It’s been awhile now since I’ve taken Siri to paper and gotten my thoughts out. I haven’t meant to be remiss, it’s just that I’ve found myself drowning in the depths of a melancholy so all-encompassing that I’ve hardly had the energy to even squeak my fuzzy squirrel more than a time or two before losing interest. I know for most, depression is like a beast that comes stealthily in the night without provocation or reason. Not so with me. The cause of my despondency is clear. His name is Charlie the Dogblin.

Charlie isn’t new to this blog. I’ve covered his often repulsive behavior in previous posts. The difference now is that where I had to merely tolerate him and his simplistic existence as an occasional visitor, the two of us now share a home. That’s right, a few months prior, I would have to listen to his sad, labored breathing for as long as my friends Michael and Rebecca were in the same house, now its every waking AND sleeping minute. We’ve become like that sitcom couple of the old, crotchety man (Charlie), and the cool hep guy (me). Just call us the Odd Couple. No, call us the Dog Couple. No, let’s go with Odd Couple.

My ennui isn’t a result of the trivial things that you are probably thinking.

List of Things NOT Causing Space’s Heaviness of Heart:

Sharing my friend, Mike’s, attention - Look, I decide when I want attention, and then I look at Mike and he does this annoying baby talk thing and gives me some scritches behind the ears.

Fewer scraps - Actually, my scrap intake has increased exponentially since the move.It’s disgusting how much food falls out of Charlie’s mouth. But I eat it.

Sharing human leading responsibilities on walks - Annoying, I’ll admit. Ceding any control isn’t easy for me, but at least my daily 2 minute squat on the most meticulously selected patch of grass is kept sacred.

Sure, this is all enough to irk any canine. As is his mouth-breathing habit, but I’ve already discoursed upon that on these pages far more than it warrants.

Here’s Charlie Dogblin'ing It Up. Look at that snout! Now imagine the smells and sounds emanating from it.

Instead, what troubles me most is The Dogblin’s deep-seeded desire to please others. It’s as if, aside from the essentials like food and pooping, he’s driven entirely by what gets him the most human attention. When we’re home alone together without any humans, I swear I can hear his heart breaking in his chest over and again from lack of attention. Of course, this only makes me want to ignore him more fully.

And the lengths he’ll go to! I swear to you that not 20 steps into our morning constitutional, he’s already squatting and taking care of business, much to the delight of my perpetually rushing friends Rebecca and Mike (would it kill them to set an alarm 10 minutes sooner?). There’s a lot of things I’ll do for a treat, but no sir, I won’t do that. I’ll go when I’m good and ready, and my walker will dutifully pick up my…leavings.

And apparently somebody somewhere once told him that he’d mastered saying the words “I love you”. Now it’s a trick he performs over and over just to get a treat. Yes. He debases himself for treats just like a circus monkey! The worst part of it is, it doesn’t even sound like “I love you”. Instead, he scrunches up his face and let’s out the saddest “a roo-roo” which sounds much more like someone filled a chihuahua full of helium and then poked it with a pin than it does “I love you”. Look!

The Dogblin says “I Love You”. I wait until the whole ordeal is complete.

Where any dignified being would feel chagrined and stop the pandering after one sad attempt, not so the Dogblin. He repeats it again and again, each time pausing to stare at the treat giver to see if he’d done it well enough. Of course he hasn’t! No, that one sounded a bit too much like “ow-roooo-ow”, which I think actually means “fresh wildebeest guts” in the Hyena dialect. I see his brain working, “That wasn’t good enough? Okay, here we go, this time for real! Rooo-rooo-row!” Repeat. How has he not realized that he could just sit and stare blankly at the humans and they will still give him the treat?!

But, still. I’m neither too naive nor in too much denial to admit that the Dogblin and I do want many of the same things from this empty thing we call life. Sometimes, I really want that treat and have done despicable, shameful things to get that sweet morsel. What, you ask? That is for another post or, more likely, for me to take to the grave with me. Yet, this, I think, gets at the crux of my woes. For all I despise about the Dogblin, mightn’t I be just a bit like him down in the deepest parts of my soul? Are not both of our lives defined solely on our lack of opposable thumbs which renders getting our own treats a near-impossibility? As I have the god given right to be aloof, hasn’t the Dogblin the right to be pitiful?

This is the source of my suffering. My brain, it will not accept that which has been given to me. The Dogblin lives from treat to treat, always so sure in his little heart that the next one he’s given will be the best thing that has ever happened to him. As many teeth-gnashed grumblings as I’ve shared with Siri about Charlie, this is a quality I find most admirable. But he’s still gross. With any luck, by the time I’m next able to speak with you, Siri, I’ll have learned a thing or two about appreciating the little things.

Finally, I just wanted to address something that has apparently been bothering some of my readers. They say I sound patronizing–that means they think I treat them as if they’re stupid–in my writings. I think they’re drooling idiots, the lot of them.

I must go now. Mike has entered the room so I must leave it.