Hello, my name is Baron. I am a two-year old, English pointer, beagle mutt mix rescue. And this is my story. ADog.blog for the non-believers. The skeptics. The dog discriminators. I know who you are. I can sense it when you walk into the room. You stand stiff. Hands to the side. You pay no attention to me, thinking foolishly, “If I ignore him, he’ll just go away.” But I don’t. Your lack of interests towards me, only motivates me to bug the shit out of you more. So I do. Until eventually one of us gets escorted out of the room.
You’re the kind of person who sees someone walking their dog around Home Depot and says to himself, “Do they really need to bring that stupid dog into the store?”
Yes, I know who you are. But more importantly, you know who you are. You’re exactly how my dad used to be. Pet Unfriendly or P.U. as I like to label you. That’s why I created this blog. To try and talk some sense into your type. The non-pet friendly people in the world.
Oh, there are millions of pet loving people out there who will also follow this blog. They’ll laugh and cry and shake their heads in mutual understanding because they know what it’s like to be a dog’s mother, father, sister or brother. They’ll tell others about The Life of Baron and how it’s just so real and so damn entertaining.
You are not my reader’s market. Don’t get me wrong, I love and really, really appreciate your audience. But God love you, you’ve already heard the divine canine calling and live with a dog. Or two. Or five. No, these words are written for another reader. They are for the haters and the ignorant. We all know them. Some are friends, family and co-workers. They are the ones who, because of their unwillingness and closed mindedness, miss out on one of life’s greatest joy. The unconditional love of a dog.
I don’t recall his exact words, so I’m going to paraphrase what my dad said a while back. If anyone knows anything about being P.U. it’s my dad. He was a poster child of Pet Unfriendly. But that was then. After sixty years of never owning a dog, he’s slowly coming to the Bark Side.
It was one morning after spoiling me with a fifteen-minute massages, breakfast—complete with beef stock, a walk around the park in the bitter cold, picking up my poop, not once, but twice and then back inside for a treat of real bacon sitting next to the electric fireplace, that’s when I heard him on the phone telling someone about me. It went something like this…
“Yea, you know the coolest thing I’ve learned over the last year since we foster-failed Baron? Dogs don’t change. He’s just like the dogs my grandparents use to have. Oh, he’s way more well behaved then they were. But a dog of the twenty-first century, is exactly like a dog of the sixteenth century. They haven’t evolved that much. Or maybe they’ve reached their highest level of evolution. I mean, kids grow up and get attitudes, spouses and loved ones can be bitchy and extremely bothersome. Society itself, seems to be going down the shit hole. Depression, anxiety and mental illness are all running rampant. Terrorist. Pandemics. Politics. It’s all extremely taxing on the mind and emotions.”
Dad leaned over and scratched my behind. “But guess what? Every time I go out into that world and deal with all of that bullshit and then come home, the minute I walk through that door, Baron acts like it’s the first time he’s ever meet me. He’s consistently and constantly happy and excited to see me.” And then he starts rubbing my tummy and I roll on my back and eagerly let him.
“You just can’t find that nature in any human being. It may come and go in little temporary spats. But we all eventually get jaded with time.” And here is the most profound thing he had to say about me.
“I guess in this troubling and changing world, he’s a constant source of normality, positivity and happiness.”
He went on to say other great things about me, but my leg began to itch, so I started to scratch it with my teeth and then while my leg was up, I saw my privates and thought to myself, “It’s been at least a hundred and twenty seconds since I last licked them.” So, I went at it again. I’m not embarrassed to admit that when I lick my privates, I lose interest in pretty much everything else in the world.
So, this blog is for you, the P.U.s of the world. Those who ask that derogatory question: Does he really need to bring that stupid dog into Home Depot. The answer is a definitive Yes! They do.
You know why? Because the person on the other end of that leash, the one that my fellow canine is leading around, may be the loneliest, most dejected, grief stricken, or mentally ill person on the planet and that four-legged creature merrily walking along smelling the floor and wagging his tail is the sole purpose of that human’s soul endeavoring to wake up each morning or perhaps preventing him from never waking up on this side of life again.
Alternatively, on a move positive note, which my species possesses more abundantly than your homo sapien species. It just may be that the owner is a healthy, happy individual who loves her pet so much, she’s returning the all the joy and happiness she gets from Bella by letting Bella venture beyond her normal living space.
To put it in perspective, you know how you felt during the Great Human Quarantine? You were forced to stay around your house. Play in your yard. Not go out in public. It sucked big time, right?
Well, fortunately for you, the yahoos in DC, eventually did away with the quarantine. We dogs, on the other hand, live our entire lives in a perpetual state of quarantine. House. Yard. Park. With an occasional drive here and there. So a trip to Home Depot or any other public place out of the ordinary is like a trip to the amusement park to you. It’s fun. It’s exciting. It’s new and different.
So don’t be such a hater when you see me or my kind walking around a Home Depot or sitting next to you at an outdoor restaurant patio. Don’t think of us as a four-legged, furry creature at the end of a leash. Think of us as medicine for an ailing soul and that leash is the IV line that’s pumping a little happiness into the psyche of the two-legged person at the other end of the leash. Come on over and say hi. Ask what my name is and if you can have the privilege to pet me. Show us a couple of seconds of love and I promise you’ll not only make my day, but I’ll make yours too!
Thanks for reading my first post. Please subscribe to this blog and continue reading the the amazing adventures of The Life of Baron and pass it on to all your P.U. friends.
Baron Von Sneed