If it hadn’t been for thumbs, humans would be completely evolutionarily fucked.
We would have gone down the drain a long time ago and played with ourselves, but since we could handle tools, the world became ours. Because we became the dominant species on Earth, the choice of attributes qualifying as good or bad are ours to make.
While we praise children and call them intelligent for their individuality and thinking, the same standard doesn’t apply to dogs. A dog is only smart if it follows orders and behaves how we want it to. As humans, we take ourselves and the responsibility of being apex predators seriously, so dogs can live in the present and only do what they love doing.
We became fast friends with the dogs, but recognizing and getting used to their habits took a while longer to digest. Lilly and Buster differed from each other, like otters and donkeys.
Lilly, the peak of Labrador breeding by the Royal court of Dubai, was a princess. Adopted as a cub and trained to be the best dog a person could imagine, let alone wish for.
She followed us everywhere. Not a single walk to the toilet was unaccompanied, not a single morning would start without her crying for humans (and food).
With the energy of a nuclear plant, she loved everything that could be thrown and never tired of chasing it. She listened to every word, command, and gesture, was gentle like Mother Teresa, and obedient like Ned Flanders.
Every minute spent with Lilly, even if you didn’t like dogs, would increase your happiness.
People argue dogs reflect their owners. If that’s the case, Buster was a typical Brit. Old, sulky, and moody.
While he greeted us in the mornings with a wagging tail and a happy smirk, it only lasted until we fed him. Afterward, he would spiral a few times in a circle, form his blanket into a pillow, and lay back down for a long overdue nap. For him, waking up was an ordeal itself.
He also didn’t listen to anything we were saying, except we held food in our hands. Then he would sit awkwardly on his hind legs and at least pretend to listen, like an old scholar, to the complaints of students.
Buster’s attention span was so short that any sound or whiff of shit would distract him like a small child on sugar.
He hated going outside by himself, but if you carried him a few meters and he suddenly found himself already there, he enjoyed the shit out of nature. He never got the hang of chasing the ball (probably because Lilly always beat him to it), but he got excited chasing Lilly.
They were an odd couple, but seeing my girlfriend and me, who are we to judge?
But for some strange reason, I found their eating habits the most interesting, amusing and disgusting oddities.
No matter how early we set our alarm clocks, Lilly was already awake and crying her wretched heart out until we got our lazy human asses out of bed and presented her with food.
While I stood in the kitchen, one eye closed and yawning, halfway measuring with the other eye the amount of food they deserved, the dogs kept all four eyes on me.
Lilly sat to my left, watching me with eager intensity and drooling into her fur, while Buster sat to my right with a mixture of eagerness and curiosity of what he was expecting, as if he had forgotten why he sat like this every single morning.
As soon as I put Lilly’s bowl down on the ground, the massacre of food began. If Jesus ever reincarnated, he would do so as Lilly. A soul so gentle, not capable of hurting anyone or anything you could put your hand into her mouth and needn’t fear a scratch. But I wouldn’t dare interrupt as she inhaled the stew of wet and dry food. She punched her nose into the bowl, shoveled a load of food into her mouth and jerked her head back, using gravitational forces to push the food down her throat. There was no time for chewing. Someone might steal the food, if she wasted precious moments to savor the taste. Better get over it and empty the bowl within a span of 20 seconds or less.
It was spectacular and when she finished, she licked the bowl spotless clean, coughed a couple of times to clear her windpipe of the remaining kibbles, which she then actually started chewing. Then the waiting began.
Everything Buster did took longer. Walking, shitting, and well, eating. He didn’t enjoy his food to a greater extent than Lilly did, but was haunted by the same demons as her. After every bite, he had to take a tentative look if he was being watched and who might have the malicious intent of stealing his food.
Paranoia costs the only irreplaceable thing: time.
When he finished, he would sigh in satisfaction, and tip-tap out of the backdoor to have a pee.
The second Buster passed Lilly, she was gone as well. But instead of doing her business as well (and her bladder was on the verge of bursting every morning), she needed to check if Buster, the old fart of a dog, forgot some food in his bowl. In the history of Housesitting, it never happened once, but like clockwork, Lilly checked every morning.
The doors to our home always stood open, and the dogs had the permission to enjoy their freedom as much as they wanted, although they never strayed too far. (You can’t leave these humans alone for too long…)
Still, both had their pleasure places where they lost time and decorum.
Autumn was Lilly’s favorite time of the year. Under normal weather conditions, there was a chance of rain to wallow in puddles of mud. The temperature was perfect for chasing the ball for hours and, of course, the low-hanging fruits.
There wasn’t a chance in the world, that fruits would go bad after falling off a tree because Lilly ate them. All.
Every time we went for a walk, she faced the gruesome struggle of following me or continuing to eat fruits. I seldom won out.
One day, I sat in my indoor cavern and wrote a story so beautifully, I might have been kissed by a muse or jerked off by God himself. To celebrate my masterpiece, I went outside to catch the sun by its rays and celebrate myself.
That’s when I found them. Scattered on the paved yard, on chairs, trees, and railings. They were a synchronization of planets and their satellites, dead in space. And at the center, was the most gigantic pile of puke I have ever witnessed. It looked like a dead sea turtle washed ashore.
The stench was indescribable. It was so horrifyingly disgusting, that I started retching and fled the battlefield before my breakfast would join the vomit parade. There are not a lot of things in life that could bring me down to my knees, but the brutal stank of vomit is one.
In the end, Teodora had to clean up Lilly’s mess because I wasn’t going near that abomination again.
I believe it’s safe to claim that dogs aren’t gourmet eaters; we have that in common. Just like me, they eat food less for the sake of nourishment, but for the love of eating. The Japanese call it Kuchisabishii. Lonely mouth.
Food is the company our mouths long for and that’s why enlightenment can only be achieved by depriving the body and mind of stimulus and living in solitude and fasting.
Dogs have already learned to live in the present and therefore neither seek seclusion nor waste a meal. It doesn’t even have to be good.
While Lilly eats literally everything you throw at her, Buster has (as always) his own way of dealing with the world. He might be picky with treats but considers any kind of poop as homemade pizza.
So if we didn’t pay attention to what the pooch was sniffing, he ended up eating it. And just because Buster was old and maybe even slightly retarded, he had his bright moments. Whenever he found a fragrance of interest, he marked the place by lifting his leg and casually walking off. But the moment we turned around to head back home, Buster mutated. As if full moon hit, the slow and lazy dog was forgotten and a young and vital beast started chasing the wind and ran like a rabbit on steroids through the country.
Eventually, he would wait for us on the exact spot he marked earlier with a satisfied grin and neatly licking his snout.
Needless to say, it was more than once that we woke to the demonic smell of puked shit in the morning.
If I should ever be charged with murder, let this be my alibi: I would kill nobody. However, if you really made an effort to get on my bad side, I will unscrupulously put you in a room with a shit-eating dog and let him puke all over you. That’s what a good-hearted soul I am.
Unfortunately, this also meant that Teodora had to clean up the mess of stinky landmines. Again.
“What will you do when we have kids?” She asked.
“Sell them.” I shrugged.
“I mean it. They smell even worse.”
“It looks to me you can handle these situations quite well,” I said through the shirt over my nose and took a couple of steps back.
She snorted, quite unladylike. “We’re living in communism, remember? Shared resources and responsibilities.”
“In that case, we will have to invest in chemical warfare armor. I’m not going anywhere near a stench like this. No matter the bloodline.”
She collected the puke in paper towels and flushed it down the toilet, then gave me a peck on the cheek. “You’ll be such a great dad.”