My Dog is Afraid of Fish

Unfortunately, there is a bit of turmoil in my house these days that doesn’t seem to be going away. In passing, I may have mentioned my dog’s fear of fish. No matter what has been said, the gravity of the problem has been severely underrepresented. Lily doesn’t just fear fish. She is terrified. The fish might as well be wearing hockey masks and carrying chainsaws. When the fish scurry about their tank, she runs to the furthest point in the house she can find. Sometimes she knocks down the gate keeping her from the second floor, sprints upstairs, and hides under my daughter’s desk, facing the wall. Sometimes she retires to the bathroom and tries to close herself in. Sometimes she goes to the bedroom window and tries to claw through the blinds in order to, presumably, open the window and slither out. This one is a particular sticking point for my wife, who is quite fond of her bedroom blinds and the privacy they afford. One day, the dog crawled on my lap, and I must note this is not a lap dog in size or relative comfort, to avoid a three inch fish. She stayed for hours. A seventy-five pound dog afraid of a one ounce piece of sushi, in a bowl, mind you.

The circumstance has become dire enough to stimulate deep consideration on the motives surrounding this phobia. My wife expressed that communication could be the answer. “If only she could talk and tell us what’s wrong,” she suggested. What’s she going to say? I suspect it would sound something like, “I’m afraid of fish. Open the window!” I’m pretty sure we already know she’s scared and wants out the window. I’m also pretty sure the ability to speak would not cause the type of introspective emotional quotient we need. I just wouldn’t expect her to engage in meaningful discourse about how fish represent a repressed fear of the unknown stemming from her puppyhood when she was orphaned and forced to survive a harsh world before being adopted. I suspect her fear of fish is something much more obvious. I think it’s plain as day the phobia centers around a healthy aversion to dark magic. They don’t call it dark magic for nothing. The dog has reason to fear it. As for why she suspects the fish are practitioners of the dark arts, well, they can breathe under water. That has to seem like dark magic to a dog. I’m not even sure she’s wrong. One of them does kinda look like Lord Voldemort.