My Love As A Dog

Sun Herald

Sunday August 1, 1999

Terry Smyth

They say love is a chemical reaction. So that's why dogs like to sniff around, says Terry Smyth.

Just the other day, on the rear end of a station wagon stuffed with furry, slavering things, I spied a bumper sticker that said "Love is a dog".

So, that's what it is. If at any time prior to my sticker epiphany you had asked me "What is this thing called love?", I would have had to answer, "Buggered if I know, actually."

Now, however, I can confidently say "I understand it's a type of quadruped."

It's as good a theory as any.

Of the 70,000 entries in The Oxford Book of Quotations, more are about love than anything else. There are 606 quotes about love. I know because I counted them and not one quote about love gives the slightest clue as to just what the hell it is.

Philosophers are no help. As Elvis said, "Wise men never fall in love so how are they to know?"

If there had been bumper stickers in Plato's day, the sticker on his chariot might have read: "Love is a grave mental disease."

Plato was sort of on the right track but while experts say love has some symptoms in common with mental illness - erratic behaviour, mood swings, impaired judgment - it is not a disease in its own right. If it were, a sizeable slab of the population would be off on sick leave at any given time and an office fling could lead to a worker's compensation claim.

Shakespeare said the course of true love never did run smooth. Robbie Burns compared it to a red, red rose. Rogers and Hammerstein told us it was a many splendoured thing and Lennon and McCartney told us it was all we need. The movie Love Story said it means never having to say you're sorry. That might explain why the producers never apologised for releasing such a stinker.

So, what was it about Antony and Cleopatra, Romeo and Juliet, Running Bear and Little White Dove, Harley and Rose, Bill and That Woman? According to one theory, it was chemistry and I don't mean chemistry in a metaphorical, airy-fairy, Eyes Wide Shut pre-publicity sense. I mean actual bunsen burner and test tube, dust coat and scratchy beard chemistry.

Apparently, the body produces a natural amphetamine called phenylethylamine. It is a surge of this substance, chemists say, that can cause a sudden attraction some enchanted evening when you see a stranger across a crowded room and somehow you know... The theory says it's phenylethylamine that works the magic but we call it love because love is easier to spell.

Where the theory falls down is that you can get the same chemical reaction all alone by eating chocolate, sipping diet soft drink, listening to music, watching porn or smoking marijuana.

Which brings us to the dog.

Dogs don't bother with any of that romantic phenylethylamine nonsense. They're attracted by pheremones: scent hormones that send a rush of raw lust to the canine brain. And these hormones don't only attract dogs to each other. They attract dogs to us. A whiff of human pheremone can instantly turn a lap dog into a leg hound, particularly when the leg belongs to say, the local vicar or your frail, filthy rich maiden aunt who was about to write you back into the will.

People and dogs have been hanging out together since the Stone Age. And in all those eons dogs have shared our homes, our fires, our food and our lives, we innocently assumed they just wanted to be friends. Best friends.

We gave the common or garden mutt such social cred that I understand certain fashionable Sydney cafes now carry signs advising: "No table service unless accompanied by a dog."

And in all that time dogs have been sniffing around us, we had no idea just what pheremone-crazed, carnal canines they really were. So if puppy love makes the world go round, maybe love means biting the hand that feeds you, disgracing yourself in public, drinking from the toilet bowl, feeling guilty even if you didn't raid the garbage, turning around three times before sitting and forming relationships only a bucket of water can break.

I'll pass, thanks. Rather a dog's life than a dog's love life.