Shaggy Dog Story

I have difficulty wanting things. Or to put it another way, I am extremely good at not wanting them. As soon as I start to want anything, I instantly tell myself why that thing is impractical, extravagent, or bad for me, and I kill the desire stone dead. It's quite a skill. I'm basically the opposite of an addict.  Several months ago, I was sitting outside a cafe and I noticed that the woman at the next table had a really cute dog. It was big and fluffy and black and its eyes were too close together. It must be nice to have a dog, I thought. Instantly, all the reasons why I shouldn't want a dog popped into my head: you can't have a dog, you live in a rented room in a house where you aren't allowed pets in your lease, also dogs are smelly, and leave hair everywhere, and you would need to pick up its shit, and anyway, you are single and you like to travel so who is going to look after your dog when you're not there? All of which is true. But screw it, I thought. I need to learn to want things. I am going to practise wanting a dog. I am going to ignore all the reasons why I can't or shouldn't have a dog, and teach myself to really want one.  I sat outside that cafe and I watched that cute dog and all the other cute dogs that passed by, and I made myself imagine having my own dog, how sweet and fun and clever it would be, what good company, how I would cuddle it, how I would take it for walks and get to know all the other dog walkers, how much love and joy it would bring into my life.  It worked. Now I want a dog. And I still can't have one. Thank god I didn't do this exercise with a baby.  A few months later, a friend of mine - an American living in Amsterdam - came to visit me in London. She is a dog lover. In fact, she used to have a dog when she lived in America, but she had to leave it behind when she moved, and she really misses it. We decided to go for a walk, and before we left the house she asked me: is it OK to pet other people's dogs in London?  What are you talking about, I said. Of course it's OK. Isn't that part of the whole point of having a dog? That other people come over and play with your dog?  Oh good, she said, because in Amsterdam, a lot of people don't like it when you pet their dogs.  Now, I lived in Amsterdam for nearly six years and in that time I learned that the Dutch do some seriously fucked up things, like keeping prostitutes in windows and wearing excessive quantites of hair gel and blacking up for Christmas and eating salad with a spoon, but I was completely unaware of this utterly barbaric practice of not allowing strangers to pet your dog. What is wrong with these people???  Anyway, we went for a walk and we stroked a lot of dogs and we met a lot of friendly dog owners, as nature intended. It's one of the things that makes me want a dog the most: the way it helps you meet people, gives you a way of starting conversations that would otherwise be impossible.  One of the perks of quarantining in Dorset is that I get to borrow my sister's dog, Willow, and take her on walks. It's the next best thing to having a dog of my own. Willow is a small border collie with melting brown eyes and a nose like a liquorice allsort. She is an extremely soppy and affectionate dog. Every time I see her she jumps up on me for snuggles. And I love snuggling that dog. With my sister, we've got it well figured out, she leaves the garden gate open and the lead on the peg by the door so I can pick Willow up and drop her off without disturbing her.  The other day I was out walking with my parents and Willow when we passed another family coming the other way, and they recognised us, or most likely they recognised Willow - it was some friends of my sister, a middle aged couple with a son in his early twenties, and a friend of the son who is from Spain and had decided to wait out the lockdown with them. We stopped and started to chat from a safe few metres away, and as we talked, Willow trotted over to the son and his friend and cuddled up to them in her sweet, affectionate way, and they snuggled her because who wouldn't, and I watched them and it took my brain a long time to catch up but eventually, almost in slow motion, I thought ooooooooh shit. Yet somehow the words could not come out of my mouth: don't touch the dog. It's bad enough crossing the road to avoid people, it feels inhuman enough. How can I tell them not to stroke this adorable, loving, innocent creature? They looked so happy. I'll say nothing and just wash my hands when I get home, I thought. I'll just wash my hands. It was too late anyway.  But of course then I realised, all this time I have been being so careful with my sister, keeping several metres away, having conversations with her from opposite ends of the garden, and then I snuggle her dog. I wear gloves to the supermarket, I queue two metres apart, I wash my hands like I'm Howard Hughes, and then I snuggle my sister's dog who is snuggled by my sister and my sister's kids and my sister's friends' son and his friend from Spain and I don't even know who else. This is a social distancing fail of epic proportions. From now on, nobody touches the dog.  What about me? What if I put hand gel on first, and afterwards? Would that make it safe?  I'm not sure that it would.  It's so much harder to stop wanting something, once you have let yourself want it.