One of the first things anyone mentions in any discussion about Romania is its dogs. They menace locals and visitors alike, roaming the streets of Bucharest in hungry, scraggly packs and lurk in alleyways like so many furry thugs. The stray dogs are a vestige of Romania”s tragic past and they serve as a case study for many of the social and economic ills that still plague Romania. For example, I was frequently frustrated by the Romanian attitudes towards spaying and neutering, seeing it not as a humane necessity, but as an act of cruelty – an attitude that stems from the lack of education and serves to compound the problem. In the same way, dogs in New York act like a prism reflecting and refracting the many quirks and idiosyncrasies of New Yorkers. For one, upon my return I was shocked by just how many dogs there are in this city. New Yorkers were always fond of their pets, but in the few years that I have been away the four legged companions seem to have taken over the city. They are walked by their owners in twos and threes and in the morning Central Park looks like a site of a canine parade.
If Romanian dogs are amongst the world”s most disadvantaged, New York pooches are unquestionably the world”s most pampered pets. From doggie daycare to doggie spas, from custom-made beds to couture clothing, and from puppy psychiatrists to doggie psychics, New York owners treat their dogs like spoiled princes and princesses. One of the reasons, of course, is that New York is a Mecca of consumerism – the home of the $500 facial, the $600 haircut, and the $50 million penthouse – and so it is only natural that the excesses of its denizens would extend to their pets.
Yet, I think there are bigger reasons for why New Yorkers are so obsessed with their dogs. After all, the majority of dog owners are not Park Avenue socialites, but the average city dwellers, sharing their overpriced studio apartments with their dogs. For them (or I should say “for us”) dogs provide the kind of companionship and unconditional love that is so hard to find in this city. In a place this big and diverse it is often easy to feel lost and unmoored and our dogs provide the proverbial anchor in the sea of urban life.
New York might well be the only place where it is acceptable for straight men to dote on their Chihuahuas and Yorkies. As befitting a New York single, upon my return I promptly signed up with an on-line dating site. This is a topic deserving a column all of its own, but the first thing I noticed from the profiles of the site”s male members is that many of them seemed obsessed with their dogs. Grown men posed in pictures with their pups, they mentioned them in the “five items I can”t live without” and seemed generally unembarrassed to shout about their love to the world. Perhaps it was all just a ploy to appear sensitive and charming to the ladies (“If I am ready to love a dog”, the ads seemed to say, ?”I could be ready to love a child”), but I think that for these men their dogs were, in fact, their true loves. Meeting girls in bars for senseless and brief encounters can wear thin for even the most jaded of bachelors, but a faithful dog serves as constant reminder that true love is possible.
I have long felt that New Yorkers are unfairly maligned as being rude and cold. In fact, I truly believe that they are, in fact, some of the nicest people in the world and I recently had my conviction reaffirmed by a New Yorker and her dog. One night I was walking my own two dogs (one of them adopted in Romania) in my Upper West Side neighborhood. As I turned a corner, I saw a woman and a dog. The woman was beautiful in a very New York way – tall and trim, stunning, trendy and very dangerous – she looked as though she could eat any man or woman alive. Her dog, a massive, muscular Pit Bull with a head bigger than mine, looked even more of a man-eater. Instinctively, I pulled my two small dogs out of harm”s way and was just about to pass the deadly couple, when the woman smiled the friendliest smile I have ever seen and rushed to explain that her dog was thoroughly harmless and friendly and that she would love to play. As the killer Pit Bull spun in excited circles and gingerly played with my dogs, his owner chatted with me in a manner so engaging that it suddenly became clear: all the dog and his mistress wanted was to make new friends.
It is moments like this that make me so happy to be back in New York – beneath its veneer of toughness and glamour, it is a city brimming with warmth and genuine kindness. In a way, I had the same feeling when I lived in Bucharest and I have no doubt that once the lives of its people improve, the dogs of Bucharest will move from the streets into the homes and hearts of their Romanian masters.
* Lola Gusman is an attorney with Salans in New York. She lived in Romania for 4 years