On falling in love with a frankfurter dog

Adoption anxieties abated, dog ownership ends up being “as good as it gets.”

As I begin to write this, there’s a footlong(-ish) dog holding her rawhide chew innocently as a child would hold the stick of a lollipop. With a toothsome grin, she chomps happily at the stick of dried cow’s skin like a kid who’s only a few final licks away from the center of a Tootsie Pop. I feel like a parent worrying about whether her child would crack a tooth on the lollipop or have the Tootsie center get stuck in her teeth, begging an enormous dental bill for cavities down the line. Comparably, I am also worried that this 10-pound creature, overzealous, might inhale an under-chewed piece of her little snack and set me back $1,000 in medical bills for an intestinal tear.

I think back to a few days ago, as this southern belle named Snickers experienced her first snowfall in New England and hated every minute of it — how I carried her to the stray patches of boot-plowed grass, begged her to crap on the concrete (which she did) and, begged her to pee somewhere, anywhere (which she did — but in a less acceptable fashion). I’m used to dealing with other people’s shit in a figurative sense. This is the first time I’ve had to deal with anyone’s shit in the literal sense. But until that moment a few days ago, I had a hypothesis that Snickers wouldn’t pee if she couldn’t get into her desired position on the ground, that so long as she was being carried, she would hold it in. After having no…