The Dog Culture Investigation
Seems like everybody is fucking getting dogs these days
Change is in the air, folks. Phil is in the American Southwest, Ishaan is back in Jersey City, and Graham is moving all his stuff out of Washington DC to never return. With the GIP team preoccupied, the BBT invited Jackson Strudeler, a freelance writer currently residing somewhere in the Pacific Northwest wilderness, to share his investigation into American Dog Culture. The following views expressed are those of the author and do not in any way reflect the official policy or position of the BBT.
Love,
Graham, Ishaan, Phil, and Jackson Strudeler (GIP+1)
The Dog Culture Investigation
By Jackson Strudeler, Guest Writer
April 2021
As a reader of the BBT, there’s a good chance you are a) a millennial yuppie freshly flush with cash, b) an older human who is likely a family member of the GIP team guilted into reading their content, or c) a millennial yuppie paying off student loans and not freshly flush with cash, but still painfully observing friends and coastal influencers who are. This is important. Because if you’re in Group A you likely have a dog. If you’re Groups B or C, you’re likely observing Group A and wondering why the fuck they all have a dog. And if you’re the latter of the two situations, then you and I have much in common.
It seems like everybody is fucking getting dogs these days. Your humble correspondent has been observing it for some time, even before COVID sent us all running from each other and toward electronic entertainment for stimulus which ultimately amounts to mere trivial amusement at best and nights spent lying awake and staring at the ceiling at worst. A simple line of reasoning would be that the reality of [COVID + Dogs] is greater than just [COVID] and that’s the end of it. Case closed.
But this reporter doesn’t think so. Your humble correspondent wanted to go a bit deeper because this was totally happening pre-COVID too. But back then when this reporter went searching for answers, he only received the same old generic, emotionally-charged runaround from his Group A friends: “But isn’t he just the cutest?” or “I just always wanted a little pupper.”
And now they’re all like, “Oh, because of COVID.”
So after months of agonizing over the truth, I decided I needed to pursue the matter in earnest. And being a big reader of the BBT, I decided to conduct a full investigation by crisscrossing the country in my 2013 Subaru Crosstrek that my parents got me after graduating from University of Colorado Boulder, interviewing experts and asking everyday dog cultists along the way just what the fuck is going on. And so began over a year of rigorous research, the results of which are currently awaiting publication in several big scientific journals, but the executive summary of which I provide to the readers of BBT below, free of charge. Enjoy.
Why is everyone getting dogs?
It’s not like this is completely new. The fact that dog culture in America is absolutely nuts has been well documented by scientists. I read the first section of this Economist article once as part of my research—but couldn't read any further than the first section because I don't have a subscription—and it said that in India people bend over backwards for children the same way Americans do for dogs. And I'm guessing it goes on to argue that as inhabitants of rich countries, specifically Group A-ers in the US, push off having children later and later into life, they still want to fill the void driven by hormones and brain chemicals to care for something small and cute. So they get that fur baby.
To bridge the linguist gap for any Old or Non-Native English Language readers, a 'fur baby' is a term for when your pet acts as a replacement for having a human baby, which is a thing that people from pre-21st century western culture used to pass the time between their birth and their death, in addition to raising said baby, whereupon the baby-turned-adult would pass their time by having a baby of their own and etc. A human baby, that is. Until recently.
And it’s totally different in other countries. The summer after I graduated college, long before COVID, I did a yoga retreat in India and while it was pretty tough, the first section of the Economist article proved super true. I wasn’t investigating in earnest yet, but I specifically remember that I didn’t see a single miniature dog being carried in someone’s purse the entire time I was in the rural northeast. Compare that to a major metropolitan area in the United States and you start to see the differences.
So I headed out in search of answers.
The first stop on my road trip brought me down to Salt Lake City, Utah, where I stopped in to chat with Senior Analyst Graham Steffens, a local cultural historian whose work has been published in an award-winning newspaper.
“It’s absolutely fucked,” he explained. “I’d been watching the numbers for years, they just kept rising and rising. I was sounding all kinds of alarm bells back then, but no one would listen. Of course, you saw a slight dip in 2008 with the recession, but it was barely a blip on the radar.”
Graham leaned back in the chair in his office, which doubles as his aunt’s arts and crafts studio, and loosened his tie a bit, with the tie being the draw strings of his coffee-stained Vans hoodie.
“And then there’s COVID.
“Sure, it sent the numbers through the roof. And that’s important. But the really dark thing is that this was a long time coming, this slide. Back before the pandemic I listened as one by one my college friends and new coworkers stopped talking about the cool shit they were doing on the weekends like drinking and smoking and instead talked about how their new puppy was spraying diarrhea on their wall for some reason. I don’t want to hear about that, that’s gross as hell.”
I pushed him for an answer. If this was happening before COVID, what was the cause? Why wasn’t it happening everywhere? Just why did it seem like everybody was getting dogs?
