Sometimes I wonder why so many people have pets. Are we so well-off now that we bore easily? Or are we lonely? Maybe it’s both. This is something I think about often because almost everyone in our neighborhood has at least one dog. I know this because almost constantly we hear their barking, see them walking their owners, or we have to shoo them from our garden spaces. They seem like living toys to me, but what do I know. We are dog people but we don’t want one. Although we claim a few because we enjoy their owners, we won’t have a pet. To us they are fun but troublesome anchors.

All my cynicism aside, as much as we tend to mock the many canines around us, we accept some. I’m really curious about our unspoken selection process because no one neighborhood dog really stands out. Are we biased by their appearance? Do we make excuses about their presence in our yard because of our opinion of their owner? We may never really know. But, no matter what the reason, nothing I have been able to consider seems any more logical than the decision to obtain these beasts — so I’m not sure how different we really are from anyone.