Toby
Toby, Toby, Toby…..
Not exactly a name that strikes fear into the hearts and minds of men.
Toby is the name of that one dog.
You know the one.
The dog that’s impossible to love.
The pathetic little shit that’s a mutt but for whatever reason, can’t conjure any warmth or mirth or joy from any human. You’d easier draw blood from stone.
The dog that can bark for nine hours straight at a pine cone.
The one that you take on an hour walk through the nicest dog park and who shits on your carpet the minute you walk back into the house.
The kind of useless asshat of a dog who literally barks at the wind at 2:30am but when bigger more aggressive dogs are around him in the dog park will roll over and let an impeccably groomed standard schnauzer fuck him in the ear.
And you could get up and stop it but that’s your dog.
Children are independent agents.
You don’t get to choose your family and you can’t control your friends.
Your pet though, is an absolute reflection of who you are as a person and your dumb fuck of a dog lets other dogs fuck him in the ear at the dog park. Descended from wolves? Ha! Remember when your friends said a rescued mutt would be an undeniable pussy magnet? Look around you. Are you drowning in pussy? Are you ready for that life-vest yet? Or is your life distinctly pussy free. Every cute athletic girl here who you’ve been trying to chat up just watched your very male dog get gangbanged.
In the ear.
Oh good.
Now that that train has left the station you can go scoop him up and try to save face as the comforting doggy dad who’s so sorry that happened to pathetic Toby. Make those big mean dogs feel bad about themselves.
Make their owners feel bad too that their pets are rapists.
How exactly does consent work between dogs?
Oh wait. Nope. The three legged cavalier King Charles spaniel is going over. Oh they’re sniffing…. is he finally making a friend? Nope. No, Muffin the three legged dog is peeing on Toby’s head now. He is literally now her property.
Did you do this to this dog? Is this dog completely devoid of personality and self respect because he’s mirroring his masters behavior? Was he this broken when you got him from the shelter? Is that in his paperwork somewhere? Did someone fail to mention this to you?
No. No it’s you.
You got this creature for all the wrong reasons. You watched one to many videos from ‘The Dodo’.
You follow too many celebrity pets on Instagram.
You follow too many random pets on Instagram.
You were never properly socialized and in the age on Bumble and Tinder and technological etiquette which was not part of any curriculum at any institution you matriculated through, you’re now realizing that this is yes, a living breathing animal. It feels pain and they can suffer psychological trauma like most animals.
You’re sitting at home now realizing two square meals a day, one walk in the evening and intermittent playtime does not a fulfilled dog life make. People like you are the reason poor fucks like Toby wind up abandoned at shelters. Why they end up dysfunctional.
Devoid of character.
You finally start to pay attention.
Read a book about it.
Or two.
Or three.
You ask the vet to refer you to an animal behaviorist. Like everything else you care about you start to carve out time dedicated to Toby. The ‘how’ and ‘why’ that led to the circumstances of Toby’s time confined to a shelter and mankind’s evolving attitudes towards pets and animals become more and more clear to you. Dogs are directly a result of human engineering. We fostered that relationship. It was our first technological achievement. Forget tools. Ravens and Crows use tools. So do Otters and Chimpanzees. No other creature has fostered and genetically engineered the traits of another animal for personal and sometimes symbiotic gain. Dogs were the first animal we did this too. Before cows and pigs and chickens for consumption, some 15,000 to 100,000 years ago, dogs helped man conquer the planet so fully. The rest is history.
Here we are. Puppy mills. Dog fighting. Dog meat markets. Continued trait-specific breeding.
Generally irresponsible behavior in the way of implied ownership if you subscribe to the idea that one living thing can own another.
That life won’t self correct.
That in the infinite unknown of science and chemistry and physics and how energies interact that aside from finding a way, life, self-corrects.
It may not be tidy or pleasant, and as the ones who inflicted our will so decidedly on an unconsenting party, the fallout over a millennia of shaping something in our markedly questionable image will be something to behold.
Especially to those who become more self aware of it and try to correct themselves…. and also to those who avidly deny it.
Even as shelters continue to overflow with pets in need.
Even as stories of abandoned dogs forming wild packs, menacing rural areas and neighborhoods abounds.
Even as dog fighting though outlawed continues.
Even as improperly raised and trained dogs attack people and children and other unsuspecting pets, not with great frequency but enough so that even a single instance is troubling…
Un-fucking ones self is a long and arduous process.
You and Toby are a start. A beginning, however small, to play your part in righting a multitude of wrongs.
You might not have been the one who abandoned him, or abused him, or failed to raise and train him but humans bear a shared responsibility here. This poor dumb fuck is as much your fault and responsibility as anything else.
Maybe symbiosis is possible.
Maybe Toby no longer acquiesces to others around him only to act out in ways forcing you to self correct.
Maybe you learn something about yourself and how you move through this life, this world.
And for fucks sake, do away with the name Toby.
Justin Challenger 