Milk Bones for People?

     My dog Mona is more than a handful. If she were a bra, she would be size EEE. Seriously. We found poor Mona at the Anne Arundel ASPCA in December of 2013 on Christmas Eve. A pure bred, chocolate lab with the shiniest coat I have ever seen, of course we jumped at the chance to own her. The angels above sent us a dog with very little discipline and no training, so to say she has been a pain in the ass is an understatement. But, like most rescues, she has been well worth it.

     While Mona is difficult, she is also very trainable. It did not take us long to get her on a schedule, nor did it take long to teach her to sit, lay, shake, speak and stay (sometimes). What has been the real mother is breaking her of her old habits. She has incredible focus. But when she attempts to charge down the street and tackle some kid on a bike while out for a walk because she thinks thats how you are supposed to play with kids, that focus is a monster. Getting her to train that focus on me or my wife has been a struggle, but it has been paying dividends. Small, incremental dividends. At a snail's pace. An excruciatingly painful and slow snail's pace. Like if the snail was frozen and crawling across the surface of Pluto...in the winter...at night...billions of years from now after the Sun has burned all of its fuel and disappeared from the sky. And the Universe has grown cold and quiet.

     With progress there are growing pains. Mona knows
some of our friends and visitors more personally than I would have wanted. I don't think you can apologize enough when your dog accosts people with her snout. Ugh. Somedays, we think "will this ever get better?" Of course it will. When a dog is so set in their thinking and used to doing things a certain way, it takes time to shift its focus and create a new paradigm. The trick is us to keep reinforcing the new behavior until it becomes second nature for our precious angel.

     We are all animals. We all have our routines and our own way of doing things. We greet people the way we learned from our parents, we drink our coffee the way we learned to like it. We travel to the places we like to go and we buy the things we like to buy at the grocery store we like to go to during the week when we like to or are able to go. People like their routines. To suddenly be told that drinking alcohol is bad for you or smoking will kill you are driving an SUV is going to melt the ice caps and flood the world, people tend to get pissed off. "What, me change? Yeah, I don't think so."

     People don't like to be told to change, even if it is in their best interests. How many people do you know or have you seen rolling an O2 canister behind them with a cigarette hanging out their mouths? Never mind that the COPD is destroying their lungs, making it hard to breathe and will eventually lead to their premature death. Don't they know that O2 is flammable and they could blow themselves up?! They might even take someone else with them! Of course they know, but they have smoked for years and they don't want to or just can't make that change. Despite the obvious danger that is in front of them (or rolling behind them on squeaky wheels) they keep right on doing what they have always done. Its familiar, its calming. Its what they know.

     Its the same mentality when it comes to the Environment or Climate Change. Tell someone that they have to change and many stick up their middle fingers. You can't tell them what to do. They are free to do as they please! They have always done things a certain way and if its harming themselves, so what? But how do you demonstrate that imposing one's will on another can harm people and their way of life? You only have to look at the people who live in the South Pacific or Bangladesh to realize that. Getting others to see that reality is the single biggest challenge environmental activists face more than any other. Its the Tragedy of the Commons, and getting people to understand that small actions by billions of people add up to big consequences.

     People aren't like dogs. You can't send them to obedience school or make them sit every time they pull on the leash. It works with Mona, sure, but if you tried that with a person, you would probably end up in a fist fight (or in a Quentin Tarantino movie). We have to take a different approach. Our challenge is to show people that they do not have to give up there freedom just to make the world a cleaner place. Dog biscuits won't work. Sure would be easier though, wouldn't it? Maybe they make Milk Bones for people.