The Amazing Longevity of a Clam

I can definitely see the appeal of having an emotional support dog. A dog can go a long way toward cheering a person up, relieving stress and loneliness, etc. They’re a lot more of an organic treatment than drugs and alcohol.

But I don’t think I’d sign up to get an emotional support dog, or any kind of service dog, because I imagine there are big downsides. First off, having an emotional support dog probably greatly increases a person’s need to have an emotional support dog. Because the purpose of the dog is to relieve your stress but I bet a lot of that stress is caused by all the people who give you shit for trying to bring a dog into a public place.

That’s why if I was going to have an emotional support dog I’d get one of those pocket-size dogs like a Yorkie. And then I could just stuff it in my backpack and go in and out of public places all day long and nobody would hassle me because nobody would know the difference. I might have to put a little snorkel mask on the dog inside my backpack so it can get enough oxygen to stay alive and keep cheering me up. But that’s a small price to pay.

The biggest downside to me though would be that emotional support dogs have the same big problem that regular pet dogs have. They die. It sucks enormously when your regular pet dog dies so it must suck a million times worse when your emotional support dog dies, especially if it gets hit by a car or something. So if I was going to get an emotional support animal it would have to be an animal that has a long lifespan. Maybe a turtle. I hear turtles can live a hundred years. But I think that mostly applies to huge sea turtles, not to pocket-size pet turtles. The animal with a long lifespan that would best fit in my shirt pocket is a clam. A quahog clam can live 500 years. I know it’s a lot harder to form an emotional bond with a clam than it is with a dog. But I would derive comfort from knowing that my little buddy, whatever its species, isn’t likely to die on me soon. And the odds are very slim that a clam will get run over by a car, unless I get run over by a car while it’s in my shirt pocket. But I would never keep my emotional support clam in my shirt pocket anyway, for the same reason I never keep money or keys or anything else in my shirt pocket. I forget it’s in there and it ends up in the laundry. And I wouldn’t want to hear something rattling around in the dryer and come to the horrifying realization that it’s my emotional support clam.

So maybe if I want to try out an emotional support animal. I’ll start with a clam and see how it goes. If it doesn’t work out I could always eat it.





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