Kate Zambreno

The dogs torture me.

I am struggling to unscramble my brain in the heat so I can untangle the idea of dog culture, and I can hear them. There must be at least thirty hounds in this three-level apartment building, and they yelp and howl the night long: bored, scared, left-alone dogs trapped in urban space, communing their cacophony of bewilderment.

Nights are the worst. Little nails scramble across the floor above. I count at least three lap dogs, those furry little beasts that you could easily dropkick like a football. The pit bull chained in the backyard that does not get along with his neighbor on the other side of the fence, jangling chains pacing back and forth, boasting in alpha barks.

And then there's Lucky. I know the pooch's name is Lucky, because I hear it called at three in the morning. When I hear the cries "Lucky! Lucky!" I know they're not describing me. Lucky is an instigator. He barks so incessantly that he gets all the other dogs wound up. He seems to be going through some personal issues as well--the woman downstairs just had a baby, so Lucky gets to sleep outdoors.

When I moved into this Wicker Park greystone a couple months ago, I wondered why the rent was so reasonable. Now I know. It's not an apartment--it's a kennel. In my mind I sic the cops on my neighbors, the dog owners, every night. But in reality all I do is yelp myself. "Please be quiet!" I moan feebly while lying in bed, which only sets off more barking.

"Are you an animal lover?" the daughter of the building owner asked me when I moved in. Oh yes, I adore dogs, I assured her. I don't necessarily want a furry ball of love all to myself, but who doesn't like dogs?

And now what have things come to? My roommate and I seriously considered throwing Lucky a wad of bologna with a nice fat Valium wrapped inside one particularly sleep-deprived evening. We make jokes, sick revenge fantasies about what we'd like to do with these darling Fidos. Mmm... Hot dogs. Canine kabobs. Hushed puppies. It's all in jest, but these dog days, and especially, dog nights, leave me wondering at our four-legged neighbors and the humans that love them.

Dogs are everywhere you look in Chicago. When nine-to-fivers get home from work, sidewalks teem with every breed imaginable, especially in dog metropoli like Lincoln Park, or Wicker Park, where I live. Athletic couples whose golden retrievers take them for a run. A businessman with two Yorkies trailing behind. The sleek soccer mom with her Weimaraner.

There's the old saying that people start to look like their dogs, but I think it's actually that we choose pets that resemble us in some way. There's the indie-rock dog, say, usually a blue-heeler or some weird mix. The cute girl with the cute schnauzer or Yorkie, with their little drunk eyes. The yuppie couple with their yuppie Lab. You know an area's become gentrified by the number of doggie specialty stores popping up. It seems that the whole city's gone to the dogs.

But has it? How can we figure the canine per human ratio? "It's like trying to pin down a blob when you try to pin down the number of dogs in the city," an Anti-Cruelty Society source informs me. Dr. Dan Parmer, administrator for the Cook County Department of Animal and Rabies Control, has more exact statistics. In 2001, 180,000 dogs were vaccinated in the city of Chicago, while 17,000 were licensed. But that doesn't tell us how many dogs in total roam the City in a Garden.

Dr. Parmer does some quick math. If you figure there's at least two million, eight hundred thousand people in the city, and an average of three to four people per abode, that makes about 700,000 households in Chicago. Even though many households don't own dogs, if you average one dog per household, that's 700,000 dogs in the city. A lot of households own two and three dogs. The statistical average, says Parmer, is probably more like 1.5 dogs per household. Which would make one million hounds afoot in the city. About one dog for every three people. That's a frickin' lot of dogs, but many of those are strays, notes Parmer. "People are irresponsible pet owners," he says. "They want dogs, then they don't want them, then they set them loose in the city."

But why do urbanites want dogs, especially high-rise dwellers who have to accompany their canine to piss on the concrete? Is there any logical explanation for this monstrous case of puppy love on the level of mass hysteria? There's the common answer that the dogs provide companionship. An article in a pet publication on the topic of "Pets and the City" (will these Candace Bushnell references never end?) quotes one Cis Frankel, Chicago author of "Urban Dog: The Ultimate Street Smarts Training Manual." Although there's more challenge in raising a dog in the city, she says, dogs can actually help navigate city existence. "You never feel alone. You can always go out for Starbucks with your dog," she says. Plus, it's easier to meet new people when you're out walking Fifi or Fido.

