What Someone Who Doesn’t Own a Dog Imagines Owning a Dog Is Like

You take your dog outside a few times a day to show them how scary and awful the world and other dog owners are, and how lucky they are to have you in their lives.

Every Tuesday night, you take line-dancing lessons with your dog for exercise and bonding.

You and your dog silently stare at each other for an hour each night until the boundaries that separate you as individuals dissolve completely and you are simply Dog.

Once a week, you and your dog do a “species swap” where you get to do dog things and your dog gets to do people things.

Every now and then, you let your dog go completely bonkers and run at a stranger so that they can admire your dog’s agility and restraint. Because your dog is a good dog.

Dinnertime! A prime dry-aged bone-in filet mignon with honey-glazed, roasted brussels sprouts and French fondant potatoes, because your dog deserves the best. You eat another P.B. & J.

Movie night! Surprise, surprise, your dog has chosen David Lynch’s Surrealist body-horror classic, “Eraserhead,” yet again.

Slumber party! You and your dog camp out in sleeping bags next to your bed, which you have not used in years.

You encourage your dog to slobber all over your face, which—thanks to a brain operation you received years ago—you somehow don’t find completely disgusting.