I am very wary of answering these questions. Mostly because the dog is a dog.
I am glad people find the videos cute. The algorithm found them so they were probably the target audience. But there's a reason the videos are cute which is that it has everything to do with film-making. You don’t want to peep behind the curtain.
For starters, the fact that they are on an average about 15-30 seconds duration should say much. In case I still need to spell it out, that's about as much time as my dog Mavena can manage to behave in a 24 hour cycle. 20 seconds out of 86,400s in a day. 0.02% of the day. The ratio is harsh.
And then there’s the fact the videos are cut and edited with the sound turned off and voiceover narration or audio overlay placed instead. This is film-making. This is selective story-telling. This is making the facts fit into the narrative. Forced narrative, I should add. The dog has no idea that a lot of people think he is a certain way. Because I – and not him – had always been the one that controlled the entire chronicle.
I would never presume to be better than people. But I do pride myself on being a responsible pet owner. I researched the breed. And why breed dog, you ask? I will answer that in a little tangent.
When I joined service in government, people’s first, and loudest, most constant opinion was: “You need to start dressing up better; you’re an officer; people expect it of you”. That is a story for another day. And then in service, for a long time, I drove my dad’s old Maruti 800. People’s opinion then? “You need to get a better ride. You’re an officer. People expect it of you.”
My fashion is on me; it will evolve and I have always liked how I dress. The car is an inanimate object and belongs to my dad; I have no strong feelings about it.
But I knew that if I were to get a dog, and dogs being dogs and NOT CATS, I did not want to waste my good mood listening to people ask “why didn’t you get a breed dog?”
I say “not cats” in caps because with cats, it’s fine. When people asked me why not Persian? I had my answers ready. With Momo, “Oh I stole her from a little girl, it’s fine” and that usually shut people up because in Mizo mores, you can “steal” a cat. With Nix, “Oh the previous owner already had 21 cats so she gave her to my sister and the calico just decided to buddy up with me instead”. Cats are fine.
Dogs, on the other hand, very needy. Very needing of discipline.
You can say don’t let people’s unnecessary comments get to you all day long. But if you can, it’s better to eliminate that comment altogether to preserve the few rare good days. People suck. Prepare for war; not battle. You know.
I've heard so many stories of people who buy expensive dogs and then abandon them or eat them because they're too difficult to handle. It got too big. It shed too much. It chews up shoes and wires and overall too destructive. It got stomach and skin issues. It won’t stop barking.
My dog is the same. Every day he sheds enough to make a new dog, it seems like. He is unruly, gets zoomies at really inopportune moments, needy, cries a lot, destroys exactly one part of a pair of shoes and then moves on to another. He howls a lot and his volume control is like if Donald Trump were a dog; you never knew what sound is going to come out – a whisper or megaphone. He is not to be trusted off leash at any point outside the house EVER. He needs a steady diet, medicine and supplements, aside from the regular shots from the Vet. And Dr Mahminga of Waggin’ Tails can attest to how many times he has drained extremely foul-smelling pus from his behind.
Ultimately he is cute because (and sorry for tooting my own horn) I tell a good story and I edit reasonably well for 20s. I am over the moon to have entertained you. I have no plans of stopping because sometimes he is very cute.
I do not regret bringing the beagle home but I also don’t want to encourage people to get beagles, either. I researched endlessly before I got him. In between all the IGOT Karmayogi lessons, the many online researches for DC, elections and land revenue, chats with family and friends, the endless certificates I issued digitally, I was researching beagles on a split screen. I knew what to expect.
The dog himself is not all that, man! He is a goofy idiot but I do love him because I wanted him, I brought him home with me, and the fact that he is this goofy is one of the reasons I am so fond of him. Alone, or with fellow pet lovers, he is not an issue. But not every insaan is a dog lover.
He even seems like he understands commands sometimes but that is more incidental than real. More imagined than ideal. He knows to sit, to shake hands, to fetch, and he knows the word for “don’t” in Mizo but whether he obeys me or not is always a 50-50. What’s more, this is it. Even if he lives out his life cycle, it's 17y, and he's never going to be more than this right now, as in this is as much as can be expected from him. Ever.
I am fine with that.
I had made my peace with the fact that I was going to bring home with me a creature that could grow up to be a menace to society, with the online beagle community describing them as single-minded, food-obsessed escape artists with selective hearing and equipped with the nose of a shark. But I wanted a loud dog that can chase away potential thieves by giving them second thoughts because, yk, dog.
Even then, he was a challenge.
Which is how a lone cat like myself came to require a domestic help because while I can take care of myself, I cannot take care of myself while attending a beagle. My dog has no clue he is a financial liability because he eats fancy, piles up vet bills, and requires a domestic help. Not only does he not know the expenses he rakes up, he cries every time I leave the house without him. Not one clue I have to do that so he can live the life of luxury he has grown accustomed to.
All this when literally all I expected him to do was bark at strangers and he does not even do that. He will bark at a leaf that's blowing in a direction he doesn't like, but he will lie on his back and begs for belly rubs from strangers, even people I want to be angry at. Recall is an exercise in futility. Weirdly he doesn’t hump people very much so I am spared that mortification, but he does want pets and games from everyone. Menace. To society.
Suffice to say he does not even reach the low bar I set for him. He's a male dog.
I do love the idiot. But I remain wary of telling people how and where I got him from. I never encourage people to get beagles. It’s a 20y commitment. In the meantime, I just make videos.
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