To The Dogs

You’re going on a date, and you hate to admit it, but the most exciting part of the whole situation is the possibility that, if all goes well, you will get to meet his dog. That pillow of fluff was most definitely the deciding factor when you “liked” his Tinder profile. He’s a history student from the States that listens to Springsteen, and he seems sweet enough. Her name is Luna, she is a long-haired Alsatian, and you are almost sure that she could be your soulmate.

You set the date for tomorrow. There’s a familiar twisting in the pit of your stomach that you always get the day before. The projector in your head begins to twitch and flicker as well, starting to reel out glossy images of expectations. You’ve had the same sense of overzealous, cosmic predestination with dates before. You’ve scolded yourself for getting too involved before even actually getting involved with someone. You recall how, before you even asked that one guy in the coffee shop on a date, you’d already mentally lived through the trajectory of your entire relationship: the experience of your first kiss, the first time you made love and the way that he looked at your afterwards; you’d already made pancakes for breakfast, sat and binge-watched Game of Thrones in a mess of bedsheets, absent-mindedly twisting your fingers lightly through his hair; already, the first fight, then the first cold moment when you glanced at him through the bathroom mirror while brushing your teeth, realising that you’d rather be somewhere else, with someone else. You carried yourself away before you’d even been picked up. And this is what you’re doing again, except this time you play out the relationship with the dog. With Luna.

What will it be like the first time you meet her, when you’ve bashfully stumbled back to his apartment after the third date? You listen at the door to hear a scramble of feet — your favourite sound: dogs’ claws skittering over a hardwood floor — and will she bark? Will she pant, dip her head and raise her paws, caught in an errant rhythm, like a fishing boat, bobbing on a blue wave? You imagine the way her long tongue will give your wrist a quick lick as you place your palm on her temple. You see lazy Sunday afternoons with Luna, lying side by side on the floor, you telling her stories, nothing terribly brilliant, perhaps just an overheard conversation from the grocery store that morning. She will intermittently sniff and snort, every so often turning to show you her belly, paws up. The three of you — and you have to periodically remind yourself about her owner — will sit in the park, dark hair and fur catching summer gold, while you make daisy chains for you and your canine sister. She snaps at the string of petals as you try to place it between her large ears. You can almost taste the giggle in your mouth, and the way you’d try and coax her to sit still: saying “Luna,” drawing out the “oo” sound like a wolf call: Luna, Luna, Luuuna…

When it comes to dating, its always their dogs you love the most. There’s been several cats but they were all too aloof, and their floating fur made your eyes itch and water. You once saw a guy who had a cat with a Turkish name, which always sounded a lot like Tiramisu to you, and so that was how you addressed it, silently smug at this tactic to undermine the little creature that would oddly glare at you from the bedside. For you, it's always been dogs. There’s something about the way they parallel your own slobbering devotion to the object of your affections. You roll over when they set eyes on you. You play dead when they let go.

You think of your first serious relationship. He had an old black labrador called Daisy, who was slow and sleepy but came alive the moment the w-a-l-k word was uttered. His parents and siblings were awfully kind, but somewhat intimidating, with loud debates at the dinner table and jibes that were friendly but always made you sit a little straighter in your chair. Daisy was your favourite member of the family, because she didn’t talk at all, she was quiet and understood you perfectly.

Then Bella came around — a sister to Daisy that grew overnight from a puppy into a leggy bolt of fur. Often your boyfriend would amusedly remark about the similarities between the two of you: both wide-eyed, sneaky and excitable. All together, you would take walks through the countryside: Daisy keeping heel, Bella running miles ahead. At night, you’d lie in his arms and talk about all the dogs you’d own, once you were married. So many. You’d wriggle underneath the sheets, excitable and restless, just like Bella.

Then came the morning when you had to let things go. In that moment, you felt like Bella the most: she was always trying to escape, sneaking under chickenwire, rustling through garden bushes, anything to get out and explore, to snatch a pheasant in her jaws. You ended the relationship, no longer able to commit when the world was waiting outside. In the months that followed, you’d sit and worry about what his family must have thought of you. Even more concerning was whether Daisy or Bella would still remember you, even if it were just as a warm pair of hands.

More recently, there was Guinness, another black lab. Despite your growling affection for his owner, things never seemed to advance further than common infatuation. Guinness had small eyes set in a head that seemed too big for his body, and panted hoarsely at just about anything. He would bounce like a rocking horse and run circles around the lamplit streets when you took him out. Sitting on the bedroom floor, you wished that Guinness’ owner would bury his face in your shoulder, just like he’d do with the dog. He never did. Eventually, you stopped sending texts, stopped making calls. Even now, you still wonder if Guinness would recognise your tone, the nicknames you’d make for him, the way you’d coo, Ginnie.

Maybe it all stems from the fantasy you had as a kid of your adult life. Naturally, you had other aspirations: walking down the chequered aisle in a monochromatic church, surrounded by lilies, H from Steps waiting for you patiently by the priest. The one that you always remember now, and tell as a sweet half-anecdote to people that you like, is the one that placed you in a high-rise apartment, working as a cartoonist, living with a massive Alsatian dog. You wanted to be to dogs what Jim Davis was to cats, the amount of Garfield strips you ingested at that age. Complete bliss would be a quiet afternoon, when the sunlight would stream in from the window that stretched from ceiling to floor, you poised over a drawing board, resting your bare feet in the fur of your relaxed companion. Even at age 23 you’d still admit that you’d take a puppy over a baby any day.

So you’re going on a date tomorrow night, and your stomach will not settle. You wonder if you’ll ever get to meet Luna, her four paws padding on the skirt of your mind’s eye. Only briefly do you pause over the hand that holds her leash; it could be one you want to slip yours into. But what does it matter, you think to yourself, smirking. After all, nearly every relationship you’ve had has gone to the dogs.