We had to work this morning. And what a beautiful day it was. Beth got us out of set up so we got to sleep in which was nice. In my line of work you meet all kinds of humans. You get humans that are clean and shiny like my dog bowl after breakfast, you get the kinds that look like they work hard and have never been forced to take a bath. We have old and young, men and woman, happy humans and grumps. The most important category to me would be the dog lovers, the dog toleraters, and the “if you don’t look at them they won’t see you because dogs are icky”-ers.
For the most part my patrons love me. In fact on this very same morning I got a whole piece of bacon to myself. Talk about the dogs life. Anyways, sometime you will get the occasional person that comes along and just plain doesn’t like dogs. Well on this same day I got to meet just such a person.
The woman who came in was a very fragile older human who was using a cane to help her get around. I normally will loupe over for a good ear scratching when someone comes in the door; and as per usually I did just this. When I got there she turned to the side and shoved her cane in my face. Odd behavior for a human but she did. So knowing that she obviously didn’t want me to approach I sat right where I was and waited for her to come to her senses and see how cute and friendly I obviously am.
It felt like I had waited a very long time and still she refused to even acknowledge my existence so I decided to get my schmooze on. I started doing ever trick Beth had ever taught me. Still nothing. Saving the biggest crowd please for the last, I started to tell this woman a very lengthy story about my life.
Finally she turned the Beth and said, “what does your damn dog want?”. Beth told her that I was just telling her a story and that I was getting to the good part. Right then I let out the saddest whimper I could come up with and killed over like a dead dog, holding as still as possible. The woman stared at me in disbelieve. After what seemed to be an age she let out the loudest old human cackle I had ever heard. When the cackling finally died down, the woman reached down to pat my belly, and said well a performance like that deserves recognition dog or not.
The lesson of the day: No matter what type of human people try and pretend to be, a dog always knows best and can play on their heart strings like a harp whose melody is full of love and kindness.
