The Cruelest Trick We Play On Our Dog

It happened again. It’s January 18th, my birthday. I honestly thought about telling my family not to sing, but it felt ridiculous. 'We can’t sing happy birthday because it might make the dog sad.' It sounds insane when you say it out loud. So, we did it. After dinner, sitting in the living room, they brought out a small cake and started singing for the third time in eight days. This time, Moose's reaction was completely different, and somehow, it was so much worse. He was already a dog confused by the birthday song, but now he was a dog who was learning a very sad lesson about life’s disappointments. I honestly just wanted to get it over with, I had a headache from work and wasn't even in a party mood.

When the singing started, he was dozing in his bed across the room. He lifted his head. His ears perked up for a second, but he didn't get up. He just watched us. There was no tail wagging, no wiggles, no excited trot over to the action. He just stared, his eyes following us as we sang. You could still see a little flicker of hope in his eyes—like, 'Okay, maybe THIS is the time? The other one was a false alarm?'—but it was mixed with a heavy dose of caution. He had been burned before. He was trying to figure out the rules to a game that we had accidentally invented, and the rules made no sense. It was just a heartbreaking sight, watching him try to calculate the odds of a hamburger appearing.

The Final Letdown

Of course, the song ended, and again, nothing for him. We cut the cake, and he just kept watching. He didn't even huff or sigh this time. After about a minute of seeing us eat cake and realizing that, once again, the song did not produce the goods, he let out the quietest little whine. It was barely audible, and it was a thousand times more gut-wrenching than the dramatic sigh from last week. He didn't even look at us anymore. He just lowered his head, put it right on top of his paws, and faced the wall. He gave up. The hope was gone. And I felt like the absolute worst person on the planet. This whole January birthday bonanza is just a cruel trick we play on him every single year, and I'd never really thought about how it must feel from his end until now.

I just couldn’t shake the feeling of guilt. It's not his fault he doesn't understand human traditions, and it's not fair to get his hopes up like that just to crush them twice in a row. He associates that one specific song with the best treat in the world, and we're basically taunting him with it. My husband and I talked about it after the kids went to bed. We can't keep doing this. It's mean without us meaning to be mean. We have to change this. So, we've made a decision. No more January 10th birthday for Moose. From now on, we’re officially celebrating his Gotcha Day on March 15th. It’s far away from any other birthdays, so the song will be just for him. No more confusion, no more letdowns. A new tradition starts next year. Finally.