Dog People
Whenever I arrive at my regular coffee shop in the morning with my dog, Juneau, I hope that there will be other dogs on the wide front deck. If I don’t have sufficient caffeine in a single-shot latte by 9 a.m., I’ll get a migraine, but I don’t come to the coffee shop only for the lattes. I come for the dogs.
Not all dogs bring me joy. I don’t really care for small dogs, though when I lived in Portland I was bewitched by a dachshund-chihuahua mix, Dobby, who belonged to a busker named Joe. He did his daily interneting at what was then my regular coffee shop, and since Dobby couldn’t come inside, Joe used his jacket to make a nest for her on a bench. He’d sit at the high table at the window so he could watch her. When I showed up, she’d jump off her perch and onto my lap and sit on her back legs, with her front paws held up in greeting. Among people who know these things, this pose is called a “sit pretty.” In the pantheon of my favorite dogs, Dobby is the smallest, but she is also among the highest-ranked.
I don’t care for hair dogs as well (as opposed to fur dogs), and I especially don’t care for oodles, which are omnipresent. I am aware that these dogs are generally called “doodles,” but the first “d” in “doodle” is derived from the “d” in “Labrador,” so it shouldn’t be maintained when poodles are crossed with other breeds. It’s not correct.
I could tell you that what bothers me about oodles is that they are fancy, taking places in homes that could otherwise go to shelter dogs, but this is equally true of Labradors, and I love Labradors. When I emerge from the coffee shop and find a Lab on the deck, it really feels like it’s going to be an excellent day, and I’m grateful to be alive. I sometimes tell the Lab owners that if you can’t love a Lab, there is something wrong with you.
The real reason I dislike oodles is that creating an oodle involves taking a respectable, working dog, like an Australian shepherd or a golden retriever or a Bernese mountain dog, and making it ridiculous. You cannot see an oodle’s facial expressions under its sculpted curls. I understand that dogs whose features have been obscured by their ridiculous hair are part of C. familiaris’s phenotypic remit — a poodle is a dog, after all — but I have not accepted this on an emotional level.
Having said that, if I emerge onto the deck of the coffee shop with Juneau and there is an oodle waiting there with his family, straining at the leash and wagging, I will say, “Can they say ‘hi’?”
If my husband is with me, I avoid making eye contact with him during my interaction with the oodle and his people. Jay has heard my treatises on the scourge of the oodles, and I am certain that, as he watches me croon over and stroke the hidden face of the boisterous oodle, he is thinking, “You are such a hypocrite.”
I don’t consider it hypocrisy, though. There is a difference between how I feel about oodles, generally, and how I feel about your two-year-old Shepacorgadoodle, Bowie, who is wiggling with anticipation, his enthusiasm fully uncorked by the mere fact that he is alive in the world. Oodles may be a pox on the face of the nation, but Bowie is pure and good. I find it almost impossible to dislike any dog in the face of his or her specific, individual canine presence.
*
The dogs I love the most are huskies. Huskies are willful and insolent. They have a reputation for escaping enclosures, and for being difficult to train, particularly on recall. When they want something, or hear an ambulance, they scream. My friend Sarah, who has two huskies, once said to me, “Why would I want a dog who does whatever I say all the time? That would be sad.”
Sarah and I lived together in grad school. During my interview at the house, Juneau, then a puppy, stole a toy from Sarah’s husky Jackson, dropped it in the middle of an area rug, lifted his leg, and peed on it. Juneau was house-trained. He didn’t pee on Jackson’s toy because he had to pee; he did it to be a jerk. Sarah was delighted. That’s when I knew I wanted to live with her. But we probably would have chosen each other even if we hadn’t liked each other. The only people a husky owner can really trust with something as dangerous as a front door are other husky owners. Juneau is technically only half husky, but personality-wise, he is purebred, so I count.
