At your service. Nah.

In my last year of grad school, at 25 and anxious to prove I could make some kind of leap into adulthood, I got a dog. I blame bourbon for the logic. I’d somehow convinced myself that caring for a dog was the baby step between caring for a houseplant and for an actual baby. I no longer have even one houseplant, but that’s another story.


The dog, a 12-pound rat terrier with 1200 pounds of stubbornness, had his own questionable logic. He couldn’t be moved by praise or reprimand or even bacon. He sat when he wanted to sit, dropped a ball only when he was done with it, used his leash as a tool for walking me. In obedience class, he bit me. In the car, he tried to drive, and once when he was thoroughly pissed off by my insistence upon steering solo, he jumped out the window. At home, he slept with half his body on my pillow and the other half on my head. 

Though he was probably content to spend most afternoons snoozing in my apartment and peeping at the neighbors through the window, I was so overwhelmed with parental-ish guilt each time I left him to go to campus or run errands, I stopped leaving him altogether. For $40, I bought a service dog vest online and took him everywhere.

But a 12-pound terrier in a service vest invariably attracts attention. People wanted to know what kind of service a 12-pound dog could possibly perform. I had done my research. I pawned him off as a participant in a pilot program for seizure-alert dogs. I said that terriers had natural alert abilities they hoped to capitalize on and give people 15 or 20 second warnings before a seizure set in. And I was careful not to overstate my dog’s skills. As he strained at the end of his lead and lunged or barked at every dog that passed by, I said I was responsible for only the beginning obedience and socialization phase, and based on his minimal progress so far, he wasn’t likely to make it to the next round of the program. In which case, I assured the now concerned inquirer, I would just keep him.

The story worked all year. I even sold it to the mother of an epileptic who peppered me with questions in an elevator. I was giving her the address for a website I’d researched when the dog lifted his leg and peed in the corner. There was an awkward pause and then the woman politely said, “I guess you have your work cut out for you.”

As I looked through my bookbag for something I could use to clean up, I admitted rat terriers might not be the right fit. “They’re trying dobermans next,” I said. I had no idea if that was true but it sounded plausible. Certainly more plausible than my 12-pound dog who then barked at a passing skateboarder as soon as the elevator doors opened. The woman wished me luck. 

I bided my time until graduation when the dog and I moved in with my parents to save money. Temporarily, I said, but even once I’d gotten my own apartment again, the dog stayed. He’s thirteen now and just as stubborn. He sleeps on my father’s head and his service vest has been retired to a box in the garage.