While our house in Chișinău is still being renovated, my partner and I are living with her parents.
Before describing what happened, there is an important part of my own background that probably explains why I reacted so strongly. I was raised with animals around me all the time: dogs, cats, birds, rabbits, hamsters and others over the years. They were not animals that existed somewhere outside the household. They were part of the household.
Our animals lived inside the house with us. I took dogs to the beach. I had dogs sleeping beside me. One of my cats even chose the middle of the night, between my legs in bed, as the place to give birth to her kittens — a particularly strange experience to wake up to. Animals, for me, have always been part of life in a very direct and connected way. They occupied the same spaces, participated in everyday routines and developed individual relationships with the people around them. They were never simply something we happened to keep.
That background matters because my partner's parents come from a very different world.
They are both approaching 80. They are good, humble people, but they grew up in the Soviet Union, with different expectations about possessions, comfort, waste, animals and everyday life. Money and goods were limited for much of their lives, and although they live in a city today, many of their habits are closer to the practical traditions of rural life.
Living together has taught me that differences like these are not abstract cultural observations. Sometimes they appear in very concrete situations where two people can look at exactly the same thing and genuinely see something completely different.
This week, one of those differences became painfully clear to me.
A dog has always been a dog
My partner's parents have had dogs throughout their lives.
But these were never what I would describe as house dogs. A dog stayed outside. It had a kennel. It guarded the property, announced visitors and provided some companionship. It might be loved, fed and recognised as part of everyday life, but there was a very firm boundary:
animals did not come into the house.
For them, this appears to be completely normal. It is not something they invented recently, and I do not believe it comes from deliberate cruelty. It is simply the model of keeping animals that they have known for most of their lives.
That is almost the opposite of the relationship with animals that I grew up with, which perhaps explains why what followed was so difficult for me to accept.
A couple of years ago, their previous dog died. My partner thought it would be good for her parents to have another one. At their age, having an animal around could give them something to care about, something moving and alive in the garden, and another presence in their daily routine.
She eventually found a puppy: a beautiful little black female.
And that was when I began to understand what having a dog meant in this household.
The puppy at the back of the house
The puppy was placed outside at the back of the property, tethered beside a small dog house.
I found it very difficult to understand.
Her world was essentially the area that could be reached from the leash. She ate there, slept there and relieved herself there. The ground around her gradually became dirty, because the same small area served every purpose.
What made the situation especially uncomfortable for me was the contrast with the dog's behaviour whenever I approached.
She was enormously happy to see me.
She would jump around, roll over, wag her entire body and try to climb into my arms. Sometimes she became so excited that she urinated while greeting me. It was chaotic, dirty and impossible not to smile at.
There was a very affectionate dog inside that little radius.
For several months I complained about the arrangement. Eventually the kennel was moved from the back of the property to the front, which at least meant that the dog was around people more often and was easier to see.
But fundamentally, very little changed.
She remained outside and tethered. The immediate area remained very dirty. Eventually I reached the point where I did not particularly want to approach her, not because of the dog herself, but because of the conditions around her.
I continued complaining.
From my perspective, something was plainly wrong. From the perspective of my in-laws, however, I increasingly realised that there was no obvious problem to correct. This was simply how dogs lived.
Then she became ill
On Thursday, 17 September, I was called during the day because the dog was sick — apparently seriously sick — and they needed help finding a veterinarian.
We found one and she was examined. The veterinarian gave her several injections and medication and provided instructions for looking after her.
As I understood those instructions, she was to be taken off the tether and brought into the house so that she could be cared for and observed.
I thought the message was clear.
The following morning I went outside and discovered, to my surprise, that she was still there.
Still outside.
Still in the kennel.
I asked why she had not been brought inside.
The answer was very simple: animals do not come into the house.
I was angry.
But underneath the anger was something more difficult. The rule was apparently stronger than the exceptional circumstances. Even a very sick animal, after a visit to a veterinarian, did not cross that boundary.
I checked the dog before leaving. She was alive, but her breathing was heavy.