Some people think huskies don’t listen because they are stupid. I can understand this, because huskies often look stupid. A recent study comparing the facial physiology of wolves and domestic dogs concluded that the former lack a muscle present in the latter that allows them to raise their eyebrows; the authors speculate that the eyebrow muscle conveyed an evolutionary advantage because it allowed dogs to communicate with humans using facial expressions. Interestingly, the only domestic dog in the sample that lacked the eyebrow muscle was a Siberian husky. Perhaps this is what gives huskies’ eyes their vacancy — a quality that pairs awkwardly with their caiman smiles, their skunky tails, and their manic energy.
But huskies aren’t stupid. They dig craters and refuse to cooperate with training because they are easily bored. They are bad at recall because, unlike shepherds and retrievers, they were bred to work while tied to their handler. Huskies were built to pull sleds through a dangerous, frozen wilderness. Their sense of smell, and their skin contact with snow and ice, provided information about their surroundings that their human drivers lacked. Part of a husky’s job, then, was to pay attention to the environment instead of the handler — and disobey the handler when they made the wrong call.
There are stories of mushers going snowblind on the trail, tying themselves to the sled, and trusting their dogs to bring them home. There are stories of dog teams dragging an empty sled ten miles to a trailside roadhouse and leading its occupants back to their trapped musher. Togo, the husky who at the age of 12 would run 264 miles in the famous relay to bring diphtheria antitoxin to the icebound city of Nome, once saved his team and his handler, the legendary racer Leonard Seppala, from a slow death adrift in the Bering Sea. When the floe on which they were running broke loose from the shore ice, Seppala put Togo on a line and tossed him over the void to tow the floating ice back in. Togo knew what he had to do, and he began to pull. If you saw the 2019 live action movie about Togo, you’ve seen a version of this incident, but what happened in real life was even more dramatic: On Togo’s first pull, the line broke and slid into the water. The dog jumped in, grabbed the line in his teeth, jumped back onto the shore ice, and then rolled over the line twice, still holding it, until it was tight around his shoulders. Having fashioned a harness, he then pulled in the floe.
When I see a husky out on the town, I want to meet that dog, but I also want to meet the person. I want to know if stories about heroic sled dogs also make them cry. When I go looking for dogs, I am also looking for people who love them the way I do. I’m looking for dog people.
*
When we started dating, Jay was not a dog person. He was willing to tolerate Juneau, but “tolerate” was the word he actually used. Dog people I met were shocked when I told them this, and I often wondered if I had betrayed Juneau by entering into a relationship with a person who could not love him. I grieved over the home life I might have created with a man who was equally besotted — one in which we endlessly narrated the dog’s doings, using a dopey vocabulary developed to describe the particular doings of our particular dog. I did this on my own, of course, but it felt incomplete. It wasn’t enough that my dog was making me stupid; I wanted my dog to make us stupid.
In our second year together, Jay and I embarked on a two-week circumnavigation of the state of Oregon. Near the end of the trip, which was also Jay’s first significant one in the company of a companion animal, he paid what I would come to remember as his first compliment to Juneau, and to my dog person lifestyle.
“I do notice,” he said, “that we talk to people more because we’re with the dog. People approach you because of the dog. There is something for you to talk about.”
*
Humans talking about their dogs are highly predictable. First, mutual sociability must be established. There are many ways to initiate this part of the conversation, but about 90 percent of the time, the same four words are used: “Can they say ‘hi’?”
Typically, names are covered next, and sexes simultaneous to names, because asking for a dog’s name requires the use of a pronoun. Breeds and ages follow, though if one of the dogs is particularly unusual in appearance, breed inquiries may precede even name inquiries. It is customary that the person who is first asked the name, breed, sex, or age of their dog returns the same question to the other party, as in:
“What kind is she?”
“She’s a mutt, but we think she’s mostly German shepherd. How about yours?”
“He’s a Lab-pit mix.”
But not:
“What kind is he?”
“He’s mostly Catahoula but the owner of the mom said she was part border collie.”
“Oh, mine is a kelpie.”
