What I Learned From the Dog That Bit Me
There’s a dog in my neighborhood named Fritz. Fritz hates me.
To the best of my knowledge, it all began during my misbegotten and short-lived stint as a jogger. Middle-age weight gain, combined with a family history of heart disease had me out pounding the asphalt on spring mornings, wheezing and stumbling my way around the neighborhood.
Fritz took an immediate dislike to me. Maybe he hates joggers, or men with tattoos, but he definitely hated me.
I’m not built for running. I’m not built for many things athletic, unless walking in the woods and “staring at trees,” as my wife calls it, counts. My jogs soon devolved into walks.
I’m not sure what Fritz is. Maybe a Shih Tzu. Little, white as snow, mean as a snake. Let’s call him a little Shih Tzu.
We live in a small neighborhood set in the woods. It was built in the early 1970s, and rumor has it that Elvis Presley had a home here. Many of the residents are senior citizens, and I always make it a point to be friendly and kind, stopping to chat and fawn over pets. Maybe it’s a way to convince them that the tattooed guy is friendly, or maybe it’s to further differentiate myself in their minds from my neighbor, who is a self-proclaimed DJ, has loud parties and engages in a lot of shirtless vaping in his carport.
One morning, my wife and I were on our second lap around the neighborhood, solving the world’s problems as one does, when we came across Fritz with one of his two humans. This human, a friendly older German woman, struck up a conversation with my wife while Fritz barked at me and strained at his leash to tear me limb from limb. All 12 pounds of him.
I decided to make friends, so I knelt down and held out my hand the way you do to make friends with a dog. The nice lady gave his leash a little slack and said, “oh, he doesn’t bite.”
Fritz lunged, I yanked my hand back and stood up, and he bit the hell out of me. Right on the ankle.
Having grown up in the south, the son of parents from “the country,” I have a spine-deep compulsion to be excruciatingly polite to the elderly. It won out in this situation and I smiled and waved a polite goodbye and didn’t mention that the little so-and-so bit me.
When we were a distance away, I lifted my pants leg and my wife and I beheld an impression of Fritz’s teeth so perfect that a forensic examiner could identify him by his dental records. He broke the skin even through my jeans. Little Shih Tzu.
To understand just how mortified I was at this point, you must understand: dogs love me. My wife says “all animals and babies love you.”
I took this as a personal affront. How could Fritz not like me? Friend to animals and children alike? The Dr. Doolittle of the artsy set?
I began to fixate on Fritz. It was as if every other dog in the neighborhood, every other dog in my life no longer mattered. Only this little bastard. Why did he hate me?
Then it came to me, like a sharp reminder from the universe in the form of a small canine’s … canines.
Not everybody is going to like you. Not everybody is going to like your work. And you may never even know why.
No matter how good you are or how hard you work, no matter if you’re famous or if you work in a small circle, there will be someone who has something against you. And, with social media at their fingertips, they’ll make it known.
Critics or trolls, dismissers or haters, informed or genuinely stupid, they’re out there.
It’s ok.
We all have some artist we dislike for no real justifiable reason. Maybe we don’t like their voice, maybe they seem smug or too needy. Maybe it feels like they never shut up about themselves. Maybe their success is utterly baffling to us.
That’s ok because we don’t have to like everybody or everybody’s work. And, in return, others don’t have to like us or our work, no matter how badly we want them to.
Just as the value of our work isn’t based on whether it’s commercially successful or critically praised, our intrinsic value has f**k-all to do with anybody else’s opinion of us. As a friend used to remind me “you can only take care of your side of the street.”
Do the work, do it diligently, do it with kindness, strength and respect. The rest is out of your hands.
For every hater, there are 10 fans. I obsessed about Fritz to the point of forgetting about the three pugs that walk together and cover me in snorty kisses, or the big German Shepherd who carries a tree branch around in her mouth and walks alongside me for a bit.
If we focus on the haters, we can lose touch with the lovers.
Obsessing about haters isn’t a good look. Have you ever seen a CEO reply to bad reviews on Glassdoor, or a restaurant get into a thread war with a bad review? The optics aren’t great. They come across as petty, defensive and often a little clownish.
You know who it really alienates? Your fans. Combative artists, petty artists push people away and incite bad, reactive feelings.
If you have haters, you’re lucky. It means you’re doing something. You and your work are making a mark on someone in some way. Even if that mark is negative, it’s something.
It’s a representation of the energy you’ve put out into the world. Savor it.
Note that all of this is about people who dislike you and your work safely. Don’t take scary people, stalkers, bullying or hate speech lightly. Learn what to ignore and what to keep an eye on.
Since that fateful bite, Fritz’s dislike of me has only grown. He begins barking on his deck when I am within sight, and he barks his way through his house and to his front door as I pass. He lunges at me on the leash, from the back seat as his car passes. And he doesn’t bark at anybody else. He has taken a special dislike to me, and I don’t know why.
But it’s ok.
As long as he doesn’t get loose.
Little Shih Tzu.
