In 2021, I thought a lot about dogs

Published on 6 December 2021

I grew up with cats. I was a cat person (no, not that kind). I didn't really think very much about dogs until December 2020. In 2021, I’ve thought about them all the time.

Pepsi arrived in the UK from Bulgaria in early December last year after a local shelter found her by the side of the road, next to a sackful of her puppies. A year ago today we picked her up from a service station on the M25, a few hours after learning that the car we'd rented technically didn't allow dogs. It never crossed my mind that they wouldn't but since then I’m always asking, “do they allow dogs?”.

We'd just moved house. The morning after we moved in – three months after first emailing about Pepsi – my partner wrote to the dog adoption charity with a picture of the garden, as if to say: Look! Look how qualified we are to have a dog now!

I saw in the new year with the top half of my body in her crate, pillow over the threshold, duvet pulled from the bed onto the ground. Pepsi was shaking with firework fear. I didn't feel very qualified to have a dog then.

And at first I overcompensated; I was not a dog person, but perhaps I could buy myself into it. Forty quid at the pet shop on venison bites and pigs' ears. Now we bulk buy disgusting smelling dried sprats and little sausages and fill in the gaps with yesterday's pizza crusts, pear cores and cheese rinds.

The January lockdown made no difference to us: we didn’t have any friends here, and all our old routines and habits were upended by the move anyway. But now we walked the dog, three times a day, every day. We started out just doing the same route – the strip of green two minutes from home, the local dog park. 

In February our next door neighbours asked us how we seemed to know everyone. "The dog", we said. Pepsi made friends for us, and we see the same dogs a few times a week: Alfie, Ruby, Bear, Rocco, Alice, Oakley, Luca, Inca, Loki. Their humans say hello, ask after Pepsi, share snippets of their news, chat about parking, dog poo bins, outbreaks of covid at the local school. My partner and I report on the dogs' activities to each other the way you might a child at school: "Saw Loki and Inca, they had a play. Pepsi tried to get involved then gave up."

When people ask how old she is, we like saying: "About 3. But she's a rescue so we’re not exactly sure." It makes her sound like she isn’t one of those lockdown dogs. In our minds, her arrival is tied to a house move, a garden, and a PhD – different to the 2020 pets now arriving at rescue centres up and down the country. Pepsi is too loved for me to want anyone to think she was a rash decision.

Over the past year, I have learned how to communicate with her. We have some common language: "breakfast" and "walk" are, I reckon, her favourite words, the ones that prompt her tail to spin like a helicopter. Some of our successful communication comes from anticipation (because Pepsi is a creature of routine); some comes from body language (mainly hers), and some from verbal communication (mainly ours).

Every morning we go downstairs to find her wagging at the living room door, a full rump wiggle of excitement to see us after eight hours away. Ten minutes of cuddles followed by The Question: "Would you like some breakfast?" This prompts two stretches, a few sneezes and jumps for joy.

Then there’s an hour-long walk followed by work for us and a post-walk Kong for Pepsi (the chew toy saviour of all dog owners). Like clockwork, she sleeps before the lunchtime walk, then sleeps again. She starts to nudge for dinner around half 3, but she’s forced to wait for 4.30pm. We walk again and she dozes on the sofa.

Aside from routine, successful communication comes from body language. Rolling over means belly rubs please. Snoring and what we call prawn pose means she's relaxed. Resting with her head on her paws means she’s waiting to go for a walk. And I can tell when she's about to set off into a squirrel chase by the shape of her ears. I know she feels at home because the protective barks whenever anyone approaches are so reliable that we haven't had to replace the broken doorbell.

And she understands us too, or at least I like to think so. At the start, my partner and I would find ourselves in accidental arguments, trying and often failing to use the same cues and words to explain to the dog what it was we were trying to say. Now we're all in sync. Up. Under. Let's go. This way. Breakfast.

Sometimes I worry that talking about the dog bores other people. It makes me feel boring, after all, not having ideas, books, something else to talk about; I wish I did. I've got a suspicion, though, that the pandemic made us all feel bored of ourselves: we talked about a virus for so long we forgot how to think or talk about anything else, and now we're sick of talking about a virus, we're stuck.

But when the dog falls asleep on my knee, I don't mind that I feel boring. This former street dog – an independent being with thoughts and feelings, a mammal who weighs around the same as a 6 year old boy – jumps up and down when I get home. That’s magic. I’ve thought a lot about dogs this year. Next year will be just the same.