My dog disappoints me. I don’t feel good about this. I am disappointed in myself for being disappointed in him. But I can’t help feeling that he should have wised up a bit by now. He is nearly four, after all, which in human years puts him in his mid-20s. I expect more from him.
An example: he growls at brooms. He has been growling at brooms ever since I first wielded one in his presence when he was a puppy. It was sweet then; how I laughed. Well, I am not laughing now. Because, having seen the broom in action most days of his life, and never once having been harmed by it, he ought to have cottoned on to the fact that brooms are fine. As are, among other things, vacuum cleaners, wheelbarrows and blokes wearing turbans – growls towards those in the third category being particularly embarrassing.
Don’t get me wrong: I am a reasonable man, so I can forgive the frantic chasing in vain of cats, squirrels and rabbits, and the odd growl-off with other dogs. He needs to get his kicks somewhere and I am all for a bit of feeble-minded fun. But the other stuff I am just not having.
He has a thing about parents carrying small children. I once figured this is because what he sees is a two-headed human. Again, all very sweet when he was a puppy – amused apologies all round, no offence taken. But, on some level, I must have assumed that, by now, it would have dawned on him that it is just a tall person holding a small person. Maybe he needs glasses.
I put my unreasonable expectations down to my inexperience as a dog owner. My only previous history of raising animals was with human children, who are different. As a toddler, my daughter announced that, when she grew up, she wanted to be a butterfly, which was sweet and funny. If she was still saying that she wanted to be a butterfly, now that she – like my dog – is in her mid-20s, it would be a problem. She has learned, you see, thanks in no small part to my good parenting, that she will not and cannot ever be a butterfly. Clearly, I am better at raising children than dogs.
• Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster, writer and Guardian columnist
