Man's (and a 13 Year Old Girl's) Best Friend

I’m a dog-lover, as you can tell from my Ode to Lucy, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t wondered why dogs are the lucky animals to which we domesticate.  Why did we choose dogs?  Why are canines the species we feed, we house, we kiss, we cuddle, we love?  Why don’t we own and love a mountain lion, an armadillo, a kangaroo?  I know there is the occasional man or woman who owns a chimpanzee or another strange animal, but typically our houses are filled with dogs, cats, birds, and/or reptiles.  Why?  That’s what I’m trying to figure out.

My sister and I posing with Lucy as
she graduated her training class

I’m thinking that maybe dogs have become our pets over time because of how sweet they are.  I just recently came home from dinner and let Lucy out of her cage.  She was jumping around and around, her tail wagging 100 miles per hour, her face full of joy to see me and my family come back home.  I opened the cage and she came right up to me, kissing my face, bringing even more happiness into my heart with each lick.  I brought her outside so she could do her business and she came right back to me once again, licking me and trying to get as close to me as possible.  It was absolutely adorable.  It’s because of this behavior, this love dog’s feel for their people, that I can see why humans long ago chose dogs as their companions.  Because of their loyalty, their affection.  Dogs make the world go round.

Me and Annie

However, just because my dog and my friends’ dogs are all happy and sweet creatures, that doesn’t mean every single dog is.  In fact, there are many dogs that are mean and growling.  Some dogs were just born with hating dispositions, and some grew up that way because of their environment and the people who raise them.  Dogs can be mean.

Lucy! ...with a lot of hair!

It’s that reason that triggers my uncertainty on the subject.  Some dogs are the best things in the entire world…  Others are the meanest things in the entire world…  But, that’s the same thing with any animal, I presume.  Even people.  There are saints, and there are serial killers (scary!).  There are many different kinds of people and animals.  Us humans tend to draw to the happy dogs and cheerful cats.  That’s just a fact.  I just finished a book called A Dog’s Purpose and loved it.  It touched my heart as you enter the mind of a dog that goes through many lives, touching the many humans he came in contact with during his life.  It was an amazingly written book that I would recommend to any dog lover.  My Lucy is my Lucy, my litter mate (okay, not really but we wrestle like it), my schnoodle who definitely, absolutely, positively loves her life.  And I love her for that.