As much as I have always wanted to be a cat person, I’ve just always loved dogs. But the more I’ve grown into myself and obtained more dogs, the more I’m realizing — they are constantly dogsplaining me in everything I say and do, and I’m no longer willing to accept it.
For example, I was at the park last weekend where I brought my dogs and met a perfectly fine border collie (known to be very intelligent). I bent down to pet him and ask him what his name was, and just as a female friend had asked me about my opinion on the U.S. nuclear deal with Iran, he interrupts: “Bark, bark, bark, bark, bark.”
I hardly get out the words, “Excuse me—?” before he quickly barks again, like I’m wrong by default, just because I was a woman. I was stunned, like, “Oh my god, am I being dogsplained right now?”
I’m tired of stupid dogs inconsiderately interrupting everything I have to say! Stop dogsplaining me!
As soon as I noticed this pattern among dogs I didn’t know, I started to see a pattern in my own household. Even my quiet, reserved Papillon, Fritz, would interrupt me when I was sharing my feelings about the new movie, Insurgent. I realized that Fritz was trying to undermine my opinion with the simple assumption that his take was more important: “Yip, yip, yip, yip,” he said so authoritatively, as if he even saw the movie. “You have to read the books to really understand the characters!” I said, and he just lifted his leg and peed on the floor, and said, “Yip yip yip yip.”
“Maybe you have a point, but that doesn’t mean you have the right to disrespect me,” I said, as I let him out of the house to do a poopy.
Dogs can be so childish about their preferences sometimes. As if just because the culture is dominated by dog-centric dogma, those accepted beliefs are “right.”
Now, when I tell my golden retrievers about the Coachella lineup, I get nothing but sneering, barked responses to everything I say. What, is Coachella too mainstream for you? It seems like they play off each other — bark, bark, bark, bark — as if they’re high-fiving every time they prove me wrong in an argument over police brutality, or women’s basketball. They often run around each other in circles, effectively blocking me out of the conversation. It’s as if they’re in a special club that I am not part of, nor will ever be.
Well you know what I have to say? Shut up, dogs! Bark bark! My opinions matter, too!
