Dog Person

I’m not a dog person, never was, actually. From my childhood, I remember a cat named Titon whose disappearance remains shrouded in mystery, a couple nameless goldfish and a red-eared slider water turtle that got killed on a day my mom was boiling crabs — I’ll spare you the details. I never really used a leash, scooped poop, belly-rubbed any quadruped, or spliced freeze-dried liver treats in preparation for a clicker training session. Worse, the neighbor’s Saint Bernard used to terrorize me, I once got bitten — skin punctured and all — by a basset hound and to this day, I must admit that I never was completely comfortable with dogs, even the friendliest ones.

My husband’s dog-person credentials are impeccable, if only because he shared his late teens with a self-sufficient country mutt going by the name of Mickey. However, sleeping with a better dog person than yourself does not make you any more competent. You need to read, you need to learn, you need to work.

A French bulldog puppy that we will probably name Milo is still with his breeder, somewhere in the West Island, but our relationship with him began long before he was even born. It started with me telling a friend “I want a dog.”

And his reaction: “But… You’re not a dog person.”

[Mickey by Matthieu Guyonnet-Duluc, Maouhum, Carcarès-Sainte-Croix, France.]