By Peppermint Patti
JOTR Columnist
I like to play with their heads, Sophie, to the extent that two-leggers can be said to have heads.
Hah!
Overstatement?
I don’t think so.
I’m not saying two-leggers lack intelligence, exactly. On occasion, they can display a certain kind of smarts. It’s just that sometimes, in the heat of things, they seem to lose their common sense.
I didn’t come to the chain-link to air all my grievances against two-leggers, of which I have many. But as long as we’ve broached it, I have to say that my own two-leggers can be terribly frustrating in the brains department.
Sometimes, they just lose all training.
Believe me, Sophie, I have invested tons of time in teaching those two. I have them just about weaned from dumping their dishes directly into the plate-slosher. They understand that part of my franchise involves lapping two-legger dregs.
It took lot of whining and fake-growling to get this far, though.
The key, I’ve found, is letting two-leggers think they’ve trained the dog.
Very simple. They have it in their hairy heads that dogs should not be fed straight from the table.
Ridiculous, of course.
From a pragmatic point of view, I would have to agree. When two-legged walkers are around, at least.
A dog can get herself in a heap of trouble, as I well know, being discovered four-square on the dining room table licking the last flecks of yellow off the butter dish.
My two-leggers get all trembly and white-faced when they catch me, so to speak, in flagrante delicious.
Believe me, the butter part of pallor is discretion, Sophie, and in that butter part I have often saved my hide.
There is a myth current among two-leggers that dogs should not be fed from the table. Very well, we work around that fable. We train them to put their unwashed plates with potato flecks and beef oil and key lime pie on the floor some distance from the dining room table. We do this by making all kinds of noise by the table till they hit on the idea, which they consider original, of “training” us to lick plates in the kitchen.
They believe they have solved a problem, and if that makes them happy, fine with me.
What difference does it make where I find a plate, so long as I get to slurp it?
A lick is still a lick, Sophie, as lime goes by.
