Puppy Love

So apparently, I'm a cliché. I was running our small dog Jax around the puppy park recently, repeatedly fencing the automatic first question from every other dog-owner – “Is he a rescue?” As I only recently became a first-time “fur-daddy” (you have permission to thump me if I ever repeat that phrase without thick irony and a mock retch), I don't know if this rote inquisition is a predominantly Brighton thing, evidence of how woke we all are here, or whether dog lovers everywhere instantly invoke this gauge on how good a person you are – are you a trophy hunter or a selfless martyr to the canine cause?... a conceited show-boater or regular Joan of Bark?
I still don't know exactly how to answer this. Did I “rescue” him? I mean I didn't drag him coughing from a burning building, wrestle him from the jaws of a crocodile or spirit him from the clutches of a vicious cockney dog-fighting ring. Although the hideous red faux-leather, studded collar his previous owner had him in could probably be considered abuse, I think he'd been loved, if a little neglected (reading between the lines...and finding fleas). He certainly wasn't bred for sale in a puppy farm or if he was, at nearly nine months when I got him he was last season's stock on final clearance. 

Rescue or no, my partner views his deliverance to us as verging on the heroic because I woke early, boshed half a pack of paracetamol for my chronically bad back and drove the nearly 500 mile round trip to bring him back from furthest Wales, but I don't tell Brightonians this, lest they pelt me with quinoa for the selfishness of my carbon footprint. 

Anyway, back to the cliché part. Out and about with Jax, I quickly found myself navigating a new minefield of etiquette. Socialising a young dog, I was reminded of the early days of parenting, perpetually hovering around my toddling son as he interacted with other kids, ready to apologise virtuously for any toy snatching or occasional biting, only now the apologies were for spontaneous barking and unsolicited, somewhat comical attempts at humping. (Judging from his first few dalliances, we assumed he was gay. Then he branched out and we thought he must be bi.... Then he tried to fuck a sofa cushion and we realised he just needed neutering...) Whilst excusing his randiness and my own inexperience at managing it, I mentioned we'd only had him three weeks and another owner chuckled knowingly and said “Oh, a lockdown pup”. I later found out this was indeed a thing. 

The events of the last year have seen a huge rise in the purchase and adoption of dogs, as millions of people find themselves stuck at home with time to kill and a presumably increased yearning for companionship. The unfortunate fallout is many thousands of dogs are now needing to be re-re-homed as their new owners return to work or find they don't actually like the sofa cushions being fucked. We feel fortunate Jax seems remarkably well adjusted, someone's always home and our sofa cushions have removable, washable covers. He's staying. When my son's in bed, Jax curls up between me and my partner and we nuzzle his neck, our hands vying for the soft fur on his tummy (oh my god, I'm such a freaking fur-daddy...). We both marvel at how this scruffy little thing with twice as many legs as either one of us, who speaks not-a-jot of human and understands even less about Brexit than the majority of people who voted on it could so quickly have assimilated himself into and improved our lives with his love, loyalty and crumb-sweeping antics. Despite having his world upended just a few months ago, some 250 miles away, he seems as genuinely happy to be with us as we are with him – of course he won't ever be accompanying us to DFS, but by all accounts he's one of the family.
Though the revelation seems novel to me, the fact that dogs rock is apparently no secret. 

It's estimated one in four UK households have at least one. Our best friend also appears to be our oldest. DNA research published last year into the genomes of 27 ancient dog remains concluded canine domestication can definitively be traced back at least 11 millennia to the end of the last ice age – other researchers suggests we look twice as far back to pinpoint the first time someone luzzed a stick and yelled “fetch”. This predates the domestication of any other species of animal and may explain why this article isn't about my stick insect trying to mount our chaise longue.
Diverging in all their shapes and sizes from a now extinct species of gray wolf, evidence suggests in the case of dogs it wasn't survival of the fittest, but the friendliest. As occasional predators of ancient humans, as well as competitors for some of their hard-fought sustenance, the all-but untameable wild wolves were a far cry from the instagram-adorning, handbag-riding pooches of today, but at some point it's thought the rare less-snarly one crept closer to the fire and got thrown a scrap or two from the day's catch. Realising a whole heap of labour-intensive, frequently fruitless hunting could be bypassed with the judicious application of the old “puppy eyes”, the ears dropped, the tails started wagging and a few thousand years later i'm apologising for my pet trying to impregnate a startled pedestrian's leather boot.

My son certainly never tried that, but then I guess this is the “new normal”.