Nintendogs and the obsessive compulsive child

I got a 3DS for christmas a couple years ago as an adult. I got it so I could play Animal Crossing New Leaf, which I would have done anything to have as a child, but I’ve been more drawn to an old Nintendogs cartridge that used to be my aunt’s. I had my own years ago but it’s long gone.

I remember one time I accidentally put one of my dogs up for adoption and sobbed and sobbed until my mom figured out that I could just turn off the game without saving to get her back. Their names had those pre-emoji symbols on either side of them, names like ☼Sweetie☼ and ♡Courtney♡, often misspelled. ︎I would take their collars off before giving them baths, even though the game does this by default. If your dog is wearing a collar, it disappears during bath time and reappears afterward, but what if the memory of it and the knowledge that it will always be there keeps them from feeling clean?

I would brush them only in the direction that their fur grows in, even though the dog is programmed to respond the same regardless of how you brush it. I would walk each dog the same number of times and for relatively equal distance. Bows are a common accessory for the Nintendog, and they can be worn around the neck or on the ears, depending on the shape of the dogs ears and their ability to support a bow. Sometimes male dogs have big ears, so bows would fall there, and female dogs with small ears would wear bows around their necks. My child brain was very concerned that dogs that did not conform to gender norms could potentially be bullied by those that did, so I took care to ensure that boy dogs with large ears never wore bows, and vice versa.

As a child is expected to, I bought as many dogs as the game allows for which means a lot of them had to stay in the puppy hotel. I had a rotating schedule to decide which dogs I would actually play with and which would spend the day being cared for by the game, so each dog had equal time with a real human.

I had the early signs of OCD, which you may have guessed from reading this. But I was so caring. I miss when my compulsions were to care for a digital pet with obsessive ritual. Caring for myself and the things I love is no longer a given but an exhaustive effort.

I used to carry a hairbrush with me everywhere and maintain a twelve step skin care routine and take hot baths with ice water where I’d read until the pages of my books got wavy from the steam. The worst of my OCD manifested in a compulsive need to eat foods in even numbers and walk so both of my feet touched the same color of tiles the same number of times. I had to wear both straps of my backpack and open doors with two hands. It was so exhausting, I can hardly conceptualize that feeling now that it’s gone. But I was present when I took such care with my steps, I wasn’t dissociative the way I am now, I was painfully, awfully present in my body. And my stomach was full when one piece of bacon had to be followed by a second to make me feel safe. My mind and body were one when I counted how many times I chewed each bite. Was it really so bad? The Nintendogs were happy. I hardly know me anymore.