2024.55

I continue to wonder how much I'm going to cry in the next four years. How frequently my heart will break. And then I consider—again, if it's time I got a dog.

Many of you know how much I adore doggos. Maybe I've attempted to steal your actual dog. Probably joked about it. More than once. Kidding, not kidding.

You might also know that I haven't had a dog since I was a kid when I lived in southeast Kansas, in the middle of nowhere, and horrible human beings would dump their dogs on the country roads close to my house. Their loss, my gain, I guess. My siblings and I would usually go to them, when they came trotting down to us, looking for food, for water. And we gave them names.

My father always viewed dogs as a burden, like another mouth to feed. Not so different from the way he viewed his children, now that I think about it. To me, these dogs were everything. I confessed every pain and hurt I had into the fur of these animals. I cried into their bodies. Hugged them too tightly. Played with them, ran with them, loved them.

My father kept every dog we ever had outside, where they'd sleep alone in the garage. It had a gravel floor. The dogs would dig holes and sleep together to conserve heat. They would whine and howl. I'd cry for them. We often begged our father to let them in the house, but he never would, unless it was so cold that leaving them out there could likely kill them. Is it -10°, -20°? How low can they go?

He has his own dog now, Alex. They make his food for him every day. Alex sleeps in their bed. I swear to god he shows more love and affection for that pup than he ever did for his kids while we were growing up.

As an adult, it's never seemed like the right time to have a dog again. My wife is allergic to most pet dander, but that's not the real reason. We like our freedom to go places, to do things. Getting a dog would complicate that. It's not a light decision to own a dog. It's a commitment. Like having a child—there is no perfect time. So I often wonder if the time has come. If getting a dog will distract me with something to love—to pour my pain into—for the foreseeable future. To have a snout, and fur, and wagging tail while I have to live through what's coming next.

I don't know. It seems selfish to get a dog for those reasons. But then again, I'm talking about survival.

Today's Poem

I don't think today's poem is a typical ode with a strophe, antistrophe, and epode. It could be, but one could be thrown by the number of stanzas, which don't map to an ode's structure 1:1. Also, my epode isn't summarizing anything, but elevating the theme to something more than what is laid out in the poem's opening lines.

This poem takes a classic anadrome (dog = god), and exploits the meaning of these two separate ideas into a poem not only praising dogs, but deifying the selflessness of dogs—like unconditional love having a physical body. To be honest, I'm not sure what other creature on God's green earth is worth more praise than a dog. Even when they're abandoned and hurt and in physical pain, they still love and are looking for love.

Sure, dogs can be mean and cruel like anything else on this planet. But mean and cruel dogs are often the result of mean and cruel humans, or humans abandoning the dog altogether.

I owe the surviving of my childhood to dogs. It's past time I wrote a poem articulating that.