Brutally Honest or Mum’s the Word?

The dog got fat. Is that brutally honest? Perhaps. Is it accurate? Debateable. Would it hurt her feelings? Absolutely.

The dog has added 6kgs of fat to her body and that is having a negative impact on her health. That is not an opinion. That is a fact. In my opening gambit I stripped the truth back to bare bones and the language was ineffectual and damaging. It was affective but not effective. We do this stripping back a lot and then we dress it up as honesty. But honesty is often little more than opinion and opinion can cause offence or worse be taken as advice. But do you have to be a wordsmith to have an honest conversation or would a reminder to be kinder with our opinions suffice? After all, being honest is a good thing but it doesn’t excuse you from being a dick.

Unfortunately, the vet is giving out to me because of the dog’s weight. I knew she was gaining before the vet dared to say it out loud. We’re all totally sick of walking and no amount of polite hinting will convince her to stop eating the baby’s leftovers. It was inevitable. Shit weather and general pan-d fatigue (I can’t even say it anymore), reduction in exercise + increase in calories = weight gain. The fix is outside, but outside is a danger zone. The dog dawdles, the baby cries and I have a breakdown only solved with biscuits. Anyway, I saw my window of opportunity to break the cycle. The rain was off, I had a parcel to post and the baby was hanging out with my husband. It was my chance to reconnect with the dog-ter, maybe try a body positivity chat? Sensitively of course, the vet had been borderline fat-shaming.

As we all know, fresh air is good for the soul and walking to the post office was invigorating. I hadn’t realised how much I’d missed it. But when I arrived at the post office, I saw that someone had tied their little chihuahua up outside. As a fellow animal owner I can tell you a whole number of seriously awful things that can happen to a dog left unattended outside a shop. The dog may bite a child’s face off and be legally destroyed. The dog may get loose and become squashed by a tractor. Or, as recently reported on the news the dog may be stolen. I had weighed up these known risks versus the reward of getting some exercise and had decided to proceed with my post office trip. But I hadn’t even considered the possibility of a stranger dog because everyone knows that leaving dogs unattended outside shops is unsafe. As I stood there my concern was now that this potential miniature psycho-dog could be a viscous bully and attack my huge, sweet fat lab. I was flummoxed and in my indecision of next steps, I was dithering. Maybe it was the way I was holding the lead but my conundrum must have been clear because a lady walked past with a judgemental look and without introduction said, “He might get stolen.”

Disregarding the blatant mis-gendering of my bad-ass queen of a best friend, this comment seriously pissed me off. Fixing her my steeliest stare and using my most aggressive accent I challenged her, “Excuse me?”

The woman was now tripping over herself to explain her almost accurate comment. “Oh, I didn’t mean any harm. I used to tie my dog up outside but you see it on Facebook… don’t you? Sometimes dogs get stolen. So, I don’t do it anymore.”

“I would never tie my dog up outside,” I lied.

“No, of course not. Sorry.”

I waited for her to be out of sight and I then stole the chihuahua whose owner was clearly a liability. I walked 20 minutes to the next post office where I posted my parcel whilst the dogs waited outside. I cared so much about the opinion of that perfect stranger that we exercised for an extra 40 minutes on our round trip. That’ll fix her.

She was probably a very nice lady, but she didn’t know the circumstances and the mental gymnastics I was doing to justify my decision. She had though, ruined my walk. She made me feel bad and I can’t work out if she was right to. Was she offering helpful advice based on a modicum of truth or was she interfering in something that simply wasn’t her business?

Her honesty policy was perhaps over-zealous but it certainly made me change my course of action.

It made me think about the joy I had when I introduced my almost-9-month-old baby to my almost-80-year-old grandma. I didn’t take a moment of it for granted. Because so far, we have survived. My grandmother has been vaccinated and going on an adventure to the Isle of Wight with my most prized-person wasn’t something I always thought I would do. But after a year of isolation, I was stunned at how openly my parenting choices were either lauded or criticised in front of this live audience. Not out of malice but out of an appreciation of “honesty.” His name, his food, his behaviours, my behaviours – there was an opinion on everything. As a lockdown first-time mum my efficiencies as a parent have mainly been judged by the safe distance of online. The irony. A place where we are told to be kind, not to filter ourselves and if you can’t say anything nice don’t say anything at all. The place where we are legally unprotected from the brutal honesty of strangers suddenly felt safer than my grandma’s living room. When I relayed the story of her honesty to a friend I was told, “Oh, it’s just a generational thing.” As though it’s OK to hurt someone’s feelings if you’re old. Maybe my Grandma’s Facebook feed is full of memes that say as a person of a certain age she has earned the right to say what she likes but I have friends my age who pride themselves on the same honest approach, so I don’t think it is a generational thing. In fact, I recently bought a pair of boots but and told friends to

lie to me if they didn’t like them. I didn’t want their honest opinions because they wouldn’t have changed my choice. I didn’t ask the lady from outside the post office for her opinion on the welfare of my dog but as a result of her feeling the need to share some poor family have lost their beloved chihuahua. There are repercussions to sharing our opinions and not always as intended. That lady has at least vindicated her Facebook feed full of stolen dogs.

So, here I am writing down my opinions as brutally honestly as I can. But I am merely trying to practise a craft in story-telling. Training my fingers and mind to write. I hope you like how my opinions are told, if not the opinions themselves. I don’t expect any action or even to change your mind. Although I do ask for feedback. But honestly… I’m not sure that I can handle it. I’m a natural born people pleaser so to please the vet the dog is on a diet. She’s done so well with her exercise and it’s starting to pay off. So mum’s the word on this next bit - I’m going to feed her that precious chihuahua as a treat. And if you believe that, it seems my exercises have been paying off too.