The dilemma of caring for a dog that hates you

I think my dog hates me. Some 8 years ago, my mother and I ordered a little white puppy off a small website called puppyspot.com. This small website turned out to ship me a demon dog. My review for puppyspot.com is 1/10. The rating for my dog of 8 years, Ziggy, is more complicated.

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They say that a dog is man’s best friend. Right now, my dog just shit in my room.

Ziggy flew from Arkansas in a little crate and landed at DTW. My dad was the one to pick him up from the airport. To him, my dad was his savior: the first person in his life to care about him and save him from big, scary flying machines. From that moment on, they got along great. For the rest of the family, however, we were not as lucky. He protected my dad like he owed him money and was determined to pay it back in acts of aggression towards… me.

Although I would like to shift the blame of him not liking me onto my dad, I do have a confession. The day Ziggy was brought home, I accidentally stepped on his tail. I was a big kid. Huge even. He whined, but I thought he was being a baby. I didn’t think anything of it. Thinking back on it, I think I messed up. He has been perpetually anxious around me since that day. Since then, I have lost weight and am a changed man spiritually and emotionally. He doesn’t see me this way.

The real problem here is my mom. My dog is a very picky eater. He doesn’t eat anything but human food. Ziggy’s favorite food: chicken biryani. Unfortunately, he ate so much processed food that he kept throwing up. Since then, we have stopped feeding him our food and substituted it with kibble. The only way he would eat his kibble was if someone said, “Loki will come eat your food.” Dogs don’t understand English, but he understood this one phrase VERY well. Through the power of negative association and Pavlov, he is now conditioned to guard his food or his toys in the hopes of saving them from being devoured… by me.

Trust me, Ziggy. I am NOT interested in your slop. I actually told him that. He started growling at me. At that moment, I gave up. Whatever I would say or do wouldn’t be enough to reverse the irreversible damage my mom’s psychotherapy did to my poor, crusty white dog.

I knew it was bad when one night my parents fed Ziggy a french fry. There I was, walking, when I accidentally stepped on his minefield of scattered fries. At first, I didn’t feel anything, but then the fiery jaws of hell started being processed by my feeble brain. Ziggy had attached his mouth to my foot like a parasite. Like a mosquito on a poor, helpless child. I am the child. For the following three months, the scar did not heal. The foot hurt tremendously.

The thing I do not get is how he could still act like this after I literally keep him alive by feeding him, bathing him, and walking him. I literally gave him life.

I don’t know. Food for thought. Am I a charity? I am not respected.