Getting home for the dogs

In a search for purpose and meaning showing love and care for people and animals is sometimes all you need

Reading an article in 'The Atlantic' about how having children negatively impacts happiness, but how happiness isn’t the only thing that matters, makes me wonder how having dogs affects happiness aside from messing up your carpets.

I’m eating my breakfast as I read and the dogs are staring at my plate dribbling saliva onto the floor which I will inevitably step in when I get up and return to the kitchen.

I've recently finished a re-read of Viktor Frankl's book 'Man's Search For Meaning' which is a powerful memoir and psychological reflection on the time he spent in Nazi concentration camps.

Frankl's theory is that it isn't happiness that provides our primary motivation in life at all but purpose, a sense of meaning derived from the experiences we are confronted with, even those as inconceivably intolerable as spending time in a death camp.

Frankl argues that meaning is fundamentally derived from purposeful work, courage in the face of adversity, and the love we feel and show for others.

When reading Frankl for the first time many years ago I can remember the notion of finding purpose resonating with me, and perhaps that's why I don't remember the birth of my children ever making me feel less happy.

I went through some of the toughest challenges of my life once they had been born but I don't believe those experiences to be directly related to them and, as tough as it is spending time in a psychiatric unit it still isn't even faintly comparable to the horror that Frankl describes.

I’m thinking about all this as I put the milk back into the fridge next to a succulent piece of salmon I've just cooked specifically for the dogs.

As Daisy settles down for a sleep, Nelly, the younger dog, clambers on top of her biting at her ears.

Daisy looks at me with a long-suffering, 'Was it your idea to get this idiot?' look on her face.

'Aww I feel sorry for Daisy,' I say.

'Why do you feel sorry for her?' my daughter asks

'She’s had a hard life.'

I know as soon as the words come out that it’s nonsense.

'No, what I mean is that she had a hard start. She couldn’t see properly.'

'She didn’t know any different though, did she? Then you spent thousands of pounds on an ophthalmologist to give her the gift of sight.'

'Partial sight,' I say.

I have put an inordinate amount of love into these animals and I sometimes wonder what it’s all about.

My dentist was telling me recently that she’d like to get a dog, especially as her children are getting older and aren’t so enthusiastic about greeting her when she comes home.

'My son still rushes up and throws his arms around me when I get in,' she tells me.

'How old is he?'

'He’s 8.'

'Yes, mine don’t hug me enthusiastically these days, especially if they’ve got a hangover.'

The dogs, on the other hand, are always delighted to see me, especially if I’m carrying a dried sprat.

Philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer suggested that we love dogs so much because we recognise they’re better than us which is a theory I can get behind.

They're masters of living in the present, they demand very little, give unconditionally, and they can lick their own genitals.

Dogs are also a reminder of the inequality in relationships where they, endlessly faithful and giving, do not always receive the same treatment from their human companions.

I’ve often told my family that I see Daisy as a reincarnation of my old rescue dog, Toby to whom I did not always display the level of patience he needed and deserved.

I'm not sure I was as well equipped to own a dog then as I am now. I was younger and too self-involved to consistently prioritise the needs of an animal that had experienced a much harder start in life than me. I hadn't discovered my purpose even though he would have represented a very reasonable one so devoted was he to me, and to chasing the odd postman across the heath.

Perhaps Daisy, a short-sighted and skeletally challenged specimen, was sent to test me.

In a relentless effort to serve the animals, I consider their needs above all others, including my own most of the time.

I'm not saying it's necessarily always healthy but, since my children have grown up and need me less, I've found purpose in my work and looking after the dogs.

In his book Frankl didn't stipulate where one needs to find meaning, he just pointed out that it's necessary.

I turn down most invitations to avoid leaving them alone, and the months of lockdown were probably a greater gift for me than for them because I often think they look relieved when I put my coat on and toss them a guilt-ridden biscuit as I go through the door shouting,

'Won’t be long.'

Although I can't begin to understand what it was like for Frankl and his fellow prisoners to endure the uncertainty of not knowing whether today might be their last, it was clear that Frankl valued kindness and humanity as both a gift to others and oneself.

An often misunderstood truth about love is that one only has to show it in order to feel it.

Whilst sniping at those we disagree with, shouting anonymous foul-mouthed obscenities to people on the internet, or hoping for bad things to befall people we don't like, we might labour under the illusion that all this makes us feel good, but it doesn't.

Dogs apparently understand this instinctively, which is perhaps why they are so willing in their shows of affection, although the salmon in the fridge may have something to do with it.

Recently I have been having a lot of anxiety dreams where I’m sitting in the toilet thinking that the doors are closed but then realising that everyone passing by can see in and is laughing at me.

In the dreams, I feel alone, isolated, like an outlier.

Then I wake up unable to move my arms and, in a moment of panic, realise that it’s only because the dogs are lying on them, snuggled close to keep warm.

’Sideways’ will be back next week with an episode on the merits of ‘Living on your own’ as so many people in early recovery seem impatient to get into new relationships.

That’s all for this week. Thanks for being here, I appreciate you.

See you next time.