Please forgive me, my furry friends (my dogs, I mean), but I’m not so sure how I feel about you anymore. I know we have a lot of fond memories, from that time you lovingly kept me company while I was crying (although the ball you kept dropping at my feet was an odd gesture), and all those times you looked at me plainly as I desperately yelled your name before running further away on our walks together. At the end of the day, you always had my back (or at least a chunk of it after that time you jumped at me while I was having a boogie in the kitchen), but over the years I’ve come to doubt your intentions. I feel like you only seem to have time for me when I can offer you something, or distract you when you’re bored. How come you never bring me food? Or take me for walks? I’ve come to realise our relationship is one-sided, and I think it’s time to break up.

“Valentine’s is coming up, which means it’s about time we assess the love in our lives and what it means to us”

Valentine’s is coming up, which means it’s about time we assess the love in our lives and what it means to us. For me, that came with the question of whether dogs truly are man’s best friend, or if we’re just those weird beings that sort of stole them from nature and locked them in our houses but gave them free food, toys, shelter, safety and healthcare – so I guess it evened out into a Stockholm syndrome-esque friendship in the end.

Having grown up in a household with an average of 2 dogs around at all times, I’ve never known a life without pets. I grew up privileged with 24/7 access to huggable walking balls of fluff, with barely any of the responsibilities of pets, as my parents bore the brunt of the dog. However, despite my love for my dogs as a child, this love was most certainly not reciprocated. My mum was definitely the dogs’ favourite, probably followed by my dad and my sisters, then me. I don’t really know where it all went wrong, although perhaps years of accidentally being referred to by the dogs’ names by my mum (but never the other way round) may have made me bitter to them. My strict no-dog-in-the-bed policy after facing too many cold nights with 90% of the duvet taken up by an unmovable creature 10% the size of it probably didn’t put me in my dogs’ good books. And in comparison to my sisters’ constant treat-giving sneaks to win their canine attention, I think somewhere along the line I became the weird roommate to my dogs, rather than their beloved best friend.

Don’t feel too sorry for me though, for how can we even be sure the dogs really love my siblings more than me, or that they love at all? Even humans struggle with the concept of love, so I’m not really sure how Misty, silver miniature poodle aged 12, is going to find it. Do they even recognise me as an individual specific being? Or am I just another caretaker in their confined shelter, who provides them with fewer amenities and hence has less value? Why do we even care if our dogs love us back in the first place? I love my houseplant Jade, but I don’t expect her to love me back, so why are my expectations any different for my canine pals? Although, if Bunny the TikTok dog has shown us anything, it’s that dogs seemingly have significant cognitive capabilities, so are probably likely to appreciate me as a person more than Jade ever will, but I’ll probably keep watering her anyway.

I think one of the reasons we feel obliged to assume our pets love us back as much as we do is because there’s something rather uncomfortable about the idea of having a pet, yet not being sure the pet is as invested in being your pet. If Misty loves me back, and I’m providing her with everything she needs to lead a happy life, then she’s probably okay with being domesticated...right?

“Even humans struggle with the concept of love, so I’m not really sure how Misty, silver miniature poodle aged 12, is going to find it”

The ugly truth about dogs is that in domesticating this species from wild wolves and coaxing them into joining our pack, we invited them into an awkward power dynamic for cultivating a healthy relationship. Our obsession with ‘pedigree’ dogs, selective breeding and manipulating their traits to create increasingly Frankensteinian variations has led to the generation of breeds such as pugs: born riddled with diseases that fill their lungs with mucus and squeeze their brains into skulls a size too small. Yet for humans, dogs provide a significant number of services to our species, from improving our physical and mental wellbeing, to community services as assistant dogs for the disabled and bomb-sniffers for the military. Maybe in the early stages of our relationship our behaviours were more even; we provided food and shelter for them while they provided protection and manual labour for us. But at this point, it’s starting to feel like our relationship with dogs is becoming a little unbalanced.

In the future, I’ll most likely avoid keeping a dog as a pet, maybe because I disagree with the ethics, or maybe because I’m too lazy to hoover my house constantly to avoid mountains of fur building up on the stairs. Either way – I think I can forgive my childhood dogs for not loving me back, and will continue to eagerly smother them with hugs much to their distaste during my visits home. Regardless of my decision, I can trust my mum and older sister will shower their respective dogs with more love and attention this Valentine’s than they have ever given to me (why don’t you ever scratch my back, Jenny?), so I imagine they’re probably doing just fine.