an open letter to my dog who, if i'm being completely honest, lowkey kinda sucks

but i love him anyway

i’ll never forget the day i met you. it was a chilly day in November 2014. the weird 63,000 square foot expo center in my neighborhood was hosting a “mega dog adopt-a-thon.” something kinda like the old Jerry Lewis muscular dystrophy telethon but with adopting dogs instead of making phone donations for the MDA and with barking instead of homophobic slurs. there were probably around 500 dogs there. 500 pathetic beasts begging for a chance, all hailing from a sea of different dog rescue groups from all over the country named things like “sad paws club” and “leash of broken dreams.” by the end of 2014 i was finally, after many trials and tribulations, a real adult. i had finished graduate school, had a real job, and found myself in a stable, healthy relationship. women in my position were having kids—why couldn’t i have a dog?

“yes, why shouldn’t you have a dog?” you communicated to me telepathically from across the room. i saw you sitting politely in your cage, waiting for an opportunity. to change a mind. to pitch yourself. your tail wagged slightly as i approached. i read the little laminated biography attached to your cage. a 23 year-old creative writing major had given you an entirely fake persona and marketed your brand like you were some high-end escort on tryst.

your name was pablo or toby. you were originally from mexico, brazil, or florida. you were only 6 months or maybe 2 years old. you were found tied to a pole, trapped under burning rubble, or floating alone on a solitary iceberg off the east coast of greenland. you were a husky mix, a pure-bred Labrador, or some made-up breed called a “black mouth cur.” you were a big loverboy, a snugglepuss, good in small apartments with even smaller children. also good with: other dogs, cats, sassy parrots, loud noises, thin walls, and low hanging chandeliers. “the only thing this big guy doesn’t do is stairs” said the weird dog rescue guy. “i’m sure he has his reasons,” i replied. it wasn’t a problem for me. i lived on the ground floor. it was kismet.

the dog rescue had curiously reduced your adoption fee from the standard $300 to $100, which was good because i love a sale. when i asked whether a home visit was necessary to make sure i was a suitable candidate to adopt you, the guy said “nah we good.” as soon as i completed the adoption forms, a foghorn played over the loudspeakers and everyone at the expo center cheered for us, which is what happened each time one of these pitiable orphans found “their forever home.” your adoption took less time than an episode of “everybody loves raymond.” i’ve taken shits longer than the time i spent acquiring you. within minutes, i became your legal owner and our lives would be connected until the end of time.

the next day i went back to the expo center. i had accidentally left my credit card there as i struggled to sign forms, collect my free “dog swag,” and hold your leash at the same time. upon my return, i was shocked to find one of those weird ninja warrior parkour gyms where the dog rescue thing had been only a day before. when i asked the guy working the front desk about the dogs he said “i’ve worked here for 8 months and that’s never been here.” ok.

once comfortable in your new home, you immediately destroyed all my things. you had a vendetta against electronics of any sort, so much so that i wondered if you might be an amish dog that found your way here on rumspringa. you chewed my laptop, tv wires, remote controls with the batteries inside them. the first time you ate some triple A batteries i immediately rushed you to the vet and asked if we needed to pump your stomach. the vet said “nah he good,” handed me a $300 bill, and sent us home.

i bought a very large cage to “crate train” you because the internet said i had to do that. i watched a ton of videos on how to do it right. i placed the crate in the room i had been using an office so you could have some peace and quiet. the internet—that lying, manipulative bitch—led me to believe that most dogs enjoy being crated. “aw my dog loves hanging out in his crate, it gives him a sense of security :)” typed bigpawmama69. but you hated the crate more than any living thing has hated anything ever. as you violently scratched at the latch, the static energy from your polyester dog bed against the metal shot huge, demonic sparks into the air. you yelped and howled like your very soul was in pain every moment you were confined to the crate. it was just a prison to you.

i crated you for a full month with little improvement. one time i left you crated while i ran errands, i came home to find you lying calmly on the living room sofa. the floor was covered in woodchips. you had somehow escaped and shawshank’d right through the wooden office door completely. that was the end of the crate and also the end of my security deposit. you won this round.

