Category Archives: The Daily Growl

It’s been a while since my last installment and some of you are probably wondering where I’ve been. I mean, after my last bit about the aches and pains the hypochondriacs out there might even think I’ve been in the hospital, or worse. Not so. I’m fine. As usual. And no, I haven’t run out of things to say. My absence has been more a matter of ‘technical difficulties’.

My readers assume, rightly, that I am the source of the material in my columns. My views, my thoughts, my opinions. But there’s a bit of a dirty secret I’ve been keeping to myself which I think needs to be divulged and it’s this: I can’t type. There. I said it. The air is once again clear.
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For as long as I can remember, and that’s longer than you think, I’ve felt good. Really good. No matter what I did or how long or hard I did it I felt fine. Maybe a little tired, but nothing a nap wouldn’t fix. OK, there was the time I misjudged the height of a stump and cut my chest on this piece of metal that was sticking out of it. The folks weren’t home, (yes, there had been suitcases involved), but my buddy Tom was staying with me and took me to the vet.

She, the vet, someone who’d been pretty nice to me before, gave me some kind of drug that knocked me out. When I woke up I was all wrapped up in bandages and had this plastic thing around my head. I looked ridiculous. I felt sick and dizzy. I mean, I was fine before I got there. The cut didn’t hurt. What was the big deal? Tom said I’d needed stitches, whatever those are. Personally, I think a nap would have done the trick.
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You know by now there are things the very sight of which will make my skin crawl. To a greater or lesser degree these include the leash, (kind of a love-hate relationship—I don’t like it, but it means I’m getting out of the house), the groomer’s van, (by the time I actually see it I’m practically inside it, so maybe I should direct my animosity more toward the groomer himself, or the sound the doorbell makes when he rings it, I don’t know, I need to think about that one some more), Mork and/or Mindy—my dad’s names for the two Sharpei’s next door whose real names are Ming and Mai, and the really old guy who walks up and down the street every day, looks and smells like a zombie, awful.

All of these are unpleasant but bearable. They pose no threat to my accustomed way of life. In fact, they offer the opportunity of a little entertainment from time to time. Barking at the old guy when he walks past my gate or going after the wrinkly mutts next door through the fence, for instance. But there is one thing, actually a few of them it turns out, different shapes and sizes, all diabolical, that not only make my skin crawl, but my hair stand up and my stomach turn. I believe they are called ‘suitcases’.
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I got some flack about the comments I made regarding the ‘rules’, about how some people feel as though they need to be told what to do every minute of their lives in order for them to get through the day without killing themselves or someone else, and about how we ‘lesser’ beings in the animal world have somehow managed to survive the millennia by following the one, basic, rule that makes the most sense—namely, Don’t Be Stupid.

I was a little surprised. I figured that if so many people felt the need to have the terms of their lives dictated to them by someone else, the least I could do to help would be to simplify things. Pare down the number of rules. Eliminate some of the redundancy and contradiction. I guess I was wrong.
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Some feedback on my last posting about the park got me thinking. There were a few angry comments about dog discrimination, (no surprise), complaints about leashes in general and why people don’t use them on their children who come running at us and pulling our tails from out of nowhere with no concern for our well-being, a few suggestions from dog walkers about legal off-leash parks available to us, (right, so we can get into even more fights with the dogs they don’t supervise or with the other dogs belonging to weirdos and psychopaths who seem to enjoy the chaos), and one self-righteous remark aimed at me and how it sounds as though I live in a pricey neighborhood, live a life of exceptional privilege and therefore have nothing at all to complain about. (Whoever wrote that didn’t leave a name. Probably some rich liberal feeling guilty and trying to foist it off on me.)
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