When people get old they start getting rid of stuff. Thus we have warehouses full of china place settings and volumes of National Geographic (“Every issue from 1953 to October, 2024, free to good home!”) sufficient to last a lifetime and a century or two beyond.
Going hand-in-hand with offloading debris accumulated over the decades is a reluctance to acquire anything. Everyone is afraid of getting a dog.
I know these old people. I am these old people. And everyone, including me, thinks the same about getting a dog at our age. But think it through.
In reality the scale tips in favor of a dog. Even at our age. Consider:
1) A dog won’t wince and turn its head when you’re old, ugly and get undressed in front of it.
2) When you’re tired of eating succotash for the fifth day (or the first day, succotash being succotash) give the leftovers to your dog. Fido will be thrilled, and follow you around until dinner tomorrow hoping for more cold lima beans, canned corn, Miracle Whip, green beans, zucchini and other inedible stuff. Your husband will thank you too.
3) You can’t get a dog because it will disrupt your busy lifestyle? At your age? Oh please.
Put a quick stop to the notion you and the spousal unit want to travel the world: Go to SFO, pick a roundtrip anywhere. Get back home, trembling, and cured of ever wanting to travel again.
4) Your dog will never be embarrassed to be seen with you in public. Unlike your children.
5) A dog on a leash allows people to comment on the terrible cuteness of your blind, flea-ridden, three-legged, mangy mutt. They’ll pet Lucky and say they once had a dog just like it. (“But we had to put him down.”)
6) Too old to walk a dog? Maybe you are, or soon will be. So find a lazy five-year old pooch with no more interest in walking around Ukiah than you. Or pay a kid to walk your dog. Quit whining about money. Sell your timeshare.
7) Least important excuse to not bring a dog home: What if we die? What happens to Li’l Halitosis when we croak?
Well, what happens when you die? Answer that.
Let others will deal with Loogie the Dog. Since all your friends and some of your neighbors know what a peach he is, they’ll be fighting to adopt her.
8) Also: It isn’t just your life that will be improved in ways you can’t predict. Get a dog and improve its life in ways we can easily predict.
A warm house, nice people and occasional walks. A back yard and a great dog next door. Lotsa toys in a big box in the hall. (Have you tried the succotash? Magnifique!) And freed, finally, from the noisy smelly depressing shelter where poor old Taylorswift has been detained since 2023. And yowling cats in nearby cages.
And no more getting your hopes dashed when kids stop at your cell and want to bring you home pleeze pleeze pleeze! but dad says “Nah, let’s get a younger dog, a smaller dog.” The family walks away, breaking your heart.
9) If you won’t get a dog because you haven’t gotten over your last dog, get a dog. Nothing eases the loss of a dog like a new dog.
A puppy is the cure.
Don’t you be the problem.
EYSTER’S IGNOMINIOUS END
DA Dave Eyster’s laudable, near-heroic reign as county DA ended abruptly last week with his reputation in tatters and taxpayers on the hook for hundreds of thousands once lawsuits against the county get totaled.
Our next DA? My bet’s on ABE: Anyone But Eyster. By then Shameful Dave will have retired to Arizona, courtesy of taxpayer-paid pensions.
50 YEARS OF PROMISES
None of us can remember a Presidential campaign that didn’t include guarantees “to end fraud, waste and abuse” in federal spending.
Just as often we heard candidates vow that once taking office “I will end America’s dependence on foreign oil!”
But when a President finally comes along and begins doing both, the left breaks into hives. “B-b-but they’re going to close th-th-the Department of Education! How will the li’l darlins learn what a disgusting, intolerant, racist, hate-filled country they live in?” ANSWER: PTA meetings?
The blob of money-absorbing suet that is the Department of Education doesn’t include one teacher. It doesn’t educate a single student, nor operate a classroom. It’s a bloated barnacle that sucks up funding, first pays its many employees, then sends along (a portion) of the money Congress allocated (with a lot of strings attached) to the 50 states.
Recent student test scores are worst in its history. Guarantee: They’ve not yet hit bottom.
Let’s send the money directly to the states and allow local districts and counties to distribute school funding.
And open the pipelines already.
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