i took you to the dog park where you were reviled by about half of the other dogs. you didn’t pick fights with them, but something about your energy really pissed a lot of them off for some reason. you would run laps around the park, which would always cause a gang of dogs to amass behind you. these dogs wanted to kill you for some unknown reason. your vibes were off, when i so desperately wanted them to be on.

i stopped taking you to the dog park and doggy daycare. i didn’t need that drama. i paid to have man with a ponytail come to my apartment and teach me how to do the caesar milan “tss!” thing. but every time i did it, you just looked at me like i had straight up lost my damn mind.

one day while paying my dog walking bill online i saw a “notes” section on your profile. i clicked on it, and it said “be careful. will confront large men” which is how i found out you were a radical feminist. the note weighed heavily on my heart. you were always so good with people, as long as they weren’t wearing motorcycle helmets, which you hated.

the summer of 2015 i did a very inconsiderate thing and started taking you to a stretch of a public park that wasn’t technically an off-leash dog park, but was used as such by many of the neighborhood residents during the early hours of 5-7 a.m. before most people were awake. and if anybody reading this is in the middle of leaving a rage comment about how letting a dog run off-leash is jerk behavior, don’t worry—i know that now and was punished appropriately.

one morning at the park you dug up what i soon learned was a dead cat that some little old polish lady had buried there. it was your treasure, your precious, and you would not let it go. little chunks of cat carcass fell off as you zoomed around the field clenching the vertebrae between your teeth. the other dog owners screamed in horror as their dogs joined the melee and rolled around in the bits of dislodged death, their tan and white fur now streaked with decay.

the crisis filled me with supernatural bravery and strength, like those frail women who lift entire automobiles off their children after a car crash. i ripped the dead cat from your mouth with my bare hands and yeeted it into a new york city public trashcan. then, like a good citizen, i fished a styrofoam clamshell chinese food takeout container out of another new york city public trashcan, dumped out the food, and used the container to grab up all the parts that fell off the dead cat, which i also disposed of into a new york city public trashcan.

after that happened, i dragged you home, put you in the bathtub, and scrubbed you for 45 minutes. if i’m being honest, you have not been clean to me since this moment and my perception of you has never been the same. as i toweled you off, i briefly entertained the thought of wrapping you in a blanket in depositing you at a fire station with a note reading: “free good dog.” i’d be the dog-owner equivalent one of those midwestern christian couples that sends their stabby adopted russian kid right back to volgograd in a DHL bubble-mailer with some air holes punched into it. but deep down in my heart i know that you found me for a reason. and that reason is that i did something very, very bad in a past life and that i’ll never escape samsara if i pawn you off on some dumb kids. i would keep you. we’d figure it out.

i thought you had really outdone yourself with the dead cat incident, but a few months later, when on a walk, you became acutely interested in a particular bush at the park. it seemed innocent enough to me so i let you have your fun, your special bush time. how foolish i was to think you weren’t in there eating the diarrhea of a homeless man who had been using the bush as a porta-potty for the last month and half.

this incident didn’t affect me because you were already a dirty dog to me now. i had abandoned all expectations for you. when i finally let go of the dog i thought you were, and the dog i wanted you to be, i could finally love you for what you were: a menacing trash dog that loved to eat human poop so much neil gaiman would have cut me a $100,000 check to have you to himself. i took you home, put you in the bathtub, put on rubber gloves and a face mask, and scrubbed you clean once more.

despite the time and money i spent on dog training, you got worse with age. you started becoming more and more leash reactive. i lay in bed at night dreading your morning walk, and i struggled to concentrate at work knowing the evening walk was already upon me. the sight of your nemesis dogs filled you with all the fury of hell. walking you was like playing the old arcade version of frogger, a game of equal parts chance and strategy. i had to avoid certain streets, cut corners widely, jaywalk you quickly into moving traffic to avoid your compatriots. if your eyes met theirs, you would lock in on the target like some terminator dog and no amount of treats or tssts! could bring you back from that sunken place.

