"Sometimes a man buys a house in order to have a dog. A man walks a dog so that he doesn't look like a child molester when he walks in the woods. Alone and in the woods, a man is a threat. Give him a dog, though, and he becomes the symbol of American individualism. A man who lives alone is a strange neighbor, but a man with a dog is defused. The dog gives the man someone to talk with so that he seems not so crazy when he mutters to himself about the way the world works, how people betray each other, how politicians grow more corrupt and stupid. "
- Jeff Oaks, "Dog at Midlife"
- Creative Nonfiction magazine
- Winter 2011
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