That Damn Dog!

From my real-life friend Good Luck Chuck:

“Is it just me, or does anyone else get seriously annoyed with women and their dogs?

It’s NAUSEATING how they treat these annoying fucking overgrown rats.

Spend the night at a chicks house and even if she’s kind enough to close the bedroom door behind her leaving little Dolce in the living room inevitably every hour on the hour some leaves rustle outside the front door or the compressor on the fridge makes a noise and “killer” has to start yapping his little head off.

I was out with some friends tonite, one of them was a girl I dated a couple of times awhile back. Not like we didn’t have anything INTERESTING to talk about, but the conversation veers toward her new sh!tzu puppy. She’s SOOOO proud of her baby! He learned how to climb up AND down the stairs, and he’s now potty trained! YAY!

As if that weren’t enough, the blackberry comes out and we have to look at pictures of her adorable little “child”. Isn’t he cute with the little bow in his hair? AWWWWWW!!!!!

Christ…..these chicks wonder why they can’t find a man who will stick around? It isn’t bad enough that they want to be a MAN themselves in everyday life, but then they want to come home and play mommy to a 10 pound mop that has to be walked every few hours and leaves “surprises” on the floor every couple of weeks.

I was recently talking with a friend about the absoulte psychotic mess the girl I used to date in my 20’s, and I got to recalling some of the more annoying aspects of that miserable relationship. One of the most aggravating things I found myself wrapped up in was her obsession over this little Westhighland Terrier she had. I hated that fucking animal; and I don’t mean your garden variety hate, but the how Satan-hates-God kind of hate.

Even after 17 years of having put this mess well behind me, I still get a violent twitch in my eye whenever I see someone walking a dog like this.

Now you’re probably wondering why I have such contempt for this otherwise innocent and cute little breed of dog. It’s not that I dislike Westies per se, but it was her insane, psychotic devotion to this pet that she would lavish on it in preference to paying attention to me or even her friends at times.

When I was finishing my degree I did a bit of research to see if this phenomenon had a psychological parallel and interestingly enough it does. I got to thinking about all of the people I knew who gratuitiously and excessively spent inordinate amounts of time and money on the wellbeing of their pets. These were universally women – I can’t think of one unattached, single man I know who even has a dog, much less gets up early to drop it off at ‘doggie daycare’ on his way to work and picks it up on his way home. Neither do I know a man who would spend the kind of money ‘gourmet dog biscuits’ command from a store dedicated to nothing else, nor a guy who would buy ‘Frosty Paws’ dog ice cream treats, but I do know women who will. I know women who will spend $1,500 for their “little precious'” to spend a day at the doggie spa. I know women who will pamper and coddle thier pet even after it shits diarrea on the living room carpet and in the same breath berate their husbands for leaving the toilet seat up.

However it’s not just the degree to which some women will go in their devotion to their pets, it’s the indifference they display toward the human beings of importance in their lives, in preference to their pets, that crosses the line. There is a current field of study in this psychological transference of emotion to pets. Nothing terribly conclusive has been set in stone of course, but the theory goes something like this; People (mainly female) having a tendency to dote exhorbitantly over their pets also tend to eschew meaningful interactions with significant people in their lives. It goes on to say that the pet becomes a ‘self-proving’ device that enables the individual to internalize that they are capable of loving while minimizing their own reciprocation of affection to another human being.

In otherwords when she sits there with little Pookie and dotes over him rather than engaging you in even limited communication or affection it may be indicative of a more complex problem – a definite red flag to be sure. Of the examples of women’s behavior I used in this essay, all of them were in some unsatisfying relationship that they were uncomfortable discussing yet would do nothing about. However, when prompted with conversation about thier pets they were always very talkative.

So what does this mean to the Game-aware then? Beware. Part of an accomodating AFC nature is a disingenuous desire to identify with a woman in order to barter his identity for her intimacy. Nothing will bring a guy down faster than allowing this pet devotion dynamic to become a part of this identification.

*****

Disclaimer: I love dogs, I do not hate them. I own three purebred racing greyhounds and I foster and recondition retired and active track dogs. I do not dress them in stupid costumes, nor do they sleep on canopy beds. I have more respect for them than to subject them to that and they are expensive enough to keep healthy under normal circumstances. That is all.