After the dog’s credentials have been established, further questions or commentary may arise — or may not. The first phase of the conversation between dog owners is very much about the dogs, but it is not only about the dogs. When I ask a stranger what kind of dog Charlie is, and how old, it’s because I’m genuinely interested in Charlie’s breed and age — because of course I am — but it’s also because I’m assessing Charlie’s owner. I’m paying attention to how interested he or she is in disclosing the basic facts about Charlie for the 5,462nd time. There are many people in this world who delight in being given the opportunity to recite even the most mundane facts about their dogs, and I feel great warmth toward this type of person.
Sometimes, though, it is clear that the owner is not enthusiastic about telling me how old their dog is, which disappoints me. It’s not because I think they’re bad dog owners. They might be good dog owners having a bad day. Or they might be adequate dog owners — people who love their pets but nevertheless view them as less than full members of the family.
In my 20’s I knew such a woman. Lexie was tan, blond, a few years younger than I. She wore white jeans. When a relative’s retriever had puppies, she and her fiancé picked out one for themselves. They named her Bella. Years later, after Lexie had produced the first of what she and her now-husband intended to be a litter of children, she said lightly to me, “Bella was my baby at first. I cried when we crate trained her. But now that I have a real one I just don’t care. I mean, I still care about my dog, but not like before. You’ll understand when you have a kid.”
I thought, but did not say, “You’re a monster.”
I should be upfront about the fact that I already disliked Lexie when she said this. I don’t dislike adequate dog owners in general. Thousands of dogs are euthanized daily in the U.S. Many of them have no behavioral issues and would thrive in a home, were one available. In this reality, adequate dog owners save dog lives.
But when I emerge from the coffee shop in the morning and look for dogs on the deck, I don’t want to talk with adequate dog owners. I want to talk with devoted dog owners. People who love meeting new dogs, and talking about their own dogs with new people. Dog people. The first phase of the conversation between dog owners is a screen. How you talk about your dog is how I decide whether or not I want to talk with you.
The second phase of the conversation is not as strictly patterned as the first, but it still tends to move through well-worn grooves. If one of the dogs is between one and two, discussion of dog adolescence is likely to occur. If one of the dogs is over the age of nine, the owner of the other dog will typically comment that the senior is “looking really good.” This will be said even if the senior is completely white-muzzled, hobbled by arthritis, patchy with hot spots, and afflicted with a mouthful of yellow, rotting teeth. The owners of dogs in this condition need to be helped along in the minute-by-minute work of denial, and the owners of more youthful dogs understand that when we provide this help, we’re bolstering a custom that will one day allow us to carry on, day after day, as our own dogs circle death before finally dropping into it, like a last hollow stamped in rumpled bedclothes before sleep.
*
The actor Bradley Whitford is a dog person. A couple of years ago, I read in the New York Times that some of the characters he plays are informed by his knowledge and appreciation of dogs. For instance, he decided that Hubert Humphrey was a cross between a boxer and a corgi. When Bradley Whitford was filming The Handmaid’s Tale in Toronto, he could not bring his dogs, Izzy and Otis, so he sometimes went to the dog park by himself. Once, a woman asked him which dog was his — this is a common overture in dog parks — and he explained that he had no dog there; his were at home, and he missed them. “And she stepped away from me,” Bradley Whitford told the Times, “like I was a pederast at an elementary school.”
Reading this, I felt terrible for Bradley Whitford.
“Bradley Whitford is a nice man,” I texted my friend Melanie, after explaining what the Canadian woman said to him. “He missed his dogs.”
Melanie is a dog person. She has a nippy heeler-collie mix who was born on a marijuana farm in Humboldt County and surrendered to the shelter for his habit of killing chickens. Truckee once escaped on a backpacking trip and spent two weeks running wild in the Trinity Alps, while Melanie and her husband ran all over the backcountry for days trying to lure him home with peanut butter. Truckee is kind of a jerk, but Melanie doesn’t care. She agreed with me that the Canadian woman was broken. She had to have been, for dismissing Bradley Whitford like that, in a moment of vulnerability, when all he wanted was to experience the joy of dogs.
