Love and other dogs.
Furry fortune telling
A friend recently encouraged me to do a quiz in which I was asked about my favourite colour, animal, and body of water, and the key reasons why I liked them. Unbeknownst to me upon answering, the quizee’s favourite animal offers a metaphorical gateway to assume what they value in a romantic partner.
Now, this didn’t really work out for me, as having contentedly reported that my favourite animal was the deer – in what I proudly saw as a circumvention of any soulful self-analysis through a jesting nod to my surname – my results suggested I wanted to date my cousin. Not ideal. However, some more insightful answers were shared by the group. Another friend of mine shared that her favourite animal was a dog. Why? Because she associated them with family cohesiveness, rich emotional understanding, and affectionate, loving behaviour.
Quizzer: ‘So, that’s what you want in a boyfriend’.
Friend: *Turning dubiously to examine boyfriend* ‘Yes… I suppose so.’
This Buzzfeed-esque tangent does have a purpose. It’s fascinating how commonly we humans use animals and pets as yardsticks against which we can measure our own internal psyche, especially – I noticed – when it comes to relationships and love. It’s not hard to get lost in a weird internet hole of personality quizzes, and when you do – as I may or may not have done – you realise just how much animals crop up. This isn’t entirely surprising given that so many of us work with or share our homes with all different types of creatures – over half of UK households are pet owners – and there’s got to be some reason we buddy up with the ones we do.
Pets and partners: parallels?
Romance appears to be a key field of life by which animals offer a window to the soul. A recurring observation is that our relationship with pets bespeaks our capacity to love. Fetchdate is a dating site connecting dog and cat owners. Its founder, Sheryl Matthys – who ‘oozes dog pheromones’ – proffers Five Reasons Why Animal Lovers Make Better Partners, reflecting such sentiments in her book Leashes and Lovers, which explores the parallels between how we treat our pets and our partners.
Matthys also claims animal lovers are more naturally caring, responsible, committed, patient, and able to love unconditionally; this is not an unusual sentiment expressed within pet psychology. For her, one’s relationship with animals is classed as a ‘more deeply seated value’, alongside politics and finances, that is fundamental to address for a sustainable relationship. This seems a fair statement: on average, dogs outlive marriages.
On the dating app Hinge, a popular photo prompt is: Are you a dog person because… [insert cute picture with dog that proves merit of character to other swooning viewers]. Broadcasting to others our relationship with pets not only attributes us with some level of lovability but further characterises that genus of love through association with the traits of said animal.
Me, myself, and my pet
We’ve all giggled gaily at the iconic scene in Disney’s 1961 animated version of 101 Dalmatians, where Pongo observes a stream of owners and their dogs trot along the streets of London, human and pooch being comically identical to one another. If you are unaware of my cultural reference, I beg you to educate yourself here. The BBC suggest that the scientific reality of ‘canine mini-me[s]’ highlights a narcissistic tendency in humans that plays into our love lives. Some suggest close ‘personality profiles’ are what draws us in when choosing our pups, and this can be taken beyond the realm of canine. In other words, humans like the familiar.
Limitless online quizzes let us indulge in wondering whether we are A Dog, Cat, Or Perfect Mix in relationships. Dogs and cats are presented as the personality pole, popularly understood as the archetypes of the ‘dog person’ and ‘cat person’. Like sweet versus salty, pancakes versus waffles, or chocolate and vanilla, the dog-cat personality is treated as a binary through which we like to categorise ourselves to make sense of the world.
What I find rather irritating is that this binary has been transposed by others into gender profiles. One holistic health site claims that cats’ ‘solitude, emotional depth, and intuition’, alongside ‘enigmatic and self-sufficient nature, often symbolize the embodiment of feminine energy’. Meanwhile, the ‘loyalty, protectiveness, and assertiveness’ of dogs reflects the ‘extroverted and action-oriented’ male archetype.
Such ideas are drawn from Jungian philosophy and argue that we need a composite of the two energies to form a balanced self. This, I think, holds some truth; yet I personally feel this ‘animus’ versus ‘anima’ gendered stereotype of self is rather tiresome. In any case, people love to get animals involved and press the value of self-discovery through categorising our cat-dog relationships.
What Your Favorite Pet Says About Your Love Life offers a less mainstream insight, declaring that turtle lovers are devoted and patient. Own a rabbit? That means you’re wild with a tendency for easy burn-out. I wonder how the links were so adamantly drawn there – to me, bunnies suggest a temperate disposition, and maybe a smaller garden. But as usual, dog owners are seen to be the passionate and playful partners, while cat owners are the ‘chill’ ones who prefer relaxing environments demanding less social battery.
What do you think?
So, are pets a window to the soul? Or is this just another pop psych fad? After all, I’d argue that there’s a whole host of animals who haven’t gotten any attention. What about a guinea pig? A parakeet? A gecko?
I open this up to the audience. Have a look at your pawed pal asleep at your feet as you read this… (or if not, your clawed compadre…your setaed sis). Do you think they say much about you? Or even better: are they like your partner? Let me know in the comments below and then, perhaps, with some trusty first-hand convictions, we can get to the bottom of this once and for all.