In the Doghouse

So, I was standing in the front yard with the dog, while the dog did what dogs do in the yard.

I am not a dog person, but everyone else in my family is, and I bowed to their wishes during the pandemic and we got a dog.

While I was in charge of cleaning up all the dog hair inside the house (we also, at my insistence, got an off-brand Roomba), everyone else was in charge of the other dog things – walking, feeding, brushing, bathing, taking to the vet. This was a fairly equitable division of labor.

Then my husband got a job outside the house (we had both worked from home before), and now I stand around in the yard in the morning with the dog on a leash. We did not get a fence. Fences cost more than dogs. (At least shelter dogs. Adopt, don’t shop.)

The good thing about standing around in the yard , I have to admit – which I’ve now done through three seasons, fall, winter, spring – is I notice so many outdoor things: birds, flowers, wind, trees budding, people walking by. (Also cars driving by, construction, and things that need doing in the yard. But I digress.)

On this particular day, I noticed that my neighbors had a doghouse. I knew my neighbors had a dog, but I had never noticed the doghouse. It was obviously quite old and had not been used for some time; like us, they keep their dog inside the house.

And suddenly I remembered that, when I was growing up in the seventies – and reading books written even earlier than that, like the fifties – everybody had doghouses. Dogs lived in doghouses. I mean, the most famous cultural dog ever may be Snoopy, and he’s almost synonymous with his doghouse. Dogs lived in doghouses, and roamed in the yard, and their owners took them their dinner. No one attended to the dog every minute.

And I wondered: does anyone still have a doghouse? So as not to fall afoul of municipal codes, you couldn’t have a doghouse unless you had a fence, I’m pretty sure. Even in my own yard, I don’t think I’d be allowed to have the dog off the leash without the yard being fenced. Did everyone have fences fifty years ago? Do I just not remember this?

Let me be clear: I am not suggesting we go back to the fifties just so we can all have doghouses. I like being able to get a credit card in my own name, and nobody smoking in public places, and having had a Black president.

I just realized we’d had a complete cultural shift around dogs, and rules, and rules about dogs, and I completely missed it.

Anyway, the dog was done, and we went back inside.

Photo by Lucas Quaresma on Unsplash