“Real people like dogs”

Beloved Ruth

Can’t say I ever heard my beloved Aunt Ruth Eloese Anderson Dunaway put it just that way, but she did express a worry that my enduring dislike for the creatures would surely unfit me for any happiness in the life hereafter.

Esteemed Valerie (a very real person)

So I confess: when selecting fellow creatures for any sociality or proximity, I have always gravitated toward those that slobber not, neither do they yap. And when they poop, they do their best to cover it up. 

Valerie, my esteemed and cherished eternal companion, evinces saintly patience toward all my sins and disabilities, including this one. But she’s far from sharing it: like our descendants, she gets all sloppy over Rick’s and Laura’s big, floppy Rudy. Who doesn’t get it and still, now and then, invites me to throw his red ball. To do which, thank you very much, I decline.

Rudy

And now I’m informed that our very language takes part in this conspiracy against my reality. Real people, you see, because they love dogs, are properly known as cynophiles. Some unfortunates bear the cynophobe tag: they fear the beasts, whether or not they also like them. 

A figment without a category

But the dictionaries seem to possess no antonym for cynophile. If, contrary to demonstrated fact, I hated women, I’d garner opprobrium as a politically-incorrect misogynist. If, equally improbably, I hated marriage, I’d be a misogamist. Or if I hated reasoning, I’d qualify as a misologist. But at least I’d still exist. And there’s apparently no “misocynist” nor “misopooch” nor anything of the sort that would acknowledge me as a recognized (if lamented) entity.

Does the commandment to “love thy neighbour” transcend the dictionary?