Happy birthday, Basil!

An essay on responsibility, Gilmore Girls, and my dog Basil

Today is Basil’s 6th birthday! Everyone wish Basil a happy birthday 🎂 🐕

Most mornings I’m woken up by what sounds like a polite, gruff man outside my bedroom door saying the word “woof” in a New Zealand accent. It is Basil, informing me that the sun has risen and it is time to take him on a walk. “Whiff,” he says, impatiently.

2024 for me has mostly marched to the beat of Basil’s slightly eccentric drum, lots of slow, cosy days packed with a truly baffling amount of different writing work, punctuated by the unbreakable routine of my anxious dog. Sometimes the only time I’d speak during the day would be to narrate Basil’s meal menu to him, or to say hi after he’d spent the morning on his “sky bed” on the balcony, and would come inside all warm from the sun and lean against me while I work.

It’s been lovely - at the beginning of the year I unexpectedly became a single dog-dad, and Basil moved in with me full time, and we became a close-knit little duo. Like Batman and Robin, but with a completely different set of mental illnesses. There’s really only been a handful of times this year where he hasn’t been my constant companion, and it’s been both a delight and a privilege to watch him adapt to the trauma of being a child of divorce (for the first week, I had to take him driving around the neighborhood in the back of my car to stop him from crying at night), to spreading his bony little wings and thriving. He now has a robust social life, and in between doggy day care (his favourite place in the world), or illegal runs off leash at the velodrome with other greyhounds (everyone poised to scatter like criminals if the cops bust us), or long walks along the river, he’s become almost an entirely different animal to the repressed and shy dog I adopted over two years ago. He loves other dogs and adores people (within reason), and just seems happy.

But while I wouldn’t trade him or this experience for anything - not only has he brought so much joy into my life, I also just think there’s an ethical responsibility to commit to rescue dogs that we adopt if we feasibly can - I have had a lot of people ask me about adopting a rescue dog on their own. I think because I post so many cute photos and videos, and write so much about him, people only see the delights. But I want to caution people that the responsibility is real and not always particularly fun. I just took him to a lovely dinner party, and I arrived all harried because he was anxious, with his bed under my arm and a bag of snacks and activities for him, and set him up in the corner - and realised that I was giving the energy of a new parent, one eye always on him, checking to see why he is fussing.

As a compulsive Gilmore Girls re-watcher, I’ve long been resigned to the shift from identifying with Rory to Lorelai, that tracks with the passage of time and the inexorable curse of aging. Now impatient with Rory’s schoolyard turmoils and casual adulteries, I’ve watched with more interest at Lorelai’s attempts to build community and find friendship and date. With the full acknowledgement that it’s only a partial comparison, I’ve found myself identifying with Lorelai as a single parent instead - and let me tell you, many of her decisions, which have seemed inscrutable and annoying to me - suddenly make sense, because I can see the responsibility looming behind it all. Her responsibility for Rory has always seemed a given to me, just a normal adult and unremarkable thing. Now I understand (a fraction) of the fear and insecurity behind it. Not sure if it justifies fumbling Max Medina, (Maaaaax Medina), but as someone who has also made some strange decisions this year as a result of dog parent stress, I have more empathy at least.

When I got Basil full time this year, he arrived with an undiagnosed infection, which took a few weeks of vet appointments, two emergency animal hospital trips, and thousands of dollars before it was fixed. Stress aside, the financial burden is significant - as a result of his expensive anxiety medication and fancy single protein diet, I’ve had to take on extra work, which has also resulted in a bunch of the deadlines I’ve been working towards this year having to be pushed back, purely because finances had to take the lead. Hilariously, the more I work, the more I have to pay for day care and dog sitters, a classic capitalism catch-22.

It’s also isolating. I live in an apartment, so before I taught him to wee on the balcony in an emergency (you do NOT want to know the process behind that training regime) I could only leave the house for a few hours at a time, in case he needed to wee, or eat food, or have a walk. After work I have to rush home to pick him up from daycare, on dates I’ve had to smooch and run home at a sensible hour, or I’ve had to convince my friends to hold all our social functions inside my apartment (lured with baked goods). I had to quit a couple of regular hobbies, including my weekly improv show as a result. Over the winter, it was very lonely, and if it wasn’t for the gorgeous support network I’ve built who respect his boundaries, and come for walks with us, and are happy to build our D&D schedule around him, I’d probably have gone a little bit mad.

I see a lot of people on TikTok idolising the quaint Stars Hollow Gilmore Girls vibe, wishing to disappear to a small, perpetually autumn town and drink coffee and wear scarves and chat to the local eccentrics and perverts. But I have to wonder now if there isn’t something slightly sad about Lorelai’s life there - yes she’s found a home and a community and a support network for her and her daughter, but what about the opportunities she’s missed out on thanks to the lack of options and choices she has from that cosy isolation? She’s essentially lived one life through her late teens, twenties and thirties - no travel, few experiences, a lack of adventure. She has a responsibility over all- no wonder she both glamorises her Stars Hollow life, and also makes insane, knee-jerk decisions while trapped in her quirky self-made prison (like marrying Christopher).

I’d always said that I wouldn’t adopt a rescue dog on my own or without a car, and I think ultimately that would still be my advice to anyone asking. Everything is a logistical challenge - it’s why I drove nine hours to Sydney for Christmas with him farting in the back seat, because otherwise, with his regular dogsitters busy over the holidays, how would I see my family? It’s something to think about at least - responsibilities force us to trade our freedoms.

But what a trade! What joy a responsibility like Basil can bring into your life. And these things aren’t static, either. Both Basil and myself are less stressed (although he’s not LOVING his Christmas visit to the grandparents yet), and slowly over the year we’ve opened up from almost complete isolation to experimenting with freedoms along with the responsibility. I think it’s only going to improve, and I’m so privileged to devote my time and money and life to making this weird long awkward dog’s life better than when it was raced and abused for amusement.

Plus, in a few year’s time, he’s going to Yale!

Happy birthday, Basil!

Thank you for reading! This newsletter is funded entirely by the generosity of our paid subscribers, allowing us to commission amazing queer writers and boost marginalised voices. If you like this article and believe in independent journalism, please consider subscribing.