One of the ways you can tell that humans and dogs have been shaping each other’s personalities for thousands of years is that dogs can get into this pattern where if there’s something they really, really like—like a treat, or a toy—being given one will cause them to become so anxious they basically can’t function. They will just pace around with their beloved object whining at a high pitch or they will try to hide it.
I had never personally observed this behavior until I got my own dog, Boswell, pictured above.1 Other dogs I have known were crazy in their own way, but their relationship to their desires was basically straightforward: if you liked something, you wanted it; if you got it, you chewed on it; when it was gone or destroyed, you asked for more of it. If it was denied you, you schemed. And perhaps learned how to open doors.2
Boswell is a perfect dog and if you even imply otherwise I’ll beat you over the head with a heavy object until your brain works right. However, he is also very stubborn and very fussy and has a handful of deep-rooted hatreds I don’t expect to ever get to the bottom of. Houseflies send him shooting from the room in terror.3 He is picky about whether or not he likes other dogs, but he seems to hate all golden retrievers on sight.
In any case, Boswell used to do this sort of thing with bully sticks and such. But now one of these loved-to-the-point of terror items is a dental chew called “OraVet.” If given one, he will either pace and whine and try to bury it in my bedclothes and then move it and then try again. Or he will scurry off to take it to his lair under my bed.
Boswell didn’t always feel this way about OraVet chews. I used to give them to him when he lived in New York and he was like… “sorry, no. Do I look like a dog to you?” But one of my parents’ dogs, Buster, loves these things to the point that after about five o’clock in the afternoon he’ll start campaigning to be given one. If you give him one before seven, he will campaign again.
Buster is a grumpy and melancholy little dog who hates to be touched by 99.9% of people he encounters. He used to have a thing for attacking men’s feet. But only men’s feet; Buster respects women. If you are in the .01% of the people he actually loves he’s a little angel to you. He will cuddle up and wag his little tail. To everybody else he is Mr. Sourpuss. Mr. Sourdog. Getting OraVet is the highlight of Buster’s day and possibly his only true joy in life. Aside from listening to Midnights.
Buster, who hates above all the other things he hates the third dog of the household (not featuring in this story),4 also recently decided to move into the basement with me and Boswell. And I do mean that Buster decided to do this. When I brought him down into the basement before, just so he could get a break from the other dog, he would bark at me and knock things over until I let him back upstairs. But he’s had it with sharing space with his most hated enemy, so one day he just… came downstairs… and never left.
The point here is that Buster’s obsession with OraVet, even before he moved into the basement, made Boswell obsessed with it too.5 And thus OraVet is highly highly valued by Boswell, because it is valued by other dogs. Unlike when he was a solo dog in the big city, his anxieties now are somewhat rooted in reality. He is surrounded by thieves who seek to take away his treasures.
It must also be said: Boswell has mixed feelings about Buster moving in. He likes Buster. They could be called pals. But he likes being the sole object of my attention more. And since I do pay attention to Buster he tries to take small revenges, like eating all of Buster’s food, which I then move to where he cannot reach. In the moment, Boswell feels I wouldn’t do that if I really loved him. Though, since he is a dog, he forgets he feels that way the moment he gets my undivided attention.
However, it doesn’t really matter how Boswell feels. Buster does what he wants to do and he will not do what he does not want to do. If he has decided he lives in the basement he lives there. If he decided he wanted to live on Mars he’d find a way.
One other thing about Boswell’s OraVet tics is that he’ll pull one out when somebody new is in the basement. With Buster this has mostly meant sitting with one in a place he knows Buster will walk by so that Boswell can growl and say don’t even think!!!! about taking!!!!!!! my OraVet!!!!!!!!!!! Some days his behavior is so perverse that I feel the odds on Boswell being an enchanted human being who is forced to live as a dog as punishment for angering a fairy are like 50/50. Anyway, let us proceed to the rest of our sad tale.
It was a warm September evening and I was sitting in my bed, blissfully unaware of the horrors to come. Buster tiptoed in and I could hear Boswell start growling from under the bed. Since he’s usually fine with Buster’s presence I was a little taken aback, and then I thought—hm, maybe he’s got some extra OraVet under there and he’s guarding it. I’ll take a look. So I reached under the bed and pulled one out. But my hand had brushed another one so I pulled that one out too. And then there were some more so I pulled them out too. And then.…
What hadn’t seriously occurred to me until this moment was that Boswell never ate the OraVets after he scurried off with them. I had assumed he ate most of them eventually, in private, in the dead of night perhaps. No. If he didn’t eat one then and there he stored it under the bed and never, ever touched it, except to parade it around from time to time. Under the bed there were so many OraVets I could not even clear them all out in one go. I didn’t count them but I think there must have been at least fifty.
He stored them very carefully, too. They weren’t strewn haphazardly about. They were stacked in little piles in different locations under the bed, probably a hedge against the chances of my finding them all ever happening.
Even now I’m not sure I got all of them. He has produced at least one more from nowhere since I thought I’d cleared them out.
The end result of this story is that Boswell is banned from having OraVet now. If he was in fact banking all of his OraVet against some day when the supply ran dry, he brought about that which he most feared. But I also wonder if he genuinely just didn’t like them all that much—that it made him anxious and was “high value” but this was entirely about having something he knew the other dogs wanted, but he didn’t actually like eating them.
Or maybe when I’m not around Boswell is logged on and watching prepper videos and getting worked up about how an EMP could like take down the whole grid, man, and so he was trying to plan for the future.
Dogs—they’re just like us—insane.
I didn’t name him, incidentally. My roommate at the time did. Do not start swapping anecdotes from Life of Johnson with me because I don’t know any.
R.I.P., Bugle.
I often say that fictional characterwise, Boswell is like a cross between Poirot and Reepicheep. That’s right. I do often say this. I also recently got a sample of Shalimar eau de toilette and it feels sort of like a Boswell scent… classic, spicy… name takes a while to explain…
Here he is. Don’t tell Buster I was fraternizing with the enemy.
That’s right. In our infinite depravity, we made dogs with mimetic desire.
Imagine this, but instead of OraVet you have a corgi so overwhelmed with the thrill of getting a boiled egg yolk that she hides it in your couch cushions 🫠
Similar dynamic in our house - Frances is not that interested in rawhide chews and won't even pick one up if you drop it on the floor in front of her. Olga will snatch one from your hand and carry it away to greedily and loudly munch it. It will eventually dawn on Frances that if she does nothing, Olga will come and take the chew, and that thought will cause Frances to start growling, just sort of generally. Olga is a real problem for Frances' mental health, because Olga has never had an original thought in her life. Instead, Olga has excellent hearing and can, from any distance across the house, hear Frances getting any attention or satisfaction and will come running to horn in on it. Consequently, when you're petting Frances, she's always looking over her shoulder and worrying.