Go, Dog, Go!

Dog.

Big dog. Little dog.

Black and white dogs.

Hello! Hello!

Do you like my hat?

I do not.

Good-bye. Good-bye!

P.D. Eastman

I would like to start off by telling you that we have a dog, 

his name is Dutch.  That's him in the above picture.  He's pretty cute.

We have a dog, but we do not consider ourselves "dog people."

You know what I mean by the term, "dog people?"

We don't leave the air conditioner on for our dog when we aren't home.

We don't leave the television on so he's not lonely when we aren't home.

We don't feed him people food.

We don't like taking him on vacation with us.

The dog doesn't have a stocking at Christmas-time.

You see what I'm getting at?

Don't get me wrong, we love our dog.

We feed him. We take him for walks.  He even sleeps with the kids.

The question I keep asking myself, almost everyday since we've been here is, 

"Do dogs belong in New York City or more specifically, Manhattan?"

I understand having a dog in suburbia, there's grass, plenty of space to run around in, squirrels to chase, and room to roam.

One may argue that city life offers some of those exact same benefits.

I've tried to be objective about this, but I just can't get over all of the concrete.

The one thing about concrete is that it doesn't absorb urine and 

dog poop isn't easy to clean up off of the street.  

Dogs seem to be a huge inconvenience in the city.

If you live in a building with a doorman, you may be required to take the service elevator when you walk the dog.  And, walking the dog needs to happen several times a day.

The service elevator isn't the best.

Another down side of having a dog in the city is that dogs force you to be oddly friendly with other dog owners.  If you haven't noticed yet, dog owners can be so weird. 

The city doesn't seem to be overly friendly towards the dogs either.

There are signs like these all over the place:

Dog urine smells horrible when it sits on the cement, baking in the sun.

Here is a polar bear dog we ran into one night. 

The dogs are seriously everywhere.

Every. Where.

Dogs are said to be man's best friend.

That may be reason alone to think that dogs belong wherever people are.

However, I don't know if I am sold on being a dog owner in the city.

But, can I live without this face?