I have known some dogs in my life. And dog owners. As I see it, there are two kinds of people--people who own dogs or want to and people who don't and really wouldn't, thank you. Owners will defend their four-legged family member, their best friend, to the death. They are fiercely passionate about their pound retrievals, posting pictures of their pets on their cubicle, all red eyes and caught-on-the-snuff expressions. They ascribe human qualities to their pets--empathy, mischievousness, depression.

A former roommate of mine had a tortured affair with a black Labrador. We lived in a large complex where there were other dogs, and the pack of canine citizens would roam feral around the grounds like a city dog gang, constantly realigning their hierarchy. There was the snotty Weimaraner, who was like head cheerleader, the aged Ridgeback that lolled about like Eeyore the donkey, a ditsy furball mix, and my roommate's dog, originally innocent and naive but soon toughened up in the city. My roommate would leave the dog alone for hours at a stretch, and come back to find her place--my place as well--absolutely trashed.

Finally she put the dog on Prozac. He was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, she informed me. Not Vietnam or anything, just daily missing his mistress' scent. She fed him the happy pills with spoonfuls of peanut butter. This is the same girl who in college kept a greyhound, those bony sprinters that are more horses than dogs, in a tiny studio. Poor thing. (The dog, I mean.) She came home one day to find he had devoured her IKEA couch. So she shipped the Greyhound off to some farm for Greyhounds, but soon craved further canine comfort.

This is the same girl who would say "puppy-puppy-puppy" in a high-pitched baby voice whenever she encountered dogs on the street, regardless of age. She reminded me of this waitress at a diner I worked at who bred pit bulls and always dated the biggest losers. She could never remember the ingredients in the Greek salad but could name every breed of dog in the dictionary. It's like that scene in "Manhattan," when the neurotic Woody Allen character asks the neurotic Diane Keaton character, "What kind of dog do you have?" and the Diane Keaton character says, "Oh the worst kind. A dachshund. You know, penis substitute and all."

What else besides affection substitute? Child substitute, perhaps. Maybe young, carefree urban couples are putting off having children even later, and so treat dogs like babies, testing out each other's nurturing instincts through the love monster, or bringing the dog into the relationship as a last resort or lunge toward intimacy.

I once owned a dog in the city. My boyfriend Justin's dog, really, a beautiful half-Ridgeback, half-pit named Rex. As in king. Which he was treated as in the triangulated relationship. For a few months I played house with Justin and our new child. I took Rex on walks and to the doggy park, sat outside at cafes, talking with other dog owners about things like breed and temperament, about which I knew precisely squat. I didn't grow up in a house with pets. A car hit my mother's dog when she was growing up, so she didn't want us to have to go through the same grief. We had goldfish instead. You don't grieve over things you can flush down the toilet nearly as much, she reasoned.

During my brief spell as a dog owner I appeared to live a life more ordinary, more athletic, more nurturing, more normal. Rex was sweet. He would curl up next to me as I watched "Friends" reruns. He was always happy to see me and easy to please, and he didn't come home at four in the morning reeking of Jack Daniel's and Marlboro Reds every other night. But I knew things were going downhill when I realized that I would miss the dog more than I'd miss the guy. Justin and I broke up, and he got custody. Now Rex roams in a big backyard in Texas, along with the other ex.

Right now where I am with my life, I can't even keep a plant properly watered. I had a fish a while back; it committed suicide. One day I came home and it was floundering on the welcome mat. I think he just decided to go for it, or maybe he thought the blue mat was the great wide sea--city life, perhaps, and long days being alone, was not its thing. I cannot even imagine having the time to care for another living creature beside myself. Frankel says to try borrowing a pet to see whether you are ready and willing to commit to this lifestyle change. "Can I borrow someone's dog?" I asked around the office. It was if I had asked to borrow one of my coworker's children for a day. "Why, are you trying to pick up men?" asked one of the editors. Puh-leeze. Wait, does that work?

Liz, an advertising rep and self-described "animal freak" graciously agreed to loan me Henry, her four-year-old whippet, which, I learned quickly, is a cousin to the greyhound. On a Sunday afternoon, my heart a little sore from an untimely breakup the previous day, I met Liz, Henry in tow. She packed a big duffel bag for the day--a bottle of water to hose Henry down, as whippets overheat easily, a leash, treats, plastic bags, a blanket to fold over so Henry could sit on the ground. Whippets, it turns out, have about two-percent body fat and don't sit easily.

