent presence of four-footed friends who are thrilled to see you.

I have come to understand how some people in my family, whose names will forever remain unmentioned because I love them in spite of their failings, have difficulty dealing with a Spinone puppy that drools occasionally; I can understand that it isn't the greatest experience to get soaked even if the puppy is looking at you with adoration.  But it irritates me anyway.  I am willing to crate the puppy under these circumstances (although I am going to use a trainer to see if I can get him to calm down when visitors come and obey in spite of being mindlessly ecstatic), but it irritates me.  I was a dog in a former life (some would say I still am...) and somehow can't imagine life in an empty house--empty, as in occupied solely by humans.

Dog people are not elegant.  Those pictures you may have seen showing a highly fashionable lovely young woman walking down a Paris street with a show-clipped, perfectly groomed poodle at the end of a leash are a sham.  No one like that would ever go on poop patrol in the back yard, recovering Tootsie Rolls with two plastic bags, one for your hand and the other as a receptacle. Dog people have dirty back seats in their vehicles, we wear jeans and grungy hats, and our clothes are often covered with dog hair seconds after putting them on.  Only a dog person, in fact, would take a shower with her dog in order to relieve his itching skin.

And it isn't thinking a dog is a person that is so entrancing; that is just neurosis and people like that need professional help or perhaps they should just get a life.  It is sharing one's days with a different species that is so much fun, a species that retains the ability to have fun and to play, to feel, to communicate.

Maybe it isn't true that there are dog people and then the others; there are animal people and the others.  Even though my very dearest and most beloved friend is one of those "others", I don't understand her when it comes to animals.  Doubtless she feels the same way about me when she sees me dash around the back yard with Lusso and TootSweet, when she sees them eat in my kitchen or sleep inside my house.  Hey, my immune system can take it!  So can yours, that isn't really the problem or the difference. 

If I am to be totally honest, I think non-animal people have a part of their souls missing.  But then, that's just my opinion.