I get what you’re saying. I’m just saying that’s really extreme to how other parts of the country feel about their dogs.

All my male relatives and friends have bawled when their dog died when it was a deep companionship like that. Completely natural.

Hell. I had a dog that was like that. There were twin boys in the neighborhood who used to come over and knock on the door and ask if Coon Tut could come out and play. (As part of a college project, I taught him to play kids games like tag, duckduckgoose, red light green light, hide and seek, etc). They grew up playing Cops and Robbers with my dog. Tut used to come home looking like one of the Village people because they’d dress him up and take highlighters to him. Anyway, they were just starting high school when he died.

Bawled like babies. Naturally. And he wasn’t their dog.

My dad even had to go to the emergency room because he thought he was having a heart attack from the emotional distress of burying him. He didn’t want me to come home from work and see the body. He also blamed himself because he was out spending time with him while working in the garden when he ended up dying.

So I get what you’re saying. It’s like that for women too...about relationships outside family more often than one would think. And there’s a fetishization among men about sex with sisters or best friends, etc. I come from a deeply conservative area and there’s a lot of fundamentalism. Women are expected to devote ALL to caring for their families so, while they’re social with other women when they see them, there really aren’t that many truly deep relationships. It’s all superficial and usually includes a lot of back stabbing or back biting.

A lot of these extreme dichotomies mean the only way to have that kind and level of companionship, man or woman, is often with a dog or other pet.

That fact in and of itself, shows how broken and warped our society has become.