“You get a dog because you want companionship and the dog can't choose to leave you,” he suggested. “You're its owner. You can't own a human being anymore and relationships with other human beings when you don't own them can get pretty messy. Example: if you're an emotional wreck and you lose your temper and scream at a human, there's a non-zero chance they'll just leave the area, or maybe your life. A dog can't do that because it can't unlock doors for the most part. Another example of how messy human relationships can be: other humans are thinking individuals who have their own set of beliefs about how the world should be and dreams of their place in it, which are likely to conflict with yours in at least some small ways because your two lives are not exact replicas because you have entirely different life experiences because: you're two different human beings. This is scary. It raises the possibility that you might have to challenge your own beliefs and consider that another person's way of living might be more rational than your own, and this deters you from extended in-person interaction. So you avoid it, because in the modern age of smartphones, social media, and dating apps, you can. It’s easier to exercise complete control when you’re the only sentient creature in the picture. You don't live with family, because older people have radically different outlooks on life and that's annoying. You don't live with friends because your college and high school friends live far away as a result of 21st century career mobility and you don’t make new ones for the aforementioned reasons. So you live alone. But you want companionship. So you get a dog.”
But, you're arguing, I do live with my significant other, Graham. Checkmate, your argument is bullshit. I'm in a loving, stable relationship where we both support each other and we wanted a dog because dogs are fun and you're just being a judgmental dick, Graham, and you're cynical probably because you work a bunch of hours in a consulting job.
That’s what you’re saying. You, the reader. Maybe.
And so I knew I had to keep digging, getting more perspectives, more answers. I packed up my 2013 Subaru Crosstrek, which has a ton of cargo space, and headed south for the next part of my investigative journey. The weather grew warmer and the mountains turned to desert. The Crosstrek has all wheel drive which means it does pretty well in light off road conditions, but you honestly want a more aggressive tread and higher ride height if you want to really get off road: think like a Jeep Wrangler or even a Subi Forester, but I’m not mad about it because the Crosstrek is super good for most of the stuff I’m doing anyway. So before long I ended up in Phoenix, Arizona and met up with a legendary writer who goes only by the pen name “Phil.” Phil has been published more than a dozen times in a nationally renowned magazine and spends his off-time sitting in a coffee shop alone and sometimes doing manual labor.
“It’s so crazy dude,” Phil explained as we stood in line. “Yeah, some people are in a loving, stable relationship and just want to get a dog because dogs are cool. It’s a fair point. I'm not saying everyone is secretly a mess, but I do think there’s more going on here.” He ordered a latte and thanked the barista using her first name.
“Have a good one, Jen. Yeah. I come here a lot, it’s kinda my spot. Anyway, like as a human being you have so much agency and creativity about how you spend your time on earth—why are so many people doing this one specific aspect of the human experience and rubbing it in my face endlessly whenever I cruise Instagram?”
Phil sipped his coffee. “There’s just so much more out there. What I’m able to tell from reading history and shit is that over the last 4,000 years there’s been a few recurring questions that bother the human race, like ‘Am I doing the right thing?’ and ‘Does my life have real meaning?’ and ‘Will another human being ever love me?’ And if you think about it, all of these questions are sidestepped by getting a dog.
“Dogs are the Netflix of living things. They'll give you things to talk about with others, aka a personality, if you don't have anything particularly noteworthy to mention already. They tie up your time with activity, with motion. But motion is easy to confuse with progress. What if people get these dogs because they want that sense of progression in life but are so exhausted mentally and emotionally after work that the prospect of the additional work of learning something new and making meaning out of nothingness is downright paralyzing? The horror of determining the best way to pass time—are we so uncomfortable with a moment of existence not filled with instant gratification and easy pleasure that we seek to immediately fill it with something that we can always justify to ourselves and others? ‘Didn't have much time last night, had to take the dog for its shots.’ ‘Dog puked all over, can’t go out tonight, have to clean it up.’ What if we’re shooting ourselves in the foot, purposely, preemptively, because we can see the infinite possibilities that being alive and young in the year 2021 seems to string out in front of us, so close now that COVID is almost on the backpedal, but we’re too scared to take them and break the mold, and so instead we fall backwards and anchor ourselves down with an absolutely rational excuse? ‘I can't move across the country—I would have to change everything, I would have to uproot it all, and besides, what would I do with my dog?’
The barista called Phil’s name and he went to retrieve his banana nut muffin.
“Thanks Jen. Do these have raisins in them today?”
She confirmed they did.
“Nice, I love raisins.”
She said she did too. He sat back down.
“Anywho, dogs are nice because they fill the gaps in conversations at parties caused by everyone lacking any real social skills at all—they fill in that gap by being fucking adorable. So, nobody has to talk to each other, they can just talk to the space in front of them about the dog. And its cuteness—”
By this point Phil seemed to be entering a caffeine rush fueled by references to late-stage capitalism, but I did manage to understand one more line that he spoke to the empty air as I snuck out the back of the organic free-trade coffee shop.
