Dog Day Afternoon

[For our first letter, I thought we’d start with a fairly simple question. From there we can move on to the wide variety of fascinating and self-created problems being experienced by my generation. Come along with me, won’t you?]

Dear Aunt Anna,
My boyfriend and I have been dating for three years. Recently we’ve been talking about getting a dog. We’ve got this awesome one-bedroom apartment in the Mission that we totally don’t want to give up, but it’s got no outdoor area, so I thought something small like a chihuahua would be awesome. My boyfriend thinks small dogs are lame. What kind of dog do you think we should get?

Thanks!
Ready to Adopt
San Francisco CA

Dear “Ready to Adopt”,

There’s a reason I have put quotation marks around your chosen moniker, but I am going to quash those less charitable impulses that are urging me to mock you so hard you fall off your fixie, and instead give you a response far kinder than you deserve, in bullet-pointed form! Excitement!

• Are you and your boyfriend planning to be together for at least another decade? A dog is like a child, albeit less likely to eventually start a LiveJournal about how much he hates you. Also not tax deductible. Still, though: tiny, dependent creature.
• Dogs poop. Whenever they feel like it, and wherever. I don’t know about you, but plastic bags of crap really don’t go with most of my outfits. Yes, most.
• I’m going to skip the lecture on the intense cruelty of keeping a large dog in a tiny apartment, since that would make it sound like I am on your side. I am not. I think this dog idea of yours is nonsense, period. Why don’t you and Captain Bad Idea of the SS Mastiff wait until you hit your thirties, get married, move to the Oakland Hills, and talk about how much you totally don’t miss the city because the East Bay is so vibrant and there’s SO MUCH TO DO, NO REALLY. That is the time for owning dogs. Now is the time for owning poorly-thought-out hairstyles.
• Is your apartment rent-controlled? If so, when you do give up and move to the suburbs, DIBS.

Best of luck!

Aunt Anna