The Human Puppy - Part 2

[Read these sequentially, please.]

We sought out others with similar tastes. Behold the power and beauty of social networking! Within 10 days of going on Facebook together as Puppyboi and Mistress, we had over 60 “friends,” seven of them near enough for us to think in terms of a party. The good news was that we hardly had to spend anything on refreshments — a couple of packs of chews at the local dollar store — because they were all to bring their own leashes and bowls. The bad news was that they were all males (though no fewer than four had represented themselves as being halves of couples), so on the evening of the party, poor Angela hardly got a moment’s peace. If they weren’t curling up beside her on the sofa, they were offering her their leashes in their mouths, hoping to be walked around the room.

One of them, Sparky, who imagined himself an alpha, made a frightful pest of himself by trying to hump her every time she rose. At first I thought his doing so was hilarious, but I came soon to appreciate how obnoxious Angela must have found it. There was no disagreement whatever between us when, later in the evening, he lifted his leg and peed on the coffee table; both of us found it inexcusable. I walloped him a couple of times with a rolled up newspaper, and he whimpered, but it was Angela and I who had to blot it all up with paper towels.

Months later, in the midst of our most heated argument to date, she brought up the incident, which neither of us had mentioned since it took place. She said she found my weird friends unpleasant to be around, as though the guy hadn’t been less a stranger to me than to her, and hadn’t paid $15 to attend the party like the others!

Not long thereafter, we split up. I was afraid I might spend months trying to find another woman who would indulge my obsession, but within nine days of putting a new profile on Facebook, using a Labrador puppy as my avatar, I had dates for coffee with three different young women, all of whose own profile photos made them appear very presentable indeed.

The first of them had apparently posed for hers before several months of serious binge-eating. Am I the first to notice that BBWs (big, beautiful women, you see) are usually only two of the three, or only the first to express it so trenchantly? Instead of the coffee I’d planned on, I had one too many glasses of wine, and was horrified to hear myself telling her — jokingly, of course! — that, while I enjoyed chasing and barking at the occasional car, I was no chubby chaser. I can be so cruel when drunk and disappointed. She said she accepted my apology, and we agreed to meet again some time, but of course never did.

The second of my Facebook dates appeared genuinely irate to discover that I was human, rather than a Lab puppy. When I pointed out, with the utmost gentleness, that her having expected me to be an actual canine had probably been unreasonable, she looked for a moment as though she might throw her coffee in my face, but settled for telling me that she’d heard Facebook was full of creeps and phonis, but that I was the first she’d had the great displeasure of actually meeting. It was her view, in fact, that I wasn’t worth the salt in her tears.

The third time was the charm. Mindee was neither a compulsive over-eater, from the look of it, nor stark raving mad, and I, at least, felt that we were on the same wavelength from the moment she expressed delight at my licking her hand in greeting rather than saying, “Mwah,” to each of her ears. When she asked without a trace of a smirk if I’d been neutered, and if I’d ever had a problem with fleas, my heart skipped a beat, and when she complimented me on my glossy coat (actually a leather jacket), I longed to mate with her right there in Starbucks. Within two weeks, I’d moved into her studio apartment on East 93rd Street, and she was walking me on the edge of Central Park at two every morning, when the gawkers and haters were asleep.