Do Dogs Get Bored?

The other day I asked my roommate if she thought dogs got bored. Her answer was simple: "No, because they aren't smart enough to know if they've been doing or not been doing something for hours."

She's right. Every time Beep sees her tennis ball it's like the first time. And whenever I throw her pink flamingo down the hallway, she runs as if she might not catch it. The other night we played fetch while I worked, and I must have thrown that f-ing pink flamingo seventy-five times. she.did.not.get.bored.

Here's my concern: Neither did I. I was obsessed with her properly retrieving the pink flamingo that not only was my work cast aside, each time I would throw this silly thing I would think, "Will she find it? Will she pick it up? Will she run back to me?" Yes, of course she would. Even if she couldn't remember, she'd already done it seventy-three times in the last forty-five minutes.

Perhaps I'm also nervous that almost the entire reason I humored her desire to chase said flamingo upwards of eighty times is that I felt like if I stopped, I would genuinely hurt her feelings. Let's get back to the beginning: dogs don't get bored. Chances are, they also don't get offended if their parents opt out of fetch for a little while. Or do they? My dilemma exactly. What if I'm hurting her feelings? What if, when I say "No more," and go about my Gossip Girl, Private Practice, Law & Order: SVU routine, she retreats to the corner thinking, "Does no one on this Earth love me?" How could I cause that kind of pain to such a small, innocent, sweetly-dressed animal? Am I so cruel that I would knowingly reject someone (okay, fine, something) whose second favorite thing to do (after getting a treat for using her pee-pad) is greeting me at the door?

I would like to answer plainly: No, I am not.

But still, what if I am?

This reminds me of the time my three friends gave me a swirly in eighth grade. I was in the library during study hall and they came in, saying that they really needed to tell me something, but since it was private, we should probably go to the bathroom. Then suddenly my hair was in a toilet, and I had three people holding me by the ankles.

Later that afternoon, after my Science teacher perfectly justifiably asked why my hair was wet and I didn't have a quick enough response, the four of us sat in the middle school headmistress's office with our advisers. The headmistress asked if these were the types of friends I wanted. They were, I explained triumphantly, they were just playing a joke. But they put your head in a toilet, the headmistress responded, kindly. Wait a second. She was right. They did try to flush my head in the lower-school bathroom. I hadn't even showered yet. It was the end of the day. The tip of my ponytail was... oh my god.

I responded, I think, in a perfectly appropriate fashion. I decided then and there that friends don't flush friends down the toilet. Literally, at least. The four of us left the office while the adults convened over necessary punishments. They decided that the ringleader deserved a suspension, and the remaining two would be forbidden to attend the homecoming dance. For eighth graders at an all-girl school, that was far, far worse than being suspended. The three of them looked at me incredulously, shocked at my ultimate betrayal. I might have toilet-water-stained clothing, but they weren't allowed at the dance. The Dance, they said in unison. I'm sorry, I said, but still, it was kind of crappy what you did.

Expectantly, news of this scandal reached far-and-wide across the middle school, and I was confronted with multiple people asking why I was so cruel. When I explained that I was sorry, and that I actually hadn't asked the school to suspend the ringleader, I was met with, "But the dance. It's Madonna themed." How could I do such a thing? Take a fucking shower, one especially ardent classmate told me. Thankfully we were thirteen and that meant that "situations" had a half-life of about three days. By the day of the Dance, everyone was fine. By the next Monday, we were all friends again. But a few weeks later, the three girls kindly let me know that while I was a fun and engaging friend, they couldn't quite trust me. I again apologized for admitting to the teachers that they'd given me a swirly, but they didn't want to hear it. I had betrayed their trust, and it was time to move on.

These two situations taught me something: I'm drawing a connection between my seventh-month-old puppy who loves nothing more than toys that squeak and the aftermath of a swirly in the eighth grade -- I really, really need to get a life.