*
There are plenty of dog people out there who don’t like people. I’ve found that the most efficient way to find one is to hire a positive reinforcement dog trainer. These are usually older women with severe haircuts who demand exorbitant amounts of your money so that they can scold you for not already knowing the things you are paying them to teach you. Their love of your dog is exactly equal to their contempt for you.
Melanie and I joke about becoming this kind of woman, eventually. I thought for a long time that I also didn’t like people, and it is true that I don’t like crowds, parties, or group conversations where the same people always seem to get talked over. But I did enjoy working as a cashier in college, because I liked encountering new people — one at a time, never for too long at a stretch, in an interaction that was given some structure by the exigencies of the transaction. I enjoyed the challenge of trying to connect, briefly, with each person who approached my register, within the constraints imposed by the context.
In retrospect, those interactions don’t feel all that dissimilar from the daily conversations I have now, with the strangers who are dog people.
*
In June of 2021, when the Pacific Northwest was cooking under what came to be known as a “heat dome,” Jay and I drove south on I-5 from Portland to attend a wedding in San Francisco, stopping overnight en route. We were the only masked guests in the aggressively beige lobby of the Redding Ramada. As Jay was checking in, a leathery old man in heavy boots tromped in through the front door. Our sightlines crossed — his gaze going straight to Juneau and mine jumping to the rectangular holster on his belt. I exhaled when I saw the antenna of a cell phone protruding from the corner: it was not a gun.
“That’s a good-looking dog.” His voice was like a pickup rolling over gravel, but he extended his hand for Juneau to sniff before going in for the pet — very respectful.
“Good boy,” he said, turning the ear-scratch into a neck rub as Juneau took two steps toward him, reaching his nose up toward the man’s face. “My wife’s got ours outside,” he said. “Seven-month old black poodle.”
“Must be adorable,” I said, even though I don’t like poodles.
“He is — when he’s not being a devil.”
We both smiled.
Later that evening, I took Juneau out front to poop. The man, his wife, and the poodle were already on the raggedy lawn, watching the foothills turn purple. The air was finally just warm, not scorching.
“Where you all from?” I asked, after we nodded hellos.
“Arizona,” he said. He nodded at the poodle. “He’s not used to grass.”
“At least he’s used to the heat.”
“Oh yeah,” he said. “Hundred and thirteen when we left.”
“That’s how hot it’s supposed to get in Portland this weekend,” I said.
He smiled inscrutably and replied, “They deserve it.”
It was such a mean thing to say that for a second I didn’t believe he’d actually said it. I issued a bland, light laugh while I replayed, in my head, the sounds I’d heard him make, looking for another set of words that might fit them. But I’d heard the correct words, and when I accepted this, I felt a shock of grief — grief, I realized, for my idea of the leathery man, when he was just a guy who loved his poodle. I wasn’t upset at who he actually was so much as that he broke dog people protocol, and told me.
When you’re on the road, you have innocuous conversations with strangers. You know, as you smile and chuckle, that these people might be packing, or might have voted for Trump, or might believe your favorite city deserves to boil alive. But you never have to get to that part, because someone comes out of the restroom for which you’re both in line. You can just be people who hate waiting but love sunsets. Opportunities for this type of connection seem rare now in America. As the political scientist Robert Putnam famously argued, civic engagement dropped off in the U.S. in the last quarter of the 20th century. We don’t join bowling leagues, attend church, socialize amicably across class and partisan divides, or even have friends over as much as our grandparents did. We work more, commute more, and shop and entertain ourselves online. Even at the grocery store, the checkout clerk may be a machine.
Humans weren’t shaped by or for this environment. The ability to cooperate is part of what conferred advantage to individuals of our species, on the scale of evolutionary time. It is unsurprising, then, that research has shown the importance of “weak ties,” and even ephemeral connections with strangers, for our happiness. But talking to strangers seems riskier now than ever. People ask me what I do for work and I say that I teach. They ask me what I teach and I don’t always want to answer, because I teach environmental policy, and when I say that I am also telling you what team I’m on. It’s the team that wants to tax the rich and take away your guns. I do want those things. But another thing that I badly want is a world where all of us can live.
