I’ve written several times about big men in trucks and their love of small dogs, but I have also been witnessing the extraordinary impact Gus has on women, especially young women, who gush and swoon over him almost as if he were Justin Bieber or some rock star.

Something is going on there.

Everywhere I go, women gather around Gus, sometimes shriek at the sight of him, hold him, say they want a dog just like him, plead with their mothers to get one. I feel very popular walking around town.

Older women are more restrained, but he clearly touches a deep chord in them, deeper than any I have witnessed in any dog or puppy that I have owned or lived with.

When I was young, my friends talked all the time about “chick magnets,’ things that attracted the interest and attention of women. Clearly, they had something like Gus in mind. I used the term often, and said once or twice recently that Gus is a “powerful chick magnet,” and I wish had known that when I was younger.

It’s a good line and people liked it, but it sounded wrong to me, thoughtless and unnatural, almost creepy when I said it. These were common words from another time that I have now seemed to  outgrow and which no longer seem funny or innocent.

So I stopped saying it. I am nearly 70, and like many older men, my choice is either to listen and change or simply get stuck in values and expressions and ideas that no longer work for women, or for men, and are no longer funny or right.

I see that small dogs touch very deep nurturing instincts in both women and men – young women in particular.  I see these instincts in the big men in trucks who can barely speak of these dogs without crying, as well as the young women who show such deep pleasure in holding and touching Gus.

I don’t know if mercy is a universal or learned instinct, but Gus is teaching me that nurturing is, in fact, a universal instinct,  it is embedded deeply in all of us. These small creatures seem to bring it out because they replicate human babies, I think, in the most literal of ways.

Lab puppies are universally considered “cute,” but they don’t replicate the feeling or experience of holding a small baby.

Maria is touched when Gus crawls onto her shoulder or stomach to sleep in the morning, and so am I. This is something deep within us that is revealed. It is not that he is a magnet, but that he is a vulnerable and appealing creature, small enough and loving enough to do that. At this point, it is just like loving a baby. It is important to keep the difference in mind.

It is unfair, I think to blame men for not always being able to keep up with rapidly evolving sensibilities.  Things we learned in ou early lives are part of our neural system, they will often pop up. This is not a crime, even if it is wrong, and even if we must learn to change.

This new and sometimes rigid sensitivity strikes many men as political correctness, so they will often dismiss abuse, harassment and blatant sexism with a shrug, saying “this is what I’ve always heard, this is what we’ve always done.” Sadly, many women say the same thing. Our president benefited greatly from this attitude when those grotesque tapes were released.

I don’t care to join the political fray, but he will never get past that with me, not unless he is truly repentant for having believed and said those things.

I can sympathize with those men, we always talked about women in that way when I was young. My friends and I never meant any harm, and never once thought it was offensive. No one ever told us otherwise, it was the way our fathers and uncles and brothers talked. But now, I see that it was and is deeply hurtful and damaging, and I would much prefer to be a man who can change than one who clings to the past and claims it as a righteous virtue.

We sometimes forget that our culture abuses and demeans men as well.

I noticed the other day that when I used the “chick magnet” line Maria didn’t think it was funny or cute.  She didn’t care to be seen as a “chick,” and neither would I.

The phase my pals and I used so often in high school is, in fact,  sexist and always was. And the fact that many men resent being told this doesn’t make that untrue.

It is absurd as well as demeaning to think a puppy like Gus is a way of getting women to love me, or be attracted to me. It’s also an exploitive way to use a dog. I have learned that the only relationship with a woman that is of any value to is one that is about me, not a dog. It is not easy being a young man in the throes of sexual impulses, all the more reason to learn about what love really is.

I wish someone had told us that we could be loved for ourselves, that is what true love is really about. We don’t need the puppy or any other magnet.

I didn’t feel right about the phrase “chick magnet” either, which is interesting. It just struck me as wrong now, I needed to think about why that was so.

Life is change, and the way we see women is finally beginning to change, although not nearly fast enough or easily enough. Much of my life is about understanding that so many of the things that seemed fine when I was young were not. We hurt a lot of people, including ourselves.

I believe people have the right to be offensive, within reason.

Free speech is free or it is nothing but a joke and an empty phrase. It is sometimes the most offensive things that need protecting.

But men are powerful and men are important, what they say matters. And I am grateful for the chance to learn these things before I wither and die. I like to think that I am not sexist in any way, but that, of course, can’t really be true. I remember all too well how I grew up and what I saw.

Change is difficult, change is important, change is sacred.

We learn every day the consequences of not listening to one another. We often talked about women, but we rarely listened to them. I am listening now.

If someone tells me something I said once hurts them or demeans them, that’s enough for me. I don’t care much what other people say about it, I do care what I see when I look in the mirror. I need to like that man, and I don’t want him to be demeaning anyone.

Dogs teach us so many different things about life if we are open them. Gus has just taught me something, young as he is. He is not a “chick magnet”, but an especially appealing creature who brings out the human need to nurture and care for the helpless and vulnerable, even if they are not adorable and cuddly.

Perhaps the next big lesson is that we can treat human beings in this way as well.