Dear Friends, Family, Fans and Abolish the Crate Federation Members:
Why do humans insist on have their dog wait to do fun things? Even when I prompt Mom to hurry up by barking in my crate or while walking into the agility ring or walking to the flyball area or walking to the pasture, she doesn’t seem to understand (or move faster). I find it perplexing, so I did a little research about why waiting seems to take so long (and why Mom moves so slow). What I found was very interesting.
I decided it might be useful to have an in-depth conversation with Grady about my findings in case I missed something. Grady thinks the problem is that I have very little patience but that’s not true. I simply have a long to-do list and don’t have time to waste waiting. When I explained this to Grady, he absentmindedly replied, “I guess.” I wondered why he wasn’t focused on our conversation and saw he was watching a bird. Now, I know it’s hard to have a conversation while bird watching and I like to bird watch as much as the next dog but I really wanted to talk. I could think of one question that would get Grady’s attention so I asked, “Do you think you have to wait a long time between meals?”
And now I have him.
Grady: “YES!! A very, very, very, very, very, very long time!”
Dawson: “Do you think that’s just a feeling or reality?”
Grady: “It’s reality if I think it’s true. Remember, one creates their own reality.”
Dawson: “We are not getting into new-age, hippy-dippy stuff again. We’re talking about meals and waiting time. Do you think you have a legitimate complaint that you wait too long between meals?”
Grady: “My tummy thinks so.”
Dawson: “Please don’t ever try to be a scientist. What if I could prove to you that you are indeed waiting a very, very, very, very, very, very long time between meals. Are you interested?”
Grady: “Of course!”
So I explained to Grady that I believe that waiting time relates to the age of the dog meaning that the younger a dog, the longer it takes time to pass for them. This is because the first year of a puppy’s life is the equivalent to 15 years of a human’s life! And, for a human there are 1440 minutes in a day which feels like 21,600 minutes to a puppy.
Grady likes charts, so I showed him a graph I made.
Grady: “That’s very interesting, but I’m not a puppy and where’s the food part of the explanation?”
Dawson: “We have to start at the beginning to fully understand about waiting. Besides, aren’t you curious why puppies are usually barking in the crate?
Grady: “Puppies are just noisy. I remember you were very loud as a puppy. I also recall wondering if Mom forgot to feed me enough as a puppy because it was so long between meals but, looking at your graph, I now understand why I felt that way. It gets better with age, right?”
Dawson: “Bad news. It doesn’t get much better as you get older. Once you’re over the age of 3, an entire day feels like 7,200 minutes. As you can see from the chart below, Mom doesn’t think that much time has passed between your meals but you end up feeling that it’s been a very, very, very, very, very, very long time.”
Grady: “Dawson, if you’re going to give me bad news, the least you could do is put it in a pie chart!”
Dawson: “You do know that a pie chart has nothing to do