It'll be fun, she assured me. "People smile who normally wouldn't smile. You can tell someone's personality by how they react to your dog." When she left, Henry and I took a long look at each other. He looked more like a little deer than a dog, a sleek, tiny, little gray deer. We walked around Wicker Park for a while. Sure enough, we were very popular. People made eye contact with me. They smiled as they got out of Henry's way.

People walk differently with a dog. Their chest sticks out, they look straight ahead, and they stroll, casually yet surely. They have purpose. I stopped graciously when we approached other dogs so Henry could go through the bottom-greeting ritual with them. "Is that a whippet?" a woman stopped me. "We were thinking of adopting one." Yes, they're very friendly, very good-natured, I ad-libbed. I allowed a group of children to pet Henry.

Henry was a good sport. Once I got the hang of the leash, we broke into a stride. A good-looking guy on Milwaukee Avenue grinned at me as we tried to cross the street. "So, this isn't that bad, Henry," I talked to him, periodically dumping water on his back as he shook it off. We decided to jump in the car and make our way to Wiggley Field on Sheffield, the Chuck E. Cheese of dog parks, or so I'd heard. He curled up in my car and listened patiently as I made my way through traffic and articulated my thoughts. It's not about looks, it's about personality, I told him. Personality in a dog goes a long way.

At Wiggley Field, owners who seemed to know each other sat on the bench as their dogs took their serial sniffs. One Lab puppy cowered under the bench. There, there, I patted him aimlessly. I think I was supposed to be more impressed at his vulnerability, his cuteness. Nice dog, I said. A pair of bulldogs tussled with a golden retriever and another big dog whose breed I don't know. The dog owners talked to each other through the dogs, looking straight ahead, periodically calling their names, chuckling at any spurt of activity, however small or inane. They petted each other's animals as they came to lap up water. Good boy, he's a good boy, yes he is, yes he is. I tried with Henry, but Henry and I hadn't established any easy camaraderie yet. After all, we had just met.

One of the bulldogs insisted on being a puppy-humper, so his owner took him home. "He's tired," she told the rest. "We've had a long day, haven't we, haven't we, good boy, yes, momma thinks you're a good boy." A woman answered her cell phone. "Buddy and I are at the dog park," she said. "He's having a good time." Then she proceeded to have an entire conversation on the dog, Buddy's mood, his dietary habits for the day. I moved aside before learning more about his bowels.

Henry wasn't having too much of the dog park, so we decided to check out the dog beach at Montrose Harbor. He strutted along beside me as people from a distance said to each other, "Look, it's a greyhound." Ahh, the whippet. So misunderstood. "That's a beautiful dog you have there," a man at the refreshment stand said to me. "Thank you, he's very friendly," I answered. It was mostly an alpha scene at the beach. Golden retrievers and Labs played fetch in the lake. Henry stayed on the leash and mostly watched. A few more people came up and asked me what breed he was. It's amazing how you can have an entire conversation on the particularities of an animal.

Heading home, I chatted with Henry about whatever was wandering through my mind at that given moment. While waiting for Liz to pick him up, he sat on my couch and we watched TV. Rachel broke up with Ross because he cheated on her, but they're kind of on again, off again, I filled him in. Liz had told me that when she broke up with her long-term boyfriend, she got both the dogs, Henry and Simon, a terrier mix. There's just something to be said about the company of a dog, she says. "You get love from a dog that you just don't get from anyone else. My dogs know when I've broken up with someone or if I'm bummed, they cling to me. I could have had the shittiest day and come home and they're at the door, tail wagging."

I lie awake, thinking over my day with Henry. Perhaps in the fast-paced cities, dogs become defenses against loneliness. There's something to be said about the support that a dog can provide that you just can't get from other humans. Dogs love you unconditionally with a month's supply of Alpo. They listen to you complain about your day without butting in their opinions. They don't want space or to just be friends. Dogs don't dump you.

And then they start again. Cereberus, the guard dog of Hades, the city dogs barking in my personal nighttime hell. Aka Lucky and company. Maybe it's like admiring the relationship between gooey couples from afar. Maybe there are the sweet Henrys, and other dogs, confused, bitter, biters, angry animals pissed off at the world. Maybe like there's people persons, there's dog persons, and there's people dogs. Maybe I understand the Luckys of the city.

But I still don't like them.

(2003-07-23)

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