Ask A Genius 1146: House-Sitting for a Neighbourino
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/11/09
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, I am house-sitting. I’m taking care of two dogs. I should specify—I love animals after taking care of these dogs, but I think I prefer being without them, except maybe a cat or two. So, my thought about this is that I like animals. I enjoy living with dogs, but their repertoire is limited. As you’d expect, they don’t have fingers. They can’t do all the things they do, which isn’t much—they have to do everything with their mouths.
Rick Rosner: And so, one dog here, you’ve met our dogs.
Jacobsen: Yes.
Rosner: The dumber dog maybe knows zero words. It knows…
Jacobsen: that one surprised me on dumper and looked at me like, “Hey, why are you here?” And I’m asking, “Why are you here?”
Rosner: Yes. That dog was never raised among other dogs, was never expected to respond to commands, is part whippet, and what the fuck else? Probably not a Chihuahua. It is skittish and isn’t built for learning anything. Plus, we’re lazy as fuck. I was discussing this at Rosh Hashanah dinner with someone working for a powerful show business couple. They have a person in charge of training their dogs.
And that backs up my point that regular people don’t have the time or the patience to do the excellent job of dog training, which one would need to get dogs who act like trained dogs.
Our other dog knows many things—the little white one. But whether she chooses to listen that’s a different matter. She’s an asshole. If she is upstairs and has to pee, she might not go downstairs because it’s a pain. So, she’ll pee on the carpet. It’s not a “fuck you.” It’s just that she had to pee.
And, so I’m writing this—you don’t know the secret of my novel. It’s about a dog.
Jacobsen: Did the answer to 42 come up?
Rosner: No, it didn’t. Well, probably not.
Jacobsen: No. No. No. It’s a dog, so it’s backwards. The answer is 24. God.
Rosner: Anyway, I’m not a fan of 42 because it’s six times seven, which adds up to 13, which makes me nervous. You don’t have to be. It’s not God, it’s dog. So it’s 24. Anyway, pets don’t have that much going on. And if they do have things going on—monkeys, for example—they still don’t have that much going on. What they do have is dangerous as fuck. You might make a wrong move, and they might bite your face off.
You’ve worked with horses. Horses don’t have that much going on either. You can train them. You must train them because they’re part of your job. Yes, if you’ve got a job that involves horses. But, even raccoons, you’d think they’d be smarter because they have fingers. Squirrels have fingers. Squirrels are pretty fun. They’re pricks, however. They’re always fucking around.
They love to joke around. They play pranks and tease dogs and maybe people. But yes, animals are no substitute for the sophistication of people. But they are pretty lovable, especially dogs because their whole deal is to be loved. My temperament aligns more with cats, but I can get along with most medium-sized dogs. It’s the tiny dogs, though, because when you want to walk them, they give up.
Our dogs don’t get walked anymore.
Jacobsen: I walk these two dogs twice daily. They’re nice around the block, but I try to make it a brisk walk because I try to do that and get back to whatever the hell I was doing. And it’s good for them to have short and rapid walks because they won’t get high intensity. So, they drag ass.
Rosner: I’ve read that humans have a deficiency that animals don’t. For us to stay in shape, we have to work at it. Animals—dogs, horses, and I assume cats, and what the fuck else—probably most mammals and maybe reptiles, they stay buff for no reason. They don’t have to exercise to stay in shape.
So that seems like a bullshitty thing for humans, that we have to do that. But it makes sense.
If we’re going to live sedentary lives using our minds, maybe the built-in buffs weren’t conserved evolutionarily over history. I don’t fucking know. But it’s a pain to have to work out every day when your fucking dog can stay ripped for nothing. Those are my thoughts.
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. ©Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use or duplication of material without express permission from Scott Douglas Jacobsen strictly prohibited, excerpts and links must use full credit to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with direction to the original content.
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