by 2016, your nemesis pool had roughly doubled in size and you now had beef with approximately half of the neighborhood dogs. at my lowest point, i felt like tilda swinton in “we need to talk about kevin” (2011) with dog ezra miller. you strained my relationship with my then-boyfriend, stretched me thin. your anxiety was getting worse, which made my anxiety worse, which pinged right back into you. sometimes i tensed up holding your leash until you and i were just a single Mobius strip of pulsating fear. i know. i lowkey kinda sucked too.

as the situation became untenable, i bought a prong collar at the recommendation of your dogwalker, whom i trusted. you paid no mind. choke me daddy, you seemed to say as you pulled on the leash more than ever. after only a few days i broke and swapped it out for a more humane muzzle. you looked sad in it. our walks, more joyless and perfunctory than ever, made my brain scream none of this is working.

you hated this city. i’m sorry i brought you here.

at my wits’ end, i spent all my money to buy a cabin in the woods and relocate you to a 5-acre plot of fenced-in land outside the city. an idyllic retreat, your own private idaho, a maximum security dog prison—spin it however you like, it was a place you could relax and do no harm. i had intended to take you there on weekends only. we were, after all, city folk. but after a handful of disastrous return trips, it was decided: you would live out the remainder of your life as a country dog.

our lives improved dramatically, but the transition was not without its challenges. this strange, new place turbo-charged your already high prey drive. there were new creatures here—chipmunks, groundhogs, turkeys, and deer—all of which you wanted to search and destroy. in 2017 you killed three groundhogs, making you qualified to run for new york city mayor. the last wretched creature i desperately tried to save by trying to break up the fight with a shovel. you won the duel, but the hog did not go gently. your face was tore the fuck up, and you deserved it. i got a $300 vet bill and spent the evening digging a hole while you reclined leisurely on the porch, pleased as ever.

a few months later, you disappeared into thin air. while examining the perimeter, i found a small hole dug under the fence. i took the day off work to look for you. i hiked through the woods and found you three hours later at a lesbian couple’s house a few miles away. you were in their backyard, calmly hanging out with their german shepherd and chihuahua. what the hell was this? i thought you had a problem with other dogs. after thanking them, i asked “has he been good?” and they said “omg yes, he’s an angel!” i said “well this dog actually lowkey sucks, i’m afraid”, collected you, and brought you home.

in 2019, the evening before thanksgiving, you accomplished your life objective: you took down a deer, which you had never been able to do before. you didn’t kill it, but, in desperate play to escape your wrath, it leapt over the fence, got tripped up, and fell hard on its neck. it was still alive, but would not recover. i broke down sobbing and googled “broken neck dying deer on my property help” and the internet told me to call the sheriff. i called the sheriff and he came over and shot the deer in the head with his gun. i thought he was going to take the dead deer away but instead he just looked at me like this 🙂 and then got in his little small town sheriff car and drove away. that was the day i learned that local sheriffs will shoot your injured deer but it’s on you after that.

i googled “dead deer removal” and the internet told me to contact wildlife services. i called that number and it sent me to voicemail because, i assume, it was a holiday. i called a another number for an animal control company over a hundred miles away and some guy with a thick new jersey accent just casually told me to bury it 2-3 feet in the ground. ok.

i don’t know if people understand how much time and effort it takes to dig a deer grave, even a shallow one, but it took 40%-50% more effort than i expected. i never saw another deer or groundhog in my yard after this happened. it’s as if there was some all-hands wildlife meeting to address the incident. a candlelight vigil held by all the little rabbits, squirrels, groundhogs, and deer gathered around a weeping willow tree (the type of tree around which all forest meetings take place). after the dirge, they mapped out the property line, set curfews, and warned their children so this would never happen again. and it never did. god bless.

