The Year that I Read Dog Books

Was I a dog person before I was a butter person?

When did I become a dog person?

My new apartment is not the nicest place in the world. I have to make it home, I know, but in the short term it kind of sucks. I'm not going to lie. I'm a little mad at my dogs. Maybe mad isn't the right word. How about bitter? If not for them, after all, I wouldn't be here.

I was in prison for a long time. Do you know how many books I read while I was in prison? I counted. 2,384. Sure, a lot of it was Star Wars novels and things like that. Then one day, I read A Boy and His Dog. Sure, it's a strange little science fiction story. But that kicked off what I call The Year that I Read Dog Books, and I developed a little fantasy about getting out of prison and adopting a couple dogs and becoming Curt Jimenez, Dog Person. Or something like that. It was 1986.

I think you have to be a dreamer to get through prison time. I did anyways. Remember, I was 18 when I did what I did, and my life up to that point wasn't necessarily something that I was able to think about returning to. I was a kid when all that crazy stuff happened, you know? I had to invent a life in my head that would be my destination once I paid my debt to society. And the best I could come up with at the time was having a couple of dogs. I couldn't conceive of myself in a serious relationship with a woman. I never really felt adult enough to think about having kids. I didn't hunt or fish. I was terrible at sports. I didn't really consider butter making a serious hobby at the time, and I wasn't writing yet.

But dogs, I could handle dogs, I thought.

I read everything Jack London ever wrote. I read and read. I reread. I read Sounder, and Old Yeller, and Where the Red Fern Grows. I read dog training books, and drew small dogs on my body in ballpoint pen.

I ranked my favorite breeds of dogs, and logged their best and worst features. You won't believe this, but my fellow inmates started calling me Dogman, sometimes just Dog. I'm not sure that it was in a nice way. I think most of them always thought I was a little off.

But The Year that I Read Dog Books ended as inauspiciously as it began. And I moved on to other things, i.e., the year I Read the French Existentialists, and The Year I Was Into Mystic Poetry. And there were others. And dogs faded into the periphery in my fantasies.

But I finally got out, and I needed something.

And I adopted Stella.

And then Warden.

And then I realized how hard it is to be a dog owner.

And then Stella died.

And then I adopted Regrette.

And here I am in my near windowless, filthy apartment, staring at the drab walls while Warden drinks out of the toilet and licks my face and Regrette squats and pees in the corner.

Perhaps I should have given myself to the existentialists, or the mystic poets.