Doggin’ It Thru Eastwood
Everything I know I learned from dogs
Walking the streets in Eastwood (practical every day for the last seven years) has taught me many things. Maintaining the same route allows me to get the exact amount of exercise I need to keep in shape, clear my cluttered mind and help me through the training process of “rewiring my brain”. (Read last week’s blog post about that one!)
Every lesson I have learned, I owe to the mixed bag of splendid and diverse canines that I have met along the way. Most of these judicious canines are my friends, except for one. After all of the years of tirelessly trying to befriend him, he wants none of the friendship that I have tirelessly (and with a great amount of courage and effort) tried to offer him.
I will divulge the culprit’s name later on in this post.
Being a practicing humanitarian, I try to find simple and practical ways to restore the “unity” that our country shared for many years and then share my successes and or my failures with whomever I can find to bend an ear. I started this extraordinary experiment by carrying a pocket full of good old American Milk-Bone dog biscuits. I thought; every dog must like Milkbones, they’ve been around forever. It seemed to be a logical assumption that if they were good enough for our dogs and dogs all across America (that have had them for years), then the same science or reasoning would apply to every pooch that came running to me wagging their tail. Not so.
Lesson #1; Not all dogs like Milk Bones.
I also figured that if I became a dog’s friend, I would have a golden opportunity to make friends with the person on the other end of the leash. Then once over that hurdle, I would have the delightful opportunity to construct a visceral and meaningful relationship with a human and man’s best friend all at the same time. I could then begin to close the “great divide” once and for all! To think it all might start with a “doggie” treat. How wonderful it would be if it really caught on. A Pulitzer Prize perhaps?
Well, what I have learned is that the dogs that I have encountered, like me much more than their owners do, except for the one I mentioned earlier. His name is Adam, (please don’t mention his name around Eastwood, it might get back to him) and to this day he would much rather have a piece of me, than the Milkbones that I have been tossing at him for the last seven years. What really irritates me is that I never did anything for him to dislike me so much. You would think I asked him to fetch me a stick, do summersaults, or roll over and play dead while he was restrained by his leash.
Lesson #2; Some dogs just want to be left alone to dig up their own damn bones.
Dogs are a lot like people. They just want us to be more like them. They have realized all along that they are much, much smarter than humans. After all, they at least know how to make a friend when someone throws them a bone; or in the case of this particular experiment; a dog biscuit.
That’s it for now. There will be more lessons from Doggin It Thru Eastwood in a future post. Until then, keep an eye out for a black Lab that answers to the name Adam. Maybe, just maybe, you will have the ideal treat he’s been waiting for all these years. If you happen to do so, please share it with me.
Milk Bones are in short supply these days, and I’m running out of time. One more thing. Keep in mind that dog spelled backward is God, and as God can, a dog can be full of love but can get angry, and sometimes might bite you. When you reach to give a dog a bone, know that they may bite you because they haven’t been taught not to bite the hand that feeds them. And never, ever, stand between a dog and a fire hydrant.
