Training | 2009.02.11
Morven Crumlish: The optimism that dogs inspire
I was recently asked to leave the room after mentioning that I have never seen a film with a dancing dog in it that I haven\'t enjoyed. I had been to watch Beverly Hills Chihuahua the night before and, for all its faults, it did feature many cute dogs - though not even Drew Barrymore can completely derail the creepiness of a trembly white chihuahua, a creature that is more diet chinchilla than Lassie. And so, for the most part, my "Aww" reflexes were working far harder than my judgment, and the film passed quickly.
Fortunately for me and other undiscerning popcorn addicts who really want a puppy, there are plenty more dog films coming out. The trailers before the film included Bolt (dog who thinks he is a superhero); Hotel for Dogs (children fill abandoned hotel with stray dogs without their parents finding out); and Marley and Me (Jennifer Aniston and Owen Wilson are upstaged by a naughty labrador).
This promises hours of happiness ahead for me, because there is simply nothing more joyful to watch than a contented dog. Every morning on my way to work I pass a spaniel whose tail whips round in circles and who gleefully hides behind trees with her tennis ball, waiting for someone to kick it into the grass. Every single morning. She never does the dog equivalent of shrugging and sighing, or makes you think that she is feeling that this whole tennis ball thing is just a bit old now, and maybe she should be doing something more with her life than unsuccessfully concealing herself behind saplings. She, along with the other dogs in the park, who run around nipping happily at each others\' heels, squabbling for first on the squeaky toy, is a symbol of pure, unsubstantiated optimism.
This is why the imminent First Puppy of the United States has received such a lot of coverage. We want President Obama, with his hope and his change, to choose a dog whose adoring, uncomplicated happiness we can attempt to imitate. Even Jon Stewart\'s Daily Show, which generally maintains a refreshing level of cynicism, had a cute puppy segment, the satire eclipsed by doleful doggy gazes and general off-the-chart endearing quality of a room full of mongrels. We want to believe. We want Obama to be a world leader we can trust. We want the financial crisis to be the equivalent of a yank on a choker chain, something that will make us behave in a more house-trained manner. We have messed up and we feel guilty, but our dogs don\'t care: they love us anyway.
Yet of course it is the unquestioning loyalty of dogs that is so often their downfall. If you are a cat owner, you will not have read this far, due to the fact that your cat has pinpointed, with uncanny accuracy, the exact paragraph you were trying to read, and has obscured it with a well-placed bottom (they can now do this with screens too). But if you have risked the wrath of the shifted cat and continued, you will know that a cat would never go back to an owner who beat it. A cat will never believe the best in you but regard you with contempt, forcing you to work for the privilege of feeding it. If it suits your cat, it may present itself for affection at a time and duration of its choosing, but it would not dream of humouring you. It knows no guilt and no shame.
And perhaps, now we have had our month of optimism, now we have run around in the snow for a day or two, it is time to peel away from our over-eager puppy selves and withdraw to our inner cat. Because the true opposite of optimism is cynicism. We should have a lot more disdain for the mess we are in. We need to spend more time demanding that doors are opened, even if we don\'t want to be on the other side of them. We need to start being difficult, and making a nuisance of ourselves. And then, maybe, they\'ll make Garfield 3.
• Morven Crumlish is a short story writer
morvenc@googlemail.com
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/05/dogs-obama-puppy
