Man's Best Friend. Yeah, right.

Let me say right at the outset, if any of you out there mention this column to my wife, I'm going to be very upset. And you know who you are out there. And, I know who you are.
Next, let me next say that I have a lovely, kind, caring, thoughtful, brave, reverent, thrifty wife. At least she's many of those things. But sometimes she'll make a statement that just completely baffles me.
Like the time (and, yes, I've already related this one in the current issue of Chesterfield Living) she and my daughter were watching television and Freddie Prinz, Jr. was on, and my wife says to my daughter, "His father was also a TV star, but I can't remember his name."
I repeat that story just to give you an idea of how her thinking goes (and, just in case you do see this, Julie, I mean how beautifully your thinking goes). But she said something the other day that I'm still pondering. Let me preface this by telling you that we (she) have (has) two dogs, Tory and Toby. My wife loves those dogs. She fixes them snacks while we're watching TV. I'm sitting there starving and she's prepared some delicious looking tasty treats for the dogs.
It's not that I don't like the dogs. It's just that they're...well, they're dogs. But, all in all, these two dogs (both labs) are beautiful animals.
But anyway, the other day my wife says, "I think if Tory were a human, she and I would not be very good friends." Huh?
Just bask in that statement for a moment. Does it kinda not make sense? I really have tried to get my mind around that statement, but with no success. How can my wife look at the dog and know what sort of human she would make. I guess I just don't have the lovely ability to imagine as does my wife. But I can't humanize the dog no matter how hard I try.
I mean if Tory were a human, I'd be really upset, I mean even more upset than I am, when I'd step in her deposits in the back yard. And, when I'm trying to eat, if a human Tory were lying on the floor, looking up at me, begging for a bite, I would have kicked her out long ago.
And, I would not, for even one minute, tolerate another human in the house who was sniffing me all over. I also wouldn't tolerate a human who drank out of the toilet. At least, I don't think I would.
I guess my point is, how can you even imagine how you would feel about an animal if it were a human? And yet, my wife feels very comfortable making that statement.
Don't misunderstand me. I'm not for one moment suggesting that there's any defect in my wife's thinking. I'm sure it's all me. I know that I don't have a full appreciation for animals. It's just that it's hard for me to look at an animal and imagine how he or she would be as a human.
I had a goldfish once. I never thought of him (I'm guessing it was a him, we never were that close), as a guy. When he died, I flushed him down the toilet. If I had had a friend living in a bowl in my bedroom, I swear I would never flush him down the toilet. And, if I did, I'd be more careful to make sure he really was dead when I flushed him. Now, that I think about it, I'm not sure the goldfish was dead. He could have just been catching some rays on the surface of the water.
We also had two hamsters once. They got loose and somehow ended up in the walls of the house. Where they went from there is anybody's guess. They may still be there. But, I know for an absolute certainty that if two of my friends had crawled in the walls of my house, I would have made sure that they were rescued, unless of course it meant tearing up the walls. Friendship only goes so far.
Now, that I reflect on this rather vast difference between my puny, miserable way of thinking and the elevated, caring thinking of my wife,l I think this means that my wife is a better person than I am. That's my story, anyway, and I'm sticking with it. Because my wife is a human, and unlike Tory and Toby, she can throw a pretty mean punch.