At around seven in the morning, we left for work.
About thirty minutes later, we received the news that she was dead.
That distinction matters to me.
I do not want to turn grief or anger into an accusation that I cannot support. Perhaps she was already too sick. Perhaps nothing we could reasonably have done that morning would have changed the outcome.
I simply do not know.
But I do know how I felt when I saw her outside that morning.
Two completely different relationships with animals
When we returned to the house later, daily life was continuing.
One of my in-laws was preparing a chicken for lunch. The other was drinking tea. The death of the dog was mentioned, but life had already moved on.
That affected me almost as much as finding her outside earlier that morning.
Again, I do not think this means that my in-laws are heartless. I have lived with them long enough to know that this would be an unfair description.
Rather, I think we attach a very different meaning to an animal's place in human life.
In my world, a dog is an individual creature whose emotional life, comfort, movement, cleanliness and relationship with humans are part of the responsibility of owning it. If it is sick, the normal household rules become secondary to caring for it.
That understanding did not begin with this dog. It comes from having spent much of my life physically sharing my surroundings with animals — sometimes very literally. They slept where I slept, travelled with me, went to the beach with me and occasionally even decided that my bed was an appropriate maternity ward. The separation between “human space” and “animal space” was never particularly rigid in my life.
In my in-laws' world, as I have come to understand it, a dog remains much closer to a traditional working animal. It can be liked and valued. Its death can be unfortunate. But there is a greater emotional and physical distance between the animal and the household.
Neither Soviet history nor rural traditions can explain every individual attitude towards animals, of course. Plenty of elderly people keep dogs differently, just as plenty of younger people neglect them. I do not want to transform one family's habits into a judgement about an entire generation or culture.
But history does shape what people regard as normal.
And at almost 80 years old, ideas that have been reinforced for an entire lifetime can be extraordinarily difficult to change.
My own mistake was assuming that a puppy would change the system
There is another uncomfortable part of this story.
The original intention was good. My partner wanted her parents to have something else in their lives: another living creature to interact with and care for.
I understood the logic.
But looking back, I think there was an assumption hidden inside that decision: that introducing a new dog would somehow produce the kind of relationship with an animal that we imagined.
It did not.
The puppy entered an existing system, and the system absorbed her.
The kennel was there. The leash was there. The rule about animals remaining outside was there. The habits surrounding cleaning, exercise and interaction were already there.
The new dog did not change those assumptions. She simply inherited them.
That may be the most useful lesson for me.
A dog is not an activity for an elderly person. It is not a garden accessory, an alarm system or something supplied to keep somebody occupied.
It is a dependent animal whose needs continue whether the owner feels energetic that day or not.
If the people receiving the animal have a fundamentally different understanding of those needs, then good intentions at the beginning are not enough.
There cannot be another dog under the same conditions
For me, that is where this experience ends.
I cannot go through it again.
I cannot watch another puppy spend its life permanently tethered beside a kennel, gradually accept the situation as something I am powerless to change, and then discover during an illness that even basic assumptions about how the animal should be cared for are completely different.
That does not mean my in-laws are bad people.
It means that, in my view, their model of keeping a dog and my minimum expectations for keeping one are no longer compatible.
Age is part of the reality. Culture is part of it. Habit is probably the largest part of all. At this stage of their lives, I do not believe it is reasonable to acquire another animal and simply hope that decades of established behaviour will suddenly change.
If another dog were ever to become part of this household, someone else would need to accept genuine responsibility for its daily care, exercise, environment, health and social contact. Without that, I would oppose the idea.
This is not a judgement I enjoy making.
The little black dog was extraordinarily pleased every time she saw me. That is probably the image I will keep: the frantic tail, the jumping, rolling over, climbing towards me and being so overwhelmed by the attention that she sometimes peed herself.
She was messy, exuberant and very much alive.
And the lesson she leaves me with is simple.
Good intentions towards an animal are not enough. Once we bring one into our lives, its welfare becomes our responsibility — according to what the animal needs, not merely according to what we have always considered normal.
Comments
Post a Comment