The truth about my son

Daddy era unlocked.

I lost my heart to a retired athlete. [Photo: Me]

I made my peace with not having children a long time ago. In fact, I have never known anything other than peace when it comes to procreation and fatherhood. I wrote about my feelings on this almost three years ago – please do feel free to read – and absolutely nothing has changed. Except…

Everything has changed.

One of the first things my partner and I agreed on after we got together was that we would like a dog someday. Renting, with no hope of ever being able to buy, made that seem an impossibility over the last decade. Nothing like not owning your own place, or being subject to a restrictive head lease by whoever owns your building, to highlight your lack of agency in your own life. Thankfully, new legislation is set to change that, but when we moved last summer, we were adamant: no dog, no thank you. We had the ‘yes to dog’ clause added to the lease.

Over the years, we’ve discussed the pros and cons of many breeds and how they might fit into our life. We were clear we wanted a rescue, however, and decided a sighthound might fit the bill.

It’s quite common now for expectant parents to withhold details of their preferred names before the birth lest anyone spoil it with their customer feedback, and I totally get it. ‘Leonara sounds like the Italian word for syphilis’, say insensitive sages, or ‘I knew an Oliver at school and he shat himself in assembly’. You would think that with TripAdvisor and social media serving as ideal dumping grounds for unsolicited opinions, people would keep their counsel IRL, but no.

And so it was when we mentioned getting a sighthound. ‘Oh they need loads of exercise.’ ‘They’re massive.’ ‘They have loads of health problems.’ Even the general concept of dog ownership was negged to death. ‘Your life’s not your own.’ When is your life ever your own? You have to go to school, or work, or the supermarket. If you don’t pay your bills, you end up on the street. And worst of all, you can’t just punch anyone who annoys you in the face.

Our confidence was shaken a little, but we were undeterred. Once my half-century celebrations were out of the way, we went on the hunt for a hound. We had been fervently stalking a particular rescue shelter for a few months and reckoned we fit all their criteria. They were overrun by needy dogs, so to save time, they would assign you a dog rather than let you select one – albeit with a few parameters you set yourself. It seemed quite exciting, a bit like expecting a baby, except not, because a whippet or lurcher can’t grow up to slam its bedroom door and tell you it hates you. The application was forensic to say the least, but we understood how vital it was to pair us with the right dog.

Given the rescue dogs’ backgrounds, there was a high likelihood the dog assigned to us would have some behavioural issues, so the application stressed, in huge caps, that we should be completely honest about the level we could handle. I lived with dogs as a child – by which I mean my family had them, I wasn't raised by Staffordshire bull terriers – but neither of us had owned one as an adult, so we marked things we were confident with and totally upfront about our potential limitations when it came to certain issues. It was important for the dog, after all, that we knew what we were getting ourselves into. We sent off the application thrumming with excitement – the rescue website warned us things could happen fast.

They certainly did. We never received a direct reply from the rescue, but the next day they uploaded a social media post stating they would NEVER send a dog to live in a built-up area of London. (I live on the edge of zone 3, with two gigantic parks three minutes’ walk away.) Soon after, another post, chastising applicants for expecting to ‘pick and choose’ the ‘perfect dog’ as they had no chance of getting any such dog from them. Oh. It was like discovering your favourite fork had decades of filth between its tines. Our wide-eyed hope shot out of the sky.

Finding suitable dogs became hard work – we’d decided we could probably handle any behavioural issues after all, but the goalposts appeared to be moving at speed. We saw ads with demands that would make Mariah Carey’s rider look like a Deliveroo pickup from the Hemel Hempstead branch of Co-Op (Queens Square). ‘Must have a log burner.’ ‘Prefers a paddock.’ (I wish I were joking.)

We began to give up hope. We applied for a few dogs, each time answering a different lengthy questionnaire but were either rejected – too far away – or too late, and they’d gone to another home. And then, one more application later, at the very kind and helpful Kent Greyhound Rescue: bingo. We now share our house with a retired athlete.

I listen to his breathing, spy on him out of the corner of my eye to make sure he’s comfortable, always have a blanket within arm’s reach in case there’s a sudden temperature plunge and I have deliberated more over the suitability of a particular coat – Or pyjamas! Greyhounds get chilly – than I have over anything hanging in my own wardrobe.

My partner came home from the office yesterday and petted the dog adoringly. ‘I can’t believe how much I already love this animal,’ he said.

My dog is not my child, I know that. I have never subscribed to the idea of ‘dog dads’, deeming it somewhat delusional, yet the day before his arrival I was collecting a six-foot long caterpillar from a toy shop because I heard greyhounds went wild for them. What is parenthood if not caring for the comfort and safety of another living thing that offers in return only apathy, demands for food, and turds you must clean up? What is a child if not an animal you willed into existence – whether by boning someone, mixing jizz and eggs in a lab, consulting an adoption agency, or browsing a dog rescue website – that could not live without you? His being my natural son is a biological impossibility, but perhaps our obsession with the absolutes of biology needs to retire in dignity; it certainly isn’t doing the culture wars any favours.

I am not his father, he is not my child, but he is my son. Works for me.

I did not need a child to make me feel complete, and I still believe that above all, my life is mine to live as I please and not a midlevel HR job where I must recruit into capitalism’s sweet embrace younger humans who share my DNA. But is our life already better with our leggy, long-snooted son in it? Yes.

We get the best of both worlds – the enriching responsibility for another living thing, without having to talk about schools catchment areas, or manoeuvring a Bug-a-boo through a shop doorway. Give me awkwardly choreographing soft, warm dog eggs into flimsy poo bags any day of the week.