Dogs are better than men

I like dogs — especially Cleo and Titus — but I like all dogs, with a few exceptions, mostly due to the nature of their owner.

I moved to Denver five years ago knowing no one except my sister and her dog. Most of the friends I’ve made here I met at an off-leash dog park, which I have mentioned before in this space.

My dog Titus is happy and playful. Cleo is his protector. Titus even today, nearly five years old, a sturdy Husky-greyhound, 75 pounds, wouldn’t know how to pick a fight if you paid him a million dollars and slapped gloves on him. 

Titus is only now learning to defend himself, and Cleo continues to protect him, because Titus still don’t know how to fight.

I have studied the legal implications of dogs, and found nothing useful there. All I know for sure, from my years of post-grad dog studies and diligent research (which the immortal Dave Barry defines as “farting around on the internet”) is that dogs are better than men.

Dogs are faithful.

Dogs do not lie.

And when they do, they don’t know how to, or even try to, cover it up.

They tell us in Doggish, “Sorry! Terribly sorry!

“Didn’t know that wasn’t allowed!”

Although they probably did.

Here’s another thing you already know:

Dogs like cats. And cats like dogs.

Humans do not fight “like cats and dogs.”

Humans fight like humans.

Also:

Dogs do not “cheat” on their owners, or their bitches.

A dog, could he or she speak English, would not understand what the word “cheat” means.

And if he did “cheat” on his bitch, it would not be cheating, as humans understand it. It would be doing what dogs do: ensuring survival of the species. Then the “cheater” would go home to help take care of the puppies.

A dog would never … (here I got a phone call from an old friend.)

“Bob,” he said, “you cannot let your life revolve around your dogs. You need to get out there and make friends with people.”

“Why?” I asked. “I talk to my dogs. We’re fine.”

“You need someone to talk to.”

“I talk to my dogs.”

“No you don’t. You talk at them. They don’t talk back to you.”

“Yes they do.”

“On what level?”

“On the levels I need.”

This friend of mine has been married happily, far as I know, for 40-some years. He said that conversations with dogs, walking and playing with them — my “relationships” with dogs — is not enough: That there’s more than that to be had in our few poor spins around the Sun.

I’m sure there is, but I can tell you without fear of contradiction that I ain’t figured out what it is yet, except for being happy with dogs.

Dogs to the left of me, dogs to the right, into the Valley of Death I ride, shouting, “Whee!”

My relationship with dogs be on a steady and even keel, as I “unburden’d, crawl toward death.”

I have good friends here in Denver, whom we see almost every day. By “we” I mean me and my dogs. What brought these friends together is our dogs.

I ain’t tryna preach here; as Lt. Joe Friday said, “Just the facts.”

OK, so maybe I should have a girlfriend, along with my dogs. But a good girlfriend can be hard to find, for a guy like me.

What I would like to ask my dog poo-pooh-sayer is:

“How you doing? Happy enough at the end of the day? And when you wake up tomorrow?

"I’m happy enough, for all my sins, complaints and failures. And you? Are you happy enough to leave me and my dogs alone?”

At this point, my imaginary interlocutor would haw and hem, scrape a foot along the ground, mutter something to himself, then turn away and say something like, “Have a nice day.”

Words which, I am proud to say, none of my dogs have ever said to me.

They just ensure it. 

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