I love dogs.
Let’s just get that out of the way. I love them in the abstract, in the pure, honest way a man can love a simple, beautiful, and completely uncomplicated animal. In other countries, they get it. You go to Argentina, there’s dog shit everywhere. Why? Because they love their dogs. They let them be dogs. A beautiful, honest, and completely natural state of affairs.
When I was a kid, we had dogs. We had a dog named Dusty who took huge, magnificent shits in the backyard, and you’d go out there with a shovel, like a man, and you’d clean it up. We had a little dog, Timmy, who was my brother’s buddy, and he’d shit in the backyard, too. You’d clean it up, and the dog was happy, and you were happy, and the whole goddamn world made a little bit of sense.
When I was an adult, I had a couple of basset hounds. I built them a little outbox, a private shitter, and they’d go in there and do their business. Or I’d take them to the park, and they’d run around like wild, beautiful animals, and they’d take a big, healthy, steaming shit right there in the middle of Mother Nature’s living room. And you’d just let it be. The worms would eat it, the bugs would eat it, it would go back to the goddamn earth. A perfect, beautiful, and completely honest cycle.
You know what stops me from getting a dog now?
The little plastic bag.
That’s it. That’s the whole goddamn story of the decline of Western civilization, right there in a little roll of scented, blue plastic. This West Coast, East Coast, coastal-elite bullshit that has ruined every simple, honest pleasure a man has left. This idea that you, a man, a goddamn bipedal primate who is supposed to be the master of his own universe, now have to walk around with a little plastic bag, and you have to bend over, and you have to pick up a warm, steaming lump of another animal’s shit with your own two hands.
And the dog, he just stands there, watching you, a quiet, smug little smile on his face. And you know what he’s thinking. You can see it in his eyes.
“That’s right, you two-legged bitch. Pick up my shit. You work for me now.”
“Go on,” he’s thinking, “get your fingers in there. You’re gonna be chewing on those fingernails later, you nasty little fucker.”
Who the hell invented this? What committee of castrated, self-hating, and completely insane sons of bitches decided that this was the new normal? For hundreds, thousands of years, men walked the earth, and dogs walked beside them, and not once, not for a single goddamn second, did a man have to put his hand in a plastic bag and pick up a warm turd in public. And now, it’s a goddamn sacrament.
I used to live in an apartment in Scottsdale. And there was this woman. Christ. An absolute goddess. She’d come home from work in her stilettos, the ones with the little stainless-steel tips on the heels, and the sound of them on the pavement was a goddamn symphony. You’d race to the window just to get a look. I’m not saying I masturbated while watching her, but I was pretty damn close.
And I’d watch her, this perfect, beautiful, and completely unattainable fantasy, and she’d be walking her little dog. And I’d be so turned on, my whole body humming with a quiet, ugly, and beautiful kind of want.
And then I saw her do it.
I saw her take out the little blue plastic bag. I saw her bend over, in her thousand-dollar dress and her two-hundred-dollar shoes, and I saw her pick up a lump of warm shit.
And just like that, the whole goddamn fantasy just… died. A quiet, pathetic little death. It was the most disgusting, the most emasculating, the most completely and utterly passion-killing thing I have ever seen in my goddamn life. I stopped watching her after that.
And you have to ask yourself, why have the goddamn dog in the first place? If you’ve got to follow it around, cleaning up its shit like a goddamn servant, what’s the point? You don’t have a backyard? Then you don’t have a right to a dog. You’re not living the American dream, you’re just a renter in a cage, and you’ve decided to bring another animal into the cage with you. It’s like having four kids when you’re only making thirty grand a year. It’s a quiet, selfish, and completely insane act of desperation.
And it’s all connected, isn’t it? The little sacrifices. The things you do that you don’t even realize are killing you, one little piece at a time. You’re not just picking up your dog’s shit; you’re not even picking up your own shit. Your husband, he needs a blowjob. Not once a year on his birthday. He needs one every goddamn day, so he feels like a man, so he doesn’t cheat on you, so the whole beautiful, ugly, and completely fraudulent enterprise of your family doesn’t come crashing down. But you’re too tired, too busy, too “empowered” for that.
And then, when he finally leaves, you get to play the victim. The single mother. “I did it all by myself,” you say. “I didn’t need a man.” No, you selfish bitch. The kids, they’ll never tell you that their lives would have been a hell of a lot richer if you’d just been willing to pick up a little bit of your own goddamn shit once in a while.
So with that, with that whole goddamn rant, I share this with you. When I finally get to Argentina, when I finally escape this clean, quiet, and completely castrated asylum, the first thing I’m getting is a dog.
A big, beautiful, and completely undisciplined sonofabitch.
And he’s going to shit wherever the hell he wants. On my lawn, on the neighbor’s lawn, in the middle of the goddamn street. A beautiful, honest, and completely unapologetic act of freedom.
Because that’s how they do it in Argentina. They’re still natural. They still remember what it’s like to be a goddamn animal.
And so, goddammit, will I.