another new “country dog problem” was the ticks. i used to think that ticks were seasonal pests, but you somehow meant to accumulate them throughout the entire year. just the thought of you and your lifeforce kept them alive throughout the heatwaves and coldfronts. you’d drag them inside by the dozens. you were patently magnetic, a charismatic cult leader and they your loyal acolytes. my charlie manson dog and his underage tick harem. i’d find them in the carpet, on the sofa, in my bed, on my head. they burrowed into my nightmares and i’d jolt awake in a cold sweat, swatting at some phantom tick crawling along my spine.

i never thought i’d type these words, but i spent a decent sum of money on NEMATODES to kill the ticks so you’d stop tracking them inside. the internet told me that the nematodes would kill the tick larvae in the yard. just another lie sold to the desperate american public by big nematode. other than the cryptocurrency i bought in 2021, nematodes is hands down the worst thing i’ve ever spent money on. those nematodes didn’t do SHIT and now i have to live with the shame that i once paid hundreds of dollars for useless roundworms.

when you tore your cranial cruciate ligament last year, i drove you hours to get an expensive surgery. as i swiped my credit card, i heard the voices of my Appalachian grandparents mocking me. dogs are for the outside. for hunting and guarding. a dog without a job is a dog without purpose, and a creature without purpose is a creature against god. a dog with a hurt leg should be left lame, and a dog too lame to walk should get a quick death that costs no more than the price of a single, lead bullet. i quieted the thoughts and paid the bill.

once home, you slept for two days straight in your creepy little anti-lick medical dog pajamas. i pitied you in your sorry state and bought you a giant bone and this FONINI Garden Snuffle Mat for Medium to Large Dogs to cheer you up since you couldn’t run free outside. you put the bone inside the mat and then violently whipped it, sending the bone hurtling through the air and directly into my television, smashing out 1/3 of the LED panels.

you needed two full months to heal. you watched wistfully from the window as the leaves changed color and the squirrels became emboldened in your absence. i will reclaim this land, you thought with your snoot pressed against the glass. after two months of restricted mobility, the surgeon gave you a clean bill of health and permission to return to your wild ways. the very next day, i let you outside and you jumped off the deck to avoid the stairs, immediately tearing your other CCL. i phoned the surgeon’s office to ask if there was a discount, like a “buy-one-get-one” kind of deal and they said no, that was not a thing.

your second surgery is scheduled this week. while i cherish our time together and wish you a long and happy life, i look forward to completing my cosmic penance that can only be accomplished by my seeing your lifecycle through to its conclusion.

obviously i’ve learned some lessons over the last decade. i was naïve. i knew city life wasn’t ideal but i thought you’d adapt. i thought stray mutts were scrappy and that you’d be so happy to have a home and not be euthanized that you’d get with the program. i thought you’d be drinking martinis with me at a dog bar, hiking with me in the mountains, meeting new furry friends at the dog park. i also thought we’d rent a pink mustang and roadtrip across route 66—just me, you, and the open sky. absolutely zero of that happened, and that’s ok.

the truth is, i joke that you lowkey kinda suck, but you’re actually a very good dog for a specific time and place. if i cultivated crops, which i do not, they would be untouched. if i needed protection, which i do not, i would be safe. if i operated a tick farm, which i do not, i’d be killing it. you are a good country dog. you were just never cut out for this godforsaken city. it’s alright. many people aren’t either.

i suspect many dog owners are as i once was—misguided but well-intentioned, thinking they are doing a good deed by giving some undesirable Dickinsian street urchin dog a loving home. but it’s not that simple. dogs are not people, and can’t always adapt like people. there are millions of years of instinct and thousands of years of intentional breeding coded into a dog’s DNA that you can’t erase or override with good intentions.

you’re an old boy now, your marauding days long over. you mostly sit around the quiet cabin and snooze away your time, stirring from the occasional nightmare that you’re back in maria hernandez park— a nightmare that every former nyc woman living with hpv also has from time to time.

this post is dedicated to you, my dog, whom i love deeply despite it all. my albatross, my best friend.