The dogs have a surveillance committee

Apparently, pet-sitting now requires chicken, brown rice, color-coded vegetables, and security clearance.

I am currently looking after two of the most precious dogs on earth. This is not hyperbole. They are a boy-and-girl pair of such sweetness that within approximately twelve minutes of meeting them, I was prepared to alter my will. They are affectionate, gentle, funny, and, apparently, perfectly healthy. They are also fat. Not slightly portly or “big-boned”, nor carrying a little winter weight. These dogs have prospered.

Their prosperity is particularly impressive because they do not live on the sort of diet one normally associates with canine decadence. There are no cheeseburgers, no illicit biltong and, as far as I can establish, no midnight raids on the rubbish bin. Twice a day, I prepare boiled chicken, long-grain brown rice, and a vegetable. But not merely a vegetable. A different-colored vegetable every day. There is a system. Naturally, there is a system.

I have begun to feel less like a pet-sitter and more like the executive chef at a wellness retreat for Labradors with private banking. Today, perhaps, orange. Tomorrow, green. Presumably, by Friday, we will have completed the rainbow and achieved enlightenment. I am waiting to see whether purple requires aubergine or whether the dogs simply receive certificates of completion.

I was given detailed instructions before the assignment. Very detailed instructions. This does not bother me in principle. If you entrust somebody with your animals, you are entitled to explain how you want them cared for. I am equally ridiculous about my own cats. If somebody were looking after Purrcy, Petunia, and Sammi, I would probably leave instructions comprehensive enough to permit the sitter to apply for guardianship.

Animals cannot tell us what is wrong. Their routines, medication, food, and safety matter, and I understand anxious pet owners because I am one. What I understand rather less well is discovering that I appear to have been placed under observation.

Friends of the owners have been dropping in. They miss the dogs, naturally. They love them, naturally. They just thought they would pop round, naturally. And perhaps report back to Central Command while they are there.

Let us call a spade a shovel: I am being checked on.

Now, I do many things reasonably well in life. Accepting micromanagement is not among them. I do not enjoy being watched or questioned about tasks I have already been entrusted to perform, and I particularly dislike that peculiar managerial arrangement whereby somebody hires you because they presumably believe you are competent and then constructs an auxiliary committee to determine whether you are being competent correctly.

There is something wonderfully simple about trust. If you trust me with your home and your beloved animals, trust me. If you don’t trust me, don’t hire me. This arrangement requires neither a WhatsApp committee nor an independent commission of inquiry, yet somehow it appears to have escaped several centuries of human organizational development.

To be fair, I was warned before taking the assignment that the owner was exceptionally particular. I was unconcerned. I have encountered meticulous people before. I have encountered anxious people before. I have encountered lists, and I rather like lists. They create the comforting illusion that human civilization remains under control. I thought, No big deal.

Reader, I had misunderstood the scale of operations.

There are instructions, routines, and expectations, and people may appear at the door because they “miss the dogs”. At this point, I half expect to discover that one of the pot plants is wearing a wire. I have resisted interrogating the ficus, but only because I am trying to behave professionally.

And yet, irritatingly, beneath my indignation lies something I understand completely. These dogs are loved. Extravagantly, anxiously, overwhelmingly loved. Their owner has gone away and entrusted two creatures who cannot telephone her, cannot explain whether they are unhappy, and cannot report whether the woman she hired is following instructions. So she controls what she can: the chicken, the brown rice, the color of the vegetables, the people popping in and, apparently, me.

This is where my righteous irritation becomes slightly less righteous, because I know that impulse. When we love something enough, trust becomes terrifying. We convince ourselves that if we create enough instructions, enough contingencies, and enough people checking enough things, nothing bad can happen. Unfortunately, life has never signed that contract.

Control is not the same thing as care. Sometimes it is simply anxiety with a clipboard.

There is another uncomfortable part of this assignment, though: the dogs’ weight. I am not their veterinarian, and I am certainly not going to redesign somebody else’s dogs’ diet while their owner is away. Apart from anything else, doing so while simultaneously complaining that she is controlling would require an Olympic standard of hypocrisy.

But caring for animals also means noticing things. When two otherwise apparently healthy dogs are significantly overweight, I cannot entirely silence the part of me wondering whether love is being measured a little too generously into their bowls. I can follow the instructions exactly while still wondering whether, in the longer term, the instructions themselves might deserve another look by somebody considerably more qualified than I am.

That is the terrible thing about love. We can do the wrong thing for the right reason. We can overfeed, overprotect, overmanage, and overcheck. We can love another creature so ferociously that, somewhere along the line, our fear begins masquerading as care.

I recognize this because I have done versions of it myself. Not necessarily with food, certainly with worry, probably with unsolicited advice, and almost definitely with WhatsApp. It is considerably easier to identify somebody else’s control issues than to recognize your own, which is one of G-D’s less amusing design features.

Perhaps that is why these two gloriously rotund little creatures have arrived in my life during Elul. Apparently, G-D has a sense of humor and does not believe subtlety is always necessary. Here I am preparing precisely prescribed meals while contemplating judgement, boundaries, control, and whether the yetzer hara is sufficiently sophisticated to disguise itself as conscientious pet ownership.

Throughout Elul, I have been thinking about four questions: what needs changing, what needs repairing, what needs accommodating, and what simply needs to be accepted. I have tended to think of them as grand questions, the sort that require introspection, solitude, and possibly a meaningful stare at the moon. Apparently, they can also turn up in a kitchen beside two bowls of chicken and brown rice.

Perhaps this assignment belongs under accommodating. The dogs have their routine. Their owner has her anxieties. I have a profound dislike of being micromanaged. None of those realities magically disappear merely because I believe mine is the most reasonable.

And perhaps accepting means recognizing that I can honor somebody else’s instructions without surrendering my own boundaries. I can understand why somebody worries without pretending I enjoy being monitored. Compassion does not require me to call micromanagement something else simply because I understand where it comes from. Understanding another person’s behavior and liking it are two entirely different mitzvot, and I am fairly certain only one is compulsory.

So I boil the chicken, cook the brown rice, and select today’s appropriately colored vegetable. I love the dogs and follow the instructions. When another emissary arrives because she just happened to be nearby and desperately misses them, I smile pleasantly and remind myself that it is Elul, and I am working on myself.

I am accommodating. I am accepting. I am practically glowing with spiritual maturity.

But if anyone asks me whether the rice was sufficiently brown, 5787 will have to take me as I am.