Is Scout a girl's name?

My dog doesn't care about pronouns—but I do care about feeling listened to

I care a lot about getting fellow people’s pronouns right. I care less about getting dogs’ pronouns right.

Scout doesn’t have any idea what the distinction between “she” or “he” or “they” is besides the different sounds the words make falling off our tongues. It takes something more tangible to offend her, like hard eye contact or an unsolicited face rub—she never even knows if someone on the internet sends me a direct message referring to her bat ears as “his”. (How would one explain Instagram to a dog, anyway?)

To that end, I don’t mind when someone calls her good boy or cute buddy or whatever else they feel like in passing. I got it wrong myself six years ago: When I first met Scout at my hometown’s shelter, I captioned a video to Sean with the text “I need him”.

But on occasion I do bristle when someone refers to Scout with masculine pronouns. It has nothing to do with the implications of the words themselves and everything to do with not feeling listened to.

I once worked with a new company to help promote their flagship product. A few weeks in—after several DMs, emails, and photos back and forth—the founder called Scout “he” three times in one email. This was in direct response to my previous message making regular use of she/her.

When we lived in Florida, our next-door neighbor constantly referred to Scout as “him”. He also ignored my requests not to let his own dog run into our yard uninvited, not to pet her roughly (he pushed her to yelp more than once), and not to spew COVID-19 conspiracy theories in our vicinity.

Almost daily I receive messages from brands interested in some sort of collaboration. A full half read like copied-and-pasted templates. Some are addressed to the wrong name entirely—one simply called Scout “heeler” with no title at all. Many use he/his pronouns.

Again: I do not care if someone gets Scout’s gender wrong. (The distinction between gender and sex matters most for my own species due to our robust culture and ongoing discrimination. Being respectful to people’s identities is the absolute least I can do to be inclusive, but the stakes aren’t nearly as high with a dog who doesn’t know English.)

I do care if the people I invest time in are willing to pay attention to my own details the way I pay attention to theirs, though. It’s not about the words themselves—it’s about what the words show about the effort they deem me worthy of. It’s about feeling like a cog in the wheel or a means to an end rather than a complete individual. It’s about my love of language and ongoing sense that proofreading, especially in formal contexts, is a subtle way to show respect. It’s about tiny details adding up to a larger demonstration of “I value you, I care about you, I see you”.

Is any of this a capital-B Big deal? No. Am I reminding myself to show others grace? Yes. (Goodness knows I make slews of my own typos and missteps.) Does it still irk me a little (okay: sometimes a lotta) to feel unheard even in the small ways? Yeah.

This seems both like a natural response to reciprocal social situations and also like something I can keep working on.