Today
is Day Five of Week Six of the Omer. That is Thirty-nine Days of the
Omer. The Theme continues to be Happiness.
Back when I was young, there was an
expression that I haven’t heard in a long time:
Everything (or, ‘everybody’) is going to the dogs. It meant, to understate, that things are
not going especially well. One doesn’t
hear this expression anymore. Nowadays,
I hear the same sentiments expressed: Everything’s
going south. In other words, down
the tubes. But one doesn’t hear this expression
here in Australia, perhaps for obvious reasons; the very name ‘Australia’
means, a place in the southern hemisphere.
For an Australian, ‘going south’ as a negative would be, well, emblematic
of the cultural hegemony of the people of the north. The parallel expression in Australia is: Everything’s gone Pear-shaped. The first time I heard this, I thought it
was a reference to the human buttocks.
But my Aussie friends tell me it is a reference to a pear’s being round –
sort of, but in an imperfect way. It’s
off-kilter.
So, Dear Reader, you might be
wondering at about this time: What
does this have to do with anything? And
it’s this: we don’t use going to the
dogs to mean messed up anymore, because, in most peoples’ minds,
there no negative association with dogs.
The idea of dog ownership is rarely thought of in less-than positive
terms. Unless, perhaps, you’re a
Muslim. I’m not making a dig against
Muslims. But it is well-known that for
Muslims dogs, like pigs, are ritually unclean.
In Iran, keeping a dog as a pet is an offence punishable by 74
lashes. Muslim clerics in other
countries have spoken out in strong terms against their followers keeping dogs
as pets. So I’m guessing that for most
Muslims, the idea of keeping a dog as a pet, just doesn’t compute. But in the Western World, dogs as well as
other animals as pets are viewed quite favourably. Although the keeping of ‘exotic’ animals has
been on the rise, the two perennial favourite species to keep as pets are are canines
and felines: dogs and cats.
Unless you’re my daughter. When we came to live in Australia, she
thought we would be able to obtain a Koala as a pet. (See!
I know to call the furry little things koalas, and not koala-bears!) Four years on, she’s still
disappointed. But I digress…
There’s no question that most everyone
we know can be put into one of two categories:
people who keep pets, and people who don’t yet keep pets. Okay, it’s not that prevalent! But some days it seems so! Every now and then – this actually happened
to us very recently – someone whom we never thought would introduce a pet to
his home, surprises us by going out and getting one. (In this case, you guessed it, a dog.) It’s just so prevalent in our culture, that
it’s almost a given that any and every family will have a pet. The pet-less home (like ours) is very
exceptional.
Okay, okay! It only seems so exceptional. Statistically, 50 percent of all Australian
households have at least one pet. So of
course, that means that we’re in good company since there are 7.6 million
households in Australia. But…only 35
percent of households in Australia have at least one child under 16. So there are 3.8 million pet-less households…and
4.94 million child-less ones! And, in
case you were wondering, with regards to the pet of choice: 38 percent of Aussie households have at least
one dog, 23 percent have at least one cat, and 12 percent have at least one of
each.
Psychologists generally think of pets
as a positive influence in people’s lives.
Having an animal companion can help alleviate loneliness for those who
are widowed, divorced, empty nesters, or socially awkward. An animal’s unconditional affection helps
their owners to see life in affirmative terms, and can help a person who has
been hurt in a relationship, to work past that hurt. If the animal is of a calm disposition, as
many of the most popular dog breeds are, they can help to calm a nervous
person. For children, having a pet
provides structure and lessons in responsibility. And the pet often provides a sort of glue that
keeps the family focused together. It’s
hard to see a downside to pet ownership.
Well, that it except for the cost of
keeping a pet! But that’s only a
downside for the individual pet owner’s ability to save. For the economy as a whole, pet ownership is
an engine that pumped 6.02 billion dollars into the Australian economy
last year. That’s an average of $ 1,584
spent per pet-owning household.
By the way, if anybody was wondering,
Rabbi Don is not anti-pet. Far from
it. I have owned dogs and cats, often
both simultaneously. But Clara is not a
pet person. And in truth, given our peripatetic
lifestyle since we’ve been married, that’s not a bad thing. Being pet-less gives us a high degree of
freedom and mobility. Of course, we’ve
had to take more than a little grousing from our kids over the years. Them: Everybody
else has pets! Us: Well, we’re not everybody else. Them:
We’re going to be maladjusted if we don’t learn to live with a
pet. Us: We’ll pay for your therapy.
Kidding aside, there’s no question
that having a beloved animal companion can, and often does, increase one’s Happiness.
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