They say that dogs are man’s best friend, but I am not so sure. First, dogs are bred to like humans and be dependent on them. It is not really their choice. The friendship part has been programmed into dogs’ DNA over centuries of careful genetic engineering. Second, I think dogs are smart enough to notice that it is worth putting up with humans because they get quite a lot out of the “friendship.” I mean, if there were someone in this universe who would feed me daily, take me on walks, talk to me without expecting a real answer, clean up after me, take me to the doctor when I am not feeling well, ensure that I get a haircut and a manicure once in a while, leave me to my own devices most of the day, buy me toys and clothes to keep me warm, and let me sleep in his bed without expecting sex, I would be his best friend too. I’d even bark and wag my tail occasionally to express my gratitude.
But, even when people do not provide everything to their dogs, the dogs remain their best friends. So the question is, why? Is it for the attention? The prestige? The knowledge that they have a place to stay? I doubt it. Dogs stay with their human (friends? owners? parents?) even when they are abused and neglected or tied up with a chain all day, no matter what kind of pain their humans inflict on them. So dogs are not really man’s best friend, they are more like man’s non-biological children. People even say that their dogs are as important to them as any other family member.
Which brings me to my next question: if dogs are man’s non-biological children (after all they never really grow up, but only grow old), how can we explain certain behaviors that dog lovers engage in when they care for their dogs/non-biological children?
Case in point, dogs in cars.
Nothing is more unnerving for me than seeing a dog sticking his large head out of the passenger-side window when a car passes me on the freeway. Who in their right mind lets a dog do that?
My dog lover friend tells me that dogs love riding in cars, and more than anything they love sticking their heads out the window and feeling the wind on their faces. She takes her dog everywhere in her car and her dog loves it.
“Isn’t it dangerous to let a dog stick his head out the window?” I ask. “So many times I drive along other cars and see dogs’ heads poking out the passenger side and worry that something awful might happen to them.”
“There’s no danger,” she says. “Nothing can happen to them.”
“But when I was a kid, I was always told never to stick my arm out the car window,” I tell her. I even heard scary stories about children who ignored the warnings and were terribly hurt when a car passed too close to them, and . . . well, you get the picture.
“Nothing can happen to them,” she insists. “There’s a lot of space between the cars. Nobody drives that close to another car.”
She is a friend and a dog lover, and I don’t want to argue, because there is no chance convincing her otherwise. But I am still skeptical. When my daughter was young and rode in my car next to me or behind me in a car seat, she knew to never stick any body part out the window, no matter how wonderful it felt. Whether a car passed too close for comfort or not was irrelevant. It’s dangerous to put body parts out of a car and it would be reckless to allow my daughter, or any other underage human, to do this, right? Then why let dogs do it?
Apparently, the answer is, “Because they like it, and stop making a big deal out of nothing.”
But this is not the only thing that bothers me about dogs riding in cars. When I visit my friend—who lives too far away to drive, so I fly to see her—I find myself riding in her car, with her dog, of course. Now, before the dog even joins us, I have to clean the passenger seat because it is covered with dog hair, and I don’t want that hair to stick to my clothes. My friend generously hands me a large beach towel to spread on the seat. But the towel does not look too promising. It’s colorful enough to camouflage the hair that has stuck to it during one of the trips she took with her dog before I arrived. I don’t want to make a big fuss, so I pretend not to notice the hair. But my troubles are not over yet. I may be “spared” the dog hair, but I am not spared the dog paws, because as soon as the dog jumps into the back seat, a certain commotion ensues, and to my displeasure, I discover that I have to share the front seat with the dog. Because this is really his territory, not mine.
Now this dog is not one of those tiny squealing purse dogs with which some women like to accessorize their outfits. It is a 60-pound German shepherd mix, and its paws dig into my jeans or my leggings with all the weight it carries around. And that’s not all. These paws that are planted on my laps are attached to two hairy front legs and a hairier body that pushes toward the passenger window, in front of my face, because dogs love to feel the wind on their face when they travel. And who am I to complain that the dog is heavy, that he is blocking the view, that his nails are digging holes into my legs, and that dog drool is inevitably making its way from the edge of his pink tongue that hangs in front of me down to my crotch.
It's so lovely to travel with a dog, my dog lover friend thinks, I am sure. But she cannot be too bothered. Her car practically belongs to the dog just like the rest of her life. She tells the dog to stay in the back, but the dog knows that she is not too serious about it and there are no consequences for bad behavior.
Last week she told me about a trip she took somewhere with her neighbors in their car, and had to share the backseat with their cute little dog. It was not connected to our conversation about dogs in car. It was really a story about the trip with the nice neighbors.
“They have such a cute dog,” she gushed. “She sat on my lap the entire trip, and she put her head on my shoulder and slept. She is the cutest thing I have ever seen.”
It's a wonder that we are still friends. I learned to hide my feelings. We all make sacrifices to maintain old friendships.
Apart from the scary sight of dogs sticking their heads out of car windows, I also sometimes see large dogs riding unrestrained in the beds of pickup trucks, looking at cars passing by and wagging their tails with excitement, and I want to ask the driver if he would leave his five-year-old child by herself in the back of the truck, to run from side to side while he drives to work at 70 mph. Forget the dust and debris that might fly by and hit the dog, what makes him so sure that the dog won’t jump out of the truck bed to chase something he spots by the side of the road? What makes him believe that the dog won’t be tossed out of the truck bed in case of a sudden stop or a sharp turn? I mean, did he have a real conversation with his dog, explaining to him all the dangers that come with riding in the bed of the truck? Did the dog promise he would be careful and stay put?
Over 100,000 dogs die each year in the U.S. from riding in truck beds, but I am considered a dog-unfriendly human for daring to say something, not the jerk who loves his dog so much that he lets him ride in the back of his pickup truck because it makes him look so cool. Not once in my life has a dog died under my care, but in this dog-loving country, dog lovers are considered more compassionate and considerate humans than people like me who shudder at the sight of dogs in cars (or on their roofs, re Mitt Romney 2008, 2012)
And what about those dog lovers who leave their dogs in their car for hours on end?
There’s a law against it, I hear. My friend says she leaves her dog for only a few minutes when she does her shopping. It might feel like a few minutes, I want to tell her, but I don’t. According to my experience, shopping can take up to half an hour, at least, especially when you live in a big city.
When my daughter was a baby, I wouldn’t leave her in the car for even a minute. Sometimes I wouldn’t put gas in my car if I had to pay cash because that entailed leaving her in the car for two minutes in order to run to the booth and pay the attendant. I guess dog lovers think that most people will not snatch a dog left alone in a car. But babies, they are a little more vulnerable. Tempting.
I know a person, and I will not give any clues as to who it is, who leaves their dog in the car for hours. And that person loves their dog. That person has never lived without a dog. The moment one dog dies, a new dog takes its place. And that person says that they love dogs more than they love humans. This person loves their dog so much, enough to leave him in a car alone, for hours, to wait for them until the end of the day.
I see this dog sit in the car patiently, waiting for his person, never barking or whining. Like the good dog that he is. The weather is always nice where this dog lives, and his person parks the car under a tree or near big bushes, where it is always cool and breezy. The window is partly opened, so there’s enough air to breathe, nothing to worry about. And the dog is well-trained. He knows that at the end of the day his person will take him on a long walk. Rain or shine, there will be a fun walk, so it is worth it for him to behave himself during the hours he is stuck in that small four-door hatchback.
So I want to know: How much do you really love a dog—who is really your non-biological child—if you let him sit in your car for hours waiting for you to come and take him for a walk?
