Welcome to Week 3 of The Bug and Me (alternatively The Rewiring of Thom or Everything I Need to Know About Life I’m Learning from My Dog).
The second most gratifying thing about changing columns is I’m finding out just how many people read my old column. The most gratifying thing is how many readers are disappointed I discontinued Thinking Critically.
Apparently some people only read the headline of the last one, though, or heard about it through the grapevine, because I’ve also run into quite a few people who thought I was retiring altogether.
I assure everyone that is not the case. I am a writer, so unless I decide to change careers completely, there is little chance I will ever get to (or perhaps want to) retire. When the grim reaper comes for me he will likely have to wait because I will probably be on deadline.
Anyway, my hope is people will enjoy reading The Bug and Me as much as they did Thinking Critically.
I also know people are reading the new column because several have, rightfully, pointed out I sometimes appear to be just as cynical, angry and negative as ever.
All I can say is, it’s a work in progress.
Similarly, if I said today, ‘I am going to learn how to play the piano,’ I wouldn’t be playing Beethoven tomorrow, or even Billy Joel.
Everyone has heard the expression, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”
I do not believe that. You can teach an old dog, it just takes a while and the right incentive.
For example, for some reason The Bug decided she was going to start chasing cars and pedestrians. I have no idea where it came from. She never did it when she was a puppy, although she has never liked bicycles come to think of it.
Now, Bug is not old by any means, but she is an adult and has become quite stubborn. And, unlike when she was a mere 100 pounds or so, she has become pretty tough to wrangle even though I’ve still got, ahem, about 80 pounds on her.
I tried a spike collar. I didn’t want to do it, but it was better than her getting hit by a truck, or worse, knocking over and seriously injuring a child. It worked to an extent, but not as well as you might think.
If you’re not familiar, a spike collar is all-metal. Its links are closed into loops on one end with prongs on the other so the prongs go through the loops of the next link and point inward toward the dog’s neck. The ends of the collar are joined with a normal metal chain you attach to a leash so when you pull the leash the collar tightens and the prongs dig into the animal’s neck. This modifies the unwanted behaviour… or so the theory goes. I was able prevent Bug from getting to her quarry by brute force, but not stop her from trying or stop her desire to do so.
She went through two of the damn things. The first one she twisted until one of the links snapped. That’s no easy feat. Karen, at the pet store, said she had never seen a dog break one of those before. The second one got so bent out of shape it became useless.
In any event, we had to go to Plan B, which is a head halter. This thing is ingenious. It consists of a collar that goes around the neck with a secondary strap that goes over the nose. The leash is attached to this second strap so when The Bug starts to pull, the halter causes her nose to be turned down and back toward me.
She doesn’t mind wearing it just walking normally, but hates it when she tries to go after something. I can tell she still wants to, but it is a three-stage process: Control the behaviour. Change the behaviour. Stop the desire.
Sadly, the same applies to me, only I am a more difficult subject. To be fair, though, human emotion and behaviour are much more complex. Or so I would like to think.
Last Thursday, Canadian entertainers The Weeknd, a singer, and Belly, a rapper, cancelled appearances on Jimmy Kimmel’s show because of a scheduled appearance by Donald Trump.
Normally, my gut reaction would be a congratulatory tirade about the presumptive Republican presidential candidate being a narcissistic, ignorant fascist.
I refrained.
The more important thing, though, and why I am claiming progress here, is I not only did not rant, but I did not feel the desire to rant.
Instead, I quietly lamented the kind of extremism Trump represents has become mainstream and that our politics—certainly in the U.S., to a lesser degree in Canada, perhaps—has become so polarized people of differing views feel they cannot even appear on the same television program with each other in good conscience.
These things should concern us all, I believe, but being cynical, angry and negative about it hasn’t been working for me. My reaction to this story gives me hope I can become a more reflective person who doesn’t get bent out of shape over things I can’t control.
In the meantime, if it doesn’t seem like I’ve changed, I’m working on it, dammit!
