Some Resolutions For An Imperfect Life
They make it look so easy in those dog training videos.
The dog behaviorist - who has some mystical connection with all canines and with all star constellations beginning with the letter “Q” - gives the dog a command, shows the dog what to do and after two tries the pair are in some plane of existence reserved for fantasy partnerships like Lassie and Timmy, Joey and Fury and Lisa Marie and Michael.
Call me a cynic, but I suspect that things are not always so blessedly tranquil when the camera stops rolling.
Life - at least not mine - is just not that perfect.
But, having been raised Catholic in a working-class neighborhood in a small town near Milwaukee, Wis., where guilt and screaming when the Packers score a touchdown are the only two sanctioned emotions, I can’t help but feel guilty that my life with dogs is not perfect like those in the videos.
Thus I make the following New Year’s resolutions:
1. I will limit myself to one curse word when trying to replace my right arm into its socket after a training session with Lacey, a racing-line Siberian husky and my lead sled dog, who I am trying to teach to walk on a leash.
2. I will think of more creative ways to explain away the black eye my dog Nakita periodically gives me in her enthusiasm over having her tummy rubbed.
3. I will remind my husband more often of the multiple-dog clause in our marriage license.
4. I will beg my veterinarian to name any new wing added to his clinic in honor of my husband and the considerable amount of our household income spent there, which will probably pay for most of the new construction.
5. I will try again to make my dog Minjin understand why it is not very politically correct of him to catch mice by their tails, then swallow them whole and live.
6. I will remind my husband more often of the multiple-dog clause in our marriage license.
7. I will purchase stock in the company that manufactures Science Diet dog food, then give my earnings to my veterinarian in hopes he will name any new wing added to his clinic after my husband.
8. I will lobby Rep. George Nethercutt to make dogs a tax deduction.
9. I will stop praising my dog Alpine for his habit of barking at exhaust left in the sky by high-altitude jets as they fly over the ranch because the behavior - while cool to brag about at cocktail parties - probably drives my neighbors crazy.
10. I will remind my husband more often of the multiple-dog clause in our marriage license.
Happy New Year!
About Dogs will switch from a biweekly to a monthly schedule in 1996. My next column will run Sunday, Jan. 14. Beginning in February, it will appear in this same spot the first Sunday of each month.
If you have information about a dog event you’d like published in the calendar that sometimes accompanies this column, I need to receive it no later than the 15th day of the month. The calendar item will then appear on the first Sunday of the following month.
Finally, for the new year, I’d like your input about this column. Do you think a local column about dogs is important? What do you like or not like about this column? Please write to me at the address below.
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