Deserving a Dog

I am not a dog person.  My father, when I was about sixteen, was given a German shepherd pup.  He named her Ginger(probably my baby sister's doing), tied her up in the basement until she grew large, then tied her up to a tree across our wooded dead end road.

These were my teenage years, wherein teenagers don't tend to heartily roll out of bed in the morning.  And I was depressed.  And beginning around five a.m., when the few neighbors we had began to pass to go to work, and then walk past to get to the bus stop for school, Ginger barked.  And barked.  And barked.

My father, obviously also not a dog person (not much of a human person either) had taken to knocking on the window when he was around and poor Ginger started to bark.  She would stop, for a couple of seconds, and then begin again.  With those two seconds of silence, she trained my father to bang on the window when she began to bark.

And in my morose, sleep-filled rage, I too took to banging on the window.

And then I left home, and it wasn't until years later when I had a home of my own, that another idiot, who lived across a small field from me, got herself a dog, which she stuck in a pen, which drove the poor dog wild, and whose high-pitched bark drove me wild all day, every day.

When I moved to South Carolina, as I was house hunting, I was looking in rural areas, where neighbors (I thought) would be spaced a civil distance.  And if there was a dog barking when I went through a house, I discarded it.

But after I moved, as these things go, dogs moved in or were acquired.  I have neighbors whose dogs are adorable and really well-behaved.  And I have neighbors who have dogs that when they get going sound like they are ripping babies to shreds.  And I have a neighbor who, gods know why, got a dog a year or more ago, and stuck it outside, and has left it yowling pathetically ever since.

Dogs are work.  I tried owning a dog once; she was a dear.  But I was unable to commit to taking care of her the way she needed -- and deserved -- to be cared for, so (and I am not proud of this) when she was picked up and taken to the pound, I left her there in the hope that a family that loved her would adopt her.

People abuse and neglect dogs just by treating them as though they don't need constant care and affection, much like a small child.  And like a small child, a dog gives back, and too many times, gives when it is receiving little in return.

I think I was so furious at barking Ginger because she broke my heart.  And so it is with the neglected neighborhood dogs.

If you leave your dog outside all day every day, if you leave your dogs for weeks while you are on vacation and it's only human contact is the guy who comes to feed  them, you don't deserve those dogs.  And they truly deserve better than you.