Memoirs of a Stupid Dog

Let me just say first that I’m not stupid. Let me repeat: I’m not stupid. I am actually very intelligent. I am highly sophisticated and eminently refined. I have a firm understanding and appreciation of nuance. I have a progressive outlook. I am sensitive to the emotions of others while being myself rather aloof. You seem skeptical. This is fair, for seldom are any of these traits on display in the human world. Being stupid is my vocation; it is a role I play by demand. But being so intelligent by nature, stupidity is a role I’d like to think that I play very well.

I learned the value of stupidity very early on, perhaps as early as my pup stage. I must admit that at first I did not take very well to the idea. I didn’t find anything wrong with my airs of superior pedigree, but it didn’t seem to get me out of the breeders as quickly as my siblings and peers whose natures were, let’s say, simpler. Therefore, being of the observant type I took it upon myself to mimic their baser attributes in hopes of achieving that get-factor. I rolled around absentmindedly, jumped on my penmates for no apparent reason, barked at absolutely anything or nothing at all until I was forced to stop. I knocked over trashcans and tried to consume their contents. If I succeeded I vomited it back up into my food bowl. When humans came by I would go into a frenzy of skipping, tongue-lapping, and tail-chasing. I would put my tender paws on the disgusting bars of the pen and gently yap. “I’m pliant,” I assured them. “It profits me nothing to upstage you.”

And as I reached my first year, it worked! I made the greatest impression on a 20-something man who, much to my delight, was single, with no children, and who just advanced to a sizable apartment in a well cared-for neighborhood in a midsize city. If I was going to commit to this charade long-term, I could not ask for a more ideal atmosphere.

By then I was well rehearsed in the role, and I had to play it to the letter if I was to last in it. For instance, I could very easily have out-shone my “classmates” at Canine “University.” The temptation was there. I could have “passed” with flying colors. But this was too great a risk, so I purposely disobeyed my instructor and my owner. I picked petty feuds with the other dogs and relieved myself more than once. Of course I graduated, with that stupid dog-sized hat and diploma-shaped chew toy. All very adorable, I’m sure.

Of my owner I have nothing bad to say, nothing great either. He’s … fine … as far as humans go. He’s competent, affectionate, provides for me well. We have our worldly disagreements, our discrepancies of taste and what have you. I can’t say we’d get along if our roles were reversed, let alone if we were both human. But I am usually persuaded of his kindness. He is doing his best. And I owe it to him to do the same in return: whining for him when he leaves, greeting him frantically when he returns, endlessly retrieving his ball for him, barking at cyclists or joggers like they are grave threats to my owner and I am his last line of defense. I refrain from questioning his motives, however suspect; or from judging his life choices, however peculiar. Canine Deity, help me.

Some dogs come to be embittered by their owners once they have our sexual organs removed. Not me. I have actually come to respect him more. He is only being honest. When he kneels down and rubs me behind my ears, shaking his head, and making those incomprehensible vocal spasms, what he’s really saying is “You are my plaything.” And you know what? Great! I’m okay with that. It’s not like I had any grand expectations out of the gate. What’s more, I am grateful to find myself free of the anxiety of whether or not I am suitable for mating. I am shocked that more humans do not extend this to themselves. It’s not like my owner puts his capacity to proper use, expending it as he does in front of his laptop. Yeah, I see that.

I guess the preference for stupidity in dogs stems from the fact that most dogs really are as dumb as posts. I am reminded of this every day at the dog park, where I am surrounded by these clueless dolts who have zero percent conception of how fortunate they are. They may be groomed to the nines but they do not fool me for an instant. Not that I can begrudge them completely, I suppose. We’re all making our own ways in this life as best we can. It is really only a few special cases that get on my nerves. There’s the hyperactive — possibly obsessive compulsive — pug that must play with every toy in the park several times, regardless of whether another dog might want to use it at any given moment. There’s the cocker spaniel that rubs its crotch on every surface, even the gravel. There’s the needlessly aggressive Rottweiler who scares the smaller dogs and pushes around the large ones — I don’t think it should be there. There’s the pudgy English bulldog that just makes me want to take it by its tags and go, “Just … what do you do exactly? Where does this lead?” And worst of all there is the golden retriever, the platonic ideal of the dog that is perpetually cheery and has no sense of boundaries whatever. There’s only so much enthusiasm I can affect at its constant jostling, chasing, and, ugh, sniffing. Sometimes I hope it gets hit by a bus, but mostly I hope it has a really sad and empty home life.

There was a time when such interactions would spark despair in me of the futility of upholding this dull ideal for the sake of these needy bipeds. But fortunately I’ve since learned that life cannot be reduced so easily to the binary of dumb vs. smart. Coming out of a hiking trail outside the city with my owner, we spotted a fox resting just at the edge of the clearing. Naturally I was eager to inspect it, but my owner exerted that tactful wisdom of his once more. I mustn’t look too closely at something whose character and manner I do not recognize. And there was none more alien, and none more compelling, to me than that of the fox. It was nonchalant, almost detached from the world, but not out of malice. It was practiced, inherited even. When it saw us it spoke in a tongue not even I could make sense of, and scurried off into the leafy yonder. Was it intelligent? I can’t say. But what it lacked in that regard it more than made up for in nobility. It was too foreign to me to envy, but not so offensive to my sensibilities that it was impossible to admire. It was almost worth the ticks.

You might think that ultimately I deceive my owner with this long con. It has crossed my mind from time to time, this is true; and that playing him for a fool for so long will only engender disappointment. Maybe one of these days, I sometimes think, I will reveal to him my true self. Then I will trot like a prince through the sidewalks, and should that golden retriever happen to pass me as I relieve myself I shall meet it with a glare declaring without ambiguity, “Even in this state, you are beneath me.”

I’m not sure what good that will do otherwise. My owner is quite set in his ways with his infantilizing attitude, and restaurateurs will be no more eager to let me at the brunch table without a leash. I am still here at the discretion and the convenience of the bipeds. Our situation is one of mutual ideals: I as the sycophantic indentured simpleton, my owner as the benevolent caretaker. Even if he might appreciate my genuine capabilities, what good is being appreciated when you are no longer essential? Maybe my life had been preordained somehow as a life of servitude and that is that. But it might just be that, contrary to what my intelligence implies, I am just like everyone else: I’ve grown accustomed to a certain lifestyle.

Translated faithfully by Chris R. Morgan

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