Glad not to have a dog

I understand why people enjoy having dogs for pets. Dogs love their masters, to the point that some would clearly lay down their lives to protect their master. It seems as though dogs experience love, and who cannot appreciate being loved? Dogs are descended from wolves who travel in packs, with one clear alpha male who calls all the shots. As long as the human master is understood by both parties that he or she is alpha, then the dog will idolize, love, and protect that human.

However, for the relationship to work, the alpha must also care for the dog. The dog must have an outlet for exercise, be stimulated mentally, fed, and cleaned.

In an urban context, a dog must be walked daily. The dog will go nuts if it is not allowed to blow off some steam. Often the dog will crap on these walks, and it is up to the human to ensure that the dog does it in a socially appropriate way. This might require bringing a plastic bag and collecting those happy offerings. It also means that the dog calls the shots: even if the human is not at all interested in going for a walk, unless the dog gets out, the mess to clean up could be far graver.

Dogs must be stimulated mentally. If the dog is bred as a retriever, it likes nothing more than to 'fetch', over and over, until it can't go on. For a human, this can be interesting for a little while, but at a certain point it gets to be like writing lines on a chalkboard.

One has to make sure that the dog is properly fed. This can go horribly wrong. If the dog has been told a thousand times that it cannot eat food off the table, but goes unpunished even once, it will always remember the one time that it was permitted to do so. This is the same when dogs 'beg' for food. I am not sure there is anything more annoying than when a dog contantly begs for food while one is trying to eat. In order to stop the dog from begging in the short run, people will give the dog food. In the long run, the dog only remembers that the begging strategy has worked, and will continue to do so. Thousands of 'No's' are required to counter one 'yes'.

In nature, dogs in a pack will disguise their collective scent in order not to alert the intended prey. To do this, they will find something very stinky to roll in. It might be feces, a rotting corpse, a dead fish. Dogs love the idea of being as stinky as they can possibly be. Therefore, the alpha has to take measures to counter this annoying instinct by bathing the dog. However, once soap is introduced to the dog's fur, it loses some of its natural oils that help to keep out dirt and water, the dog compensates by producing too much oil, and the outcome is that the fur needs to be washed all the more. One step down the 'bathing' road and the dog will need to be bathed regularly for the rest of its life.

In total, a dog needs to be cared for in the same way a two-year old human needs to be cared for. We need to make sure that the child is physically and mentally stimulated, fed, and cleaned regularly. The only difference is that two-year old humans will one day be able to do all of these things by themselves, whereas a dog will be stuck at this stage for the rest of its life.