July 9: This dog has a gun and he didn't take his medication

In my experience, the most vicious dogs are the tiny ones. I’ve only been bitten by a dog once. It was a Chihuahua. I was walking out of a hotel in southwest Calgary when this yapping little dog ran up behind me and sunk its fangs into the back of my calf. Drew blood too. I yelled and I kicked at it but it was already running back to its master – some spaced out old lady who was sitting serenely on a bench. I’m not the type to kick dogs, but I really wish my foot connected there. Had the dog bitten my then three-year-old niece, I would have turned it into doggie ground meat right then and there.

I'll chew your big toe to shreds, creep

In our society, we tend to put a dog to sleep if it bites someone. I’vebeen told that every dog has the capacity to bite; that we should never forget that dogs are, essentially, wild beasts.

We used to have a shih tzu named Gizmo. Gizmo was afraid of pretty much everything and was just about the tamest dog you could ever meet. Sometimes I could get Gizmo excited. I’d get down on the floor and I’d take a swipe at her and Gizmo would go racing off throughout the house, trying to work up a strategy to fight back. I would lie down and Gizmo would attack my wrists. She wouldn’t bite them but she would put them in her mouth and I would feel her teeth on my skin. If she really wanted to, she probably could have bitten down hard and done some real damage, but she never did. She was a tame doggie.

Mark Twain, aka Samuel Clemens, once said that heaven goes by favour, not by merit. If it went by merit then your dog would get in and youwould stay out.

A popular sign in a dog owner’s house: “Lord, help me be the kind of person my dog thinks I am.”

In Bible times, dogs were considered unclean animals. Sinners aresometimes compared to dogs.

I’ve heard it said that there are no bad dogs, just bad dog owners. That may be true. When you come right down to it, dogs, like all animals, are neutral when it comes to human beings. We are not their natural prey so they will leave us alone as long as they are not starving or threatened by us.

And yet, you don’t see dogs on the psychiatrist’s couch, moaning about how guilty they feel about peeing on the carpet or eating the chocolate cake you were saving for a birthday party. No one ever says: “That dog has a gun and he forgot to take his medication.”

My brother says that he cries when he watches his dog swim in the lake. Maybe it’s because he knows his dog loves him unconditionally and that dogs don’t complicate their lives with unnecessary gobbledegook. A dog’s life is pure. They can’t speak English but they often communicate better than people who have a solid grasp ofit.

Hooray for dogs.