Leave your dog at home.

When I see you in an office building, cradling your puppy, I don’t reflect on how cute he is, but what an incredible loser you are. That you can’t leave home without your accoutrement. The four-legged creature is no different from a cigarette or a cell phone. It’s a way for you to feel centered, not alone in this big, scary world of ours.

You can’t relate to people, so you get a dog. Or maybe people just haven’t been good to you, you haven’t gotten the unconditional love you believe you’re entitled to. So, you’ve purchased this overpriced animal and have imbued him with a human personality. You even dress him up, giving him a sweater to fight the cold. If that dog could talk, if he was really the human being you believe he is, he’d be embarrassed to leave the house, to show up in front of his peers. Kids don’t like to wear the lame clothes you buy them, that’s why they kick and scream when you try to put them on. But you probably don’t have children. Because men are mean, they leave you. It’s just you and your dog… Or your dreaded cat. If you see a single woman with a cat, RUN! That’s when you know they’ve jumped to the other side, when they’ve given up on a real relationship, when they get the damn cat. Oh, it sleeps next to them in bed, and it doesn’t do all the gross things men do. You can count on it. You can stroke it while you’re sitting on the couch watching TV. Do you wonder why the men run? Since you want to infantilize them? Turn them into your girlfriend? And, for the record, those clothes in "Sex & the City" do nothing for us. At best we’ll tolerate some see-through lingerie. But really, we want you naked. Designer/shmesigner. And, while we’re on the topic, we’ve got no desire to sleep with Sarah Jessica Parker. EVER!

Not that guys are immune to the dog thing. They just bring much bigger animals to work. Yup, they kick off their shoes at their desk while this hundred pound animal lies on the floor. If I wanted to work in a barnyard, I’d don overalls and ring up Elmer Fudd. I don’t bring my toys to work, why do you? Didn’t you get enough "Show & Tell" in first grade?

And that’s what it all comes down to… You want to look cool.

But dragging your doggy around town is not cool. Sure, fellow animal-lovers may ooh and ahh, but the rest of us, those who realize life is truly hard and are trying to cope, are wincing. What kind of fucked up person invades our personal space with animals they say are controlled, but never are?

They do bark. They do bite. They do smell. We don’t love them, the same way we don’t love your kids. You wouldn’t bring your kid to work, why do you think it’s o.k. to bring your dog?

And yes, some dog owners do have relationships. Even have children. But I’ve never seen someone with kids bring their dog to work. They’ve gone to the movies and restaurants with their children. They’ve sat there embarrassed while their kids have wailed uncontrollably. They don’t want to subject others to this pain.

Then again, there are some parents who do! When did that happen? When did everybody become entitled to their personal space, the rest of us be damned? Probably about the same time parents stopped respecting the school’s criticism of their kids and started showing up at the principal’s office saying little Jason or Jennifer was perfect at home and couldn’t possibly be causing a problem out of their ear and eyesight.

Then there are those really big men with the tiny little dogs. I almost forgot about them. What’s up with that? Is it a desire to overpower little creatures? Are these the same men who abuse their partners? Or, is it some kind of uninterpretable signal, that those of us not in the club can’t read, having to do with their preferences and predilections.

And when did dog owners start being more concerned with pet abuse than human abuse? Kill a dog and it’s front page news. Underprivileged men get railroaded in court and are sent to jail for the rest of their lives and if it makes the news at all, conventional wisdom is they had it coming.

Yup, a football player has fighting dogs and it’s all we see on TV. Suicide bombers blow up people in Iraq and there’s almost no coverage.

So please, do whatever you want behind closed doors. Buy twenty dogs, as long as they don’t bark and you clean up the shit. I don’t care what you’re doing in your domicile. But once you leave your front door, you’re part of society. Where there’s an element of decorum. Where there are rules of behavior. Which no dog can understand. You say they’re cute and you can control them, I don’t buy it. Leave your smelly animal at home.