At my office, we have a dog. Yes, technically, one person in my office has a dog, but when you have one person who brings in their pet all the time, it kind of just becomes the "office pet". But anyways, we have an office dog. As anyone who knows much of anything about me is aware, I am a cat person. I don't harbor any specific beef towards dogs, they just don't really make me all goofy the way cats do.
Now the president of my company, who is a character, is completely smitten with this dog. Like "head-over-heels ecstatic, the owner better keep an eye out because one day that dog is going to disappear and the president will claim not to not know anything about it" kind of obsessed.
Yesterday, the president and I were in the kitchen at work, and the dog was in there with us, staring up at him, and he was making eyes at the dog, talking about how cute she was and how much she brightens up his otherwise mundane days. He then turns to me and asks if I like the dog. I naturally say "oh yeah, me and dog, we're totally cool. We're almost friends."
At this point he asks a question that I have never really considered when relating to animals before: "Why do you like the dog?"
I stop and think for a second. The question has totally thrown me for a loop. I mainly like the dog because I am a moderately normal adult, and insofar as that the dog has done me no specific harm, and has given me no major reasons to not like it, I like the dog. But that can be hard to convey to someone else, especially given that the dog pooped on the carpet on Wednesday. That was as close as I got to not liking the dog.
So I dig deeper. And I start rambling, as I occasionally have a habit of doing, especially when put on the spot. "She's... cute. And kind of friendly. She's always around, and she walks all funny, which amuses me." Then I start to see exactly where I need to steer this description. "Yeah, you know she's cute, she's usually fun to be around or at least entertaining, most everyone else likes her a lot too. But she can be kind of inconsistent - some days she will walk right up to me and be completely interested in me, but most of the time she doesn't even acknowledge that I'm in the room. I would say I like her a minimum of six times as much as she likes me....
"In fact, that is probably what I think makes me like her so much: she reminds me of the last few girls that I've dated."
And that, my friends, is the honest-to-goodness truth.