“And so ultimately you get a dog for many of the same reasons you get a car or a house. It's a thing, and Americans love things. They idolize them. And you compare your thing to another person's thing. And that in and of itself—the comparing—is a thing. A thing that you do. Which Americans love.”
Arizona was far behind me and I began the great trek across the flyover states. I say great trek because the 2013 Subaru Crosstrek, despite its size, still gets about 33 miles per gallon on the highway. Despite the fact that I know how to drive stick shift, I have an automatic because the manuals are actually less fuel efficient for the 2013 models, which is kind of crazy. But I definitely can drive stick if I need to, so it’s whatever, I’m just saving up until I can get something a little newer and faster. But I can drive stick. And so in time, the fabled east coast slid into view as I came to the end of my journey. It was ending how most cross-country tours end: in Jersey City.
My contact here was a little different than the last two. I didn’t know much about him, but I took my seat beside the shoreline and waited to meet an individual who was only described to me as Ishaan Goel, a 26-year-old Indian American who used to work for Capital One and is now on a sabbatical or something because it started as a sabbatical and then stretched into a longer length of time. I’d seen his work published in a few small, local, nationally syndicated media organizations and knew he would have the final say on the matter. In due time, an individual appeared on the horizon.
“Hey dude.”
“Yo. You Ishaan?”
“Yeah, are you Jackson?”
“Yeah. Yeah, good to meet you. Thanks for meeting me.”
“Yeah for sure dude, happy to help.”
“Yeah. I really appreciate it. I’ve got a set of structured questions, but I also want to just give you a chance to talk and stuff. You know? Then I’ll edit it down and cut all the superfluous stuff and bounce it off you before we go to print.”
“Yeah that sounds good man. I guess what’s your first question, or do you want to walk a little first?”
“Yeah let’s walk a little, I’ve been driving a lot and kinda need the stretch.”
“Ok cool, let’s walk around.”
“Cool.”
And just like that we were off. They were everywhere: Dog shops, dog parks, dogs being walked, dogs being patted, phrases like “good boy” being thrown out so often that the phrase began to lose its very meaning. What is good, I wondered? Do we humans have the right to define canine morality based on their obedience to our wishes when we build nuclear weapons and sleep with our friends’ spouses? What good has this boy truly done?
“Yeah, so what’s up with dogs anyway?” I began.
“Yeah, I know what you mean. I feel like everybody’s been fucking getting a dog lately.”
“Yes, exactly. I know exactly what you mean.”
Silence. We kept walking.
“So, do you think there’s a reason?” I asked.
“Huh?”
“A reason. A reason that everyone is fucking getting dogs.”
“Oh. Yeah, I don’t know. Maybe because of COVID?”
“Yeah, and like maybe everyone is lonely and looking for an outlet, but the outlet is ultimately empty and hollow? Something like that?”
“I don’t know about that. What’s empty about a dog? Dogs can be cool.”
“Yeah… I guess so.”
Silence.
“Yeah, but if you were to shit on someone for getting a dog—that’s kinda the theme of the article—what would you say?” I pushed.
“Oh, I wouldn’t really shit on them. I mean, it’s not for me, because I move around a lot and a bunch of other reasons, but I’m sure it makes a lot of people happy.”
“Yeah, but is there like an existential bent you can take on it? Can you make it a big diatribe against some aspect of society or the human experience for my article?”
“Oh I see. I guess I could, my friends and I do that all the time. But I don’t know, I kinda don’t mind dogs.”
“Oh,” I sighed. “Not even a little?”
“No… It’s a pretty normal thing. They can be fun, like other stuff people do. They can play fetch.”
“Yeah… that’s true.”
“And you can train them to do stuff and that’s probably pretty rewarding.”
“Do you think there could be something sinister going on, though? What if they’re secretly killing us?” I almost demanded.
He just kind of looked at me.
“Secretly killing us?”
“Yeah. Secretly… killing us. I mean, not actually killing us, but like… yeah.”
“I mean, personally I wouldn’t get one because why would I take care of something that won’t become a varsity athlete one day, you know? That’s what a kid is for. But if that’s not your goal, it could be fun.”
“Yeah… yeah.”
“And I’m not having a kid until way later in life anyway.”
We were next to the river once again. The sun was setting to our west and we watched it sink for some time before either of us said anything.
“Are you sure you don’t want to trash on them at all?” I finally asked.
“Nah, I’m good. Did you have any more questions…” he drifted off. “Or was it just the dog thing?”
“It was… just the dog thing.”
“Ah,” he replied. “I see.”
Ishaan brushed a few crumbs off his shirt. He shuffled his feet a little. I adjusted my glasses and looked at my notes.
He stood up and stretched.
“Maybe a dog is just a dog, dude.”
“Yeah. Maybe it is.”
“But you know, if you want to talk about a waste of time and money, we could talk about cars. I would never, ever get a car. I don’t get why all my friends are buying them since we graduated. Seems like everybody is fucking getting cars these days.”