Kindness is not everything, but I do believe that kindness matters. The dogs, and the subject of dogs, reduce us to our kindest selves. If all parties adhere to it, the dog people protocol helps us hold the view. “Holding the view” is a term I’ve borrowed from Jay’s meditation tradition. Meditation is a method of training the brain to operate in a specific way, and when I tried it, I did not like it at all. Maybe my conversations with dog people are my own kind of meditation, and part of how I cultivate compassion for all beings.
*
Jay and I got married later that summer. His promises to me included a commitment “to tolerate one dog,” but I was the one who copied our vows into the booklets I’d ordered on Etsy. Jay read exactly what was on the page and didn’t realize that I had edited the script until he’d already vowed to tolerate two dogs.
That autumn, when the weather set in and Jay’s seasonal depression returned, I started finding him in the dog bed with Juneau, stroking his buttery double coat. I said nothing. I wanted to let Jay have his process. One day he said, tentatively, “If I love the dog, would I have to be responsible for him?”
“Of course not,” I said.
Jay has since rewritten several classic holiday songs, replacing the original lyrics with lines formed from the nonsense we repeat about Juneau. Sometimes, out of nowhere, he sings, “Oh, Mr. Beans, oh, Mr. Beans, how lovely is your fat fat.” I don’t know if I will get my second dog — Jay maintains that the promise doesn’t count, because he was tricked into making it — but I do know the joy of living in a home where the dog has made both of us stupid.
This morning on the deck at the coffee shop, a man sat down on a bench near me, waiting for his drink. Juneau went over to visit him. The man enjoyed how Juneau shifted his weight between his back feet as he scratched the fur at the base of his tail, which is something about Juneau that I also enjoy.
“He’s really into butt scritches,” I told the man, who laughed, and asked me Juneau’s name.
The man wanted to know a lot about Juneau after that: his mix, his age, how active he was. You might think that the man was actually interested in me, but that wasn’t it. His interest in Juneau did not abate when I described the walk that we would take after I finished my latte. “I’d like to go to the beach, but I don’t think we’ll make it that far since my husband isn’t here,” I said.
“He really likes you all to be together,” the man said.
The people who observe an interaction like this one and assume that the interest is not in the dog are not dog people. They are like the broken Canadian woman, who misread Bradley Whitford as a creeper because he wanted to watch the play of dogs who weren’t his.
People like this may understand the pleasure of intercepting with your shins the compulsive lean of a bulky pit bull who is unaware of his size, or sinking your fingers into the thick fur of a husky who may, if you’re lucky, give one of your hands a dainty, elfin boop with her wet nose, before reorienting to the external environment, as she was bred to do. But they may not understand the thing that comes close, for me — the momentary connections with members of my own species that are forged in shared appreciation of the things dogs do, and how dogs are.
*
Juneau was willing to walk all the way to the ocean this morning, even without Jay. The tide was in, so there was only the thinnest sliver of sand. We descended the stairs just behind a man in late middle-age who wore a wetsuit and carried a surfboard.
“There’s not much beach down there,” he warned me, and his eyes had a kind twinkle.
“I know, but he has to see for himself,” I said, nodding at Juneau.
At the bottom of the stairs, the man set his board on the wet sand. Juneau stood at attention, his ears pointed toward the break, watching a set of smaller waves beat at the shore a few feet ahead of us.
“Hey,” the man said softly. “Come here, dog.”
Juneau crossed in front of me, looking like he was going to respond to the summons, but at the last minute he veered off and started sniffing the seawall.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “He’s very friendly, but —”
“It’s okay,” the man said. “There are a lot of smells here.”
“Exactly,” I said, and we smiled at each other before he walked into the sea.