Here’s something you may not know: The state of Massachusetts has the lowest rate of dog ownership in the entire United States. Only 22% of households in Massachusetts have a dog, while for the country as a whole 66% of households have a dog.
This certainly doesn’t mean that people in Massachusetts don’t like dogs. Rather, it’s how the population is spread out, or more accurately, not spread out. About 2/3 of all Massachusetts residents live in the greater Boston area, and 91% of Massachusetts residents live in urban areas; and although you can usually have dogs wherever you might live, it sure is a lot easier to take care of a dog if you don’t live in a densely populated area.
Jay lived part time in New York City about twelve years ago, in the financial district, and one thing we always marveled at was the number of people out at 6AM walking their dogs. In fact, that was how we recognized people–we knew people by their dogs…“Hey, here comes the guy with the overweight pug”…. “There’s the lady with the two labs”, etc.
And every one of these people had to get up around 5AM, take their dogs for a 20 minute walk, scoop up the dog’s poop multiple times, then go to work, and repeat the procedure around lunch and dinner time, with maybe a last walk in the evening. Or hire someone to do it! This person probably loved his dog, but it sure looked like a big hassle.
Now compare that to us, living in Central Massachusetts, which is pretty much the opposite of New York City. We have dogs, and all we have to do with them is feed them once a day, and they’re all set. They have a very large yard to play in, bounded by an invisible fence, and a dog door to get in and out of the house. Sure we have vet bills, and dog food for 4 makes the 111 Chop House look like a bargain, but overall it sure is a whole lot easier than having a dog in the city.
However, we are doing our part to increase dog ownership figures for Massachusetts. We recently took in a fourth dog, that came with the appropriate name of Shadow, since she follows us everywhere, and often we don’t even know she’s there. A much more appropriate name would be Pesty.
Shadow’s mission in life, perhaps because she’s part Border Collie, is to catch tennis balls, a duty she takes to a ridiculous extreme. She will retrieve balls as long as someone is willing to throw them, or in Jay’s case, to hit them with a tennis racquet to make her run further and thus take longer to bring the ball back. She will run full speed to get the ball, and then trot back with it, eventually laying it at our feet. Then, she’ll back up a few steps, and just stare at the ball until me or someone else picks it up and throws it again.
If we are indoors, and I haven’t picked it up in about a minute, she’ll pick it up again, and drop it on my lap, back up three steps again, and stare. If that doesn’t do the trick, in about another minute, she’ll pick it up yet again and drop it again, but in less convenient places, such as in Jay’s coffee cup (this has happened a number of times).
The point is that she is truly relentless. She’s like the Terminator as a dog….she just won’t stop, ever. Whenever someone is in the hot tub, Shadow finds either tennis balls or her frisbee, and drops them, splash, right in to the tub. The other day Jay was sitting in the hot tub in the middle of the day, trying to loosen up his back, and Shadow was doing her usual, dropping tennis balls into the tub, when he realized that she was dropping new, dry tennis balls into the tub. She had actually climbed up into his tennis bag, which was on a table, and was bringing out the newest, used-once balls, and dropping them in the hot tub.
So this is it for us for dogs. Four is enough, and five is considered by the state to be an official kennel, with all the costs, rules, and bureaucracy that entails.
