Fearing Dog Ownership Is No Way To Live Life

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The other day, I was out walking on the trail, replaying a conversation I’d had earlier with a friend. He asked me why I never got a dog even though I describe myself as a dog person — as opposed to a cat person.

“I’m not proud of this,” I said, “but I’m reluctant to get one. I’m sure I would love the dog so much, I’d be devastated when it died one day. I don’t know if I can go through that.”

He understood but then pointed out that if I never owned a dog, I’d never have ten or more years of loving someone who loved me with their entire being, every second of their lives, forever. My life would never know that.

The truth of that statement shot through me.

While it’s true there are other reasons why I might not get a dog right now — care, travel, the usual — this emphasis on the fear of the cost of something was a surprise to me. Here I am coaching people on how they might build a more helpful reality framework to support action, and yet I’m looking at the world of dog ownership as a scary glass half-full.

Humanhood: The Great Journey. Coming to a theater near you.

It’s interesting that I didn’t notice my negativity bias sitting in front of me. I know what negativity bias is. I read about it, think about it, talk about it. Then when it’s staring me in the face, I don’t see a thing. Why don’t they call it blindness?

We’ll naturally do a cost-benefit analysis of the options before us. Sometimes we skew our analysis. Sometimes we blip through it. In the case of pet bereavement, I jacked up the calculation to fend off potential future pain. Since I’m good friends with worry and take that negativity bias to the hilt, I used my special math to analyze pet ownership.

Benefit = small. Cost = catastrophic. Final analysis = don’t get a beautiful, adorable, darling, hilarious, loving doggie.

What short-circuited this for me was the image of those ten years of dog ownership — the unmatched, unconditional love. Ten years of that can change your life. It can make your life. If you have this happiness, you’ve now lived a life with ten irreversible years of embedded joy.

The odd thing with the cost analysis on love is that the more benefit there is, the higher the cost — at least in the case of a pet. We’re likely to outlive pets, so we’re likely to mourn. The more attached we are to our deceased, the deeper the pain.

But it’s also true that the greater the love, the more our lives have been enriched for the long term.

As I continued to walk along the trail, I turned on a classic Christmas tunes playlist on my phone. Famous songs from long ago — Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole, Perry Como — spilled out of the neckline of my shirt. My phone was tucked into my bra, of course.

It was cheerful and I sang along or danced with my arms as I’ll do, and it was festive until it turned sad and tears trickled down my cheeks.

The songs unearthed Christmases past, of my grandparents and family gatherings with people I adored who are long gone now. Those Christmases had no inkling the future would be so different — minus some of its participants, the family spread far and wide, life so changed. Those Christmases put dolls in my young arms that promised children to me one day who would stay swaddled forever. I had no idea how life is lived. And maybe I have a misconception of how it’s to be lived now, in my middle age. I seem to think it’s best to trade love for a guarantee against sorrow.

I can’t imagine my history without my grandparents. Their faces flap about in my memory on a huge flag that represents my life’s love. When each of them died, I was stunned by how much I grieved them, and still do. But you don’t get love without grief. Would I forgo that love? Never.

I thought about these things as I walked along the trail. It was turning to civil twilight as the silhouettes of the deciduous trees came into stark black prominence against the sky. The intricate lines of those bare tree branches overlapped with one another, intertwining like a dance. These are creatures of pure art no matter the season. I can’t believe I’m lucky enough to be alive to see such a thing right before the dark hits.

As I get older and my age becomes a freakier number, I feel sad during moments like these because I don’t know how I’ll say goodbye to these trees. But would I forgo having loved such creatures? Never.

Eventually, I arrived home, put my walking shoes away, and started to wash the dishes. As I scrubbed, I suddenly started to sing Kermit the Frog’s “Rainbow Connection.” This is the song I sang to my Kitten for days as she slowly passed over the rainbow bridge. I’d stroke her and sing. I’d cry and contemplate, think of time and love’s tender feather brush against this life of mine.

The thing is, we become the person who experiences the giggles from the cat’s sweet insistent cuddles and the dog’s high-art enthusiasm. Those giggles log into our brains and we draw from their memory in ways we aren’t even aware of. They enter into our calculations here and there throughout the rest of life. They become who we are.

The same goes for anything we choose to go for, take on, agree to, or tackle. Our actions create us. Our worrying about the cost of action — and the resulting failure to act — creates us, too. You can imagine who we then become — a lady who never owned a dog out of fear but who would have made a wonderful dog mom if she had.

Dog ownership doesn’t always work out, though. Neither do jobs, marriages, friendships, hobbies, books we start but don’t finish, shows we try to like on Netflix but can’t, conversations we attempt but flounder, dinners we massacre. And thank goodness. These are all evidence that we didn’t end up like that lady who never tried to be a dog mom. We learned something — whether we like that new knowledge or not. If we give it time and an open mind, that new lesson can pave the way for a beautiful trek up an exquisite mountain.

In my case, maybe even with a dog by my side.

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Hope you're doing well, friends.