Tuesday, 27 May 2014

Animal cafe experiment number 1: Drinking with dogs

I was finding it really hard to focus on my friends when I first arrived at the café. I hadn’t seen them for a while and it was only polite that I give them all, or at least a significant amount, of my attention but it was quite difficult to do when I had something else so spectacularly outrageous to look at. She was sitting in the far corner of true cafe, perfectly poised on her companion's lap, dressed in all white with just a touch of bling on her collar – understated elegance (something I have always fallen far short of). It was obvious to all that she (let's call her Princess) totally owned the café: staff were pandering to her, drinks and snacks were gratuitous and people were lining up to get their turn to sit with her, if only for a moment, to bask in her radiant beauty. Intimidated by her beauty and the confidence that came with it, I was forced to chose a seat on the other side of the café next to a fatter, much older companion, who lazily greeted me with slobber running out of his lips and down his chin in a most unflattering way. He was certainly not elegant or graceful, as demonstrated by his feeble attempt to launch himself off the bench onto our table, narrowly missing my strawberry juice with his belly and definitely coming into contact with the cup of tea of one of my companions via his left hind leg, in his desperate race to the wooden floorboards in front of us where he triumphantly relieved himself in a way only a dog does. Welcome to the world of the dog café.

Here is what happens at a dog café – you sit, order drinks, perhaps buy a doggy bag full of dog treats (to act as a bribe for attracting the stars of the cafe like Princess to come to your table) and you play with as many different dogs as you want. In this particular cafe there seemed to be one of each breed including (and I swear I am not making this list up): a Beagle, Labrador, Siberian Husky, Golden Retriever, Bulldog, Chow Chow, Pembroke Welsh Corgi, West Highland White Terrier, Samoyed, Leonberger, Weimarana, Shar Pei and, of course, the Poodle, Princess. 








I like dogs. I like that they don’t make me sneeze (unlike cats), they are, usually, nice to pat (unlike children who, if they are mine anyway, refuse to wash or brush their hair) and I especially like that they like to follow you around (unlike husbands). I am also a firm believer that dogs make you happy (a fact scientifically proven like climate change yet, strangely, less contentious). For the first few minutes in the cafe I did feel really happy, eager to pat a furry ball of fluff, longing to have something soft on my feet and desiring a nuzzle in the knees (from a dog only) as I walked around the rectangular shaped cafe. But here is the catch: in a cafe full of dogs, happiness seems rather fleeting. 

First, there was the dog leaping incident: I wasn’t so keen to continue drinking my strawberry juice after the dribbling, droopy dog jumped over it and one of my (human) companions dramatically and completely abandoned his mostly un-drunk cup of tea, protesting that the dog's under belly had made contact with his tea straw.


The tea that was left

Next was the rash: another of my group started complaining about an itch, swearing he could see a rash emerging on his left forearm and emphatically concluding that it must have been from one of the dogs he had earlier, delightedly, patted. The rest of us (sharing a slightly fastidious love of hand washing) became a little more hesitant about approaching any dog from that point on.

Offending rash

Finally, there was the toilet factor, or lack thereof to be more precise. When we realised that all these dogs had to go to the toilet somewhere and that that somewhere was not outside behind a tree (or at least a bush) but was in the middle of the room we were occupying our happiness dramatically started to fade. I felt sorry for the dogs who had no privacy for their business. Then I felt sorry for me who had to sit there right next to the dog and its doggie do's. Most of all, I felt sorry for the dog cafe workers who, in between serving you strawberry juice and tea, donned plastic gloves and armed themselves with disinfectants, smelly sprays and (I suspect from the odour) a bleach product of some kind to clean up the mess (here's hoping that a dog cafe worker has never got elements of the two roles mixed up).


the dog cleaning station

I think, therefore, that I have discovered a chink in the hypothesis that dogs make you happy. Here is my pictorial illustration:




Compounding the ratio of dogs versus humans and the corresponding impact on your happiness must be the ownership of the dog (or dogs). I can't draw a graph that explains this (I am a two dimensional girl only (who also failed maths at high school)) but my point is simple - the happiness quotient decreases double fold when the number of dogs outweighs the human involved and the dogs are not your own. Why? Because the slobber of an unknown dog is kind of like the snot of an unknown child. If it is your child, you probably (hopefully) have little difficulty in wiping that snot away (and onto your already child stained jeans in that terrifying moment when you realise you used your last tissue  when cleaning up your child's toilet accident) but if it is a stranger's child (or even a friend's child) this seemingly simple task has the potential to make you run far, far away and it certainly does not make you happy. 

So how happy did I feel at the dog cafe, being outnumbered by dogs 10:1 and watching these unknowns do their business on the floor in front of me? While I was definitely happy to be with my friends and not at home doing the washing, cooking or cleaning, I did not feel that overwhelming sense of glee that I get from singing K-POP (very loudly) in the car, from buying a new pair of fluorescent sneakers or from sneaking the last spoonful of chocolate chip ice-cream from the freezer and then claiming to the children that husband ate it all.

All that being said, I am prepared to give it another go. I have also reluctantly promised my children (two of whom are huge dog lovers) a visit. (A whole new graph would be required here to explain how rapid a decrease in happiness will be when watching your own children chase a pack of unknown dogs. What could possible go wrong?) But I will be prepared with nose guards, arm guards, hand disinfectant and dettol. Princess, I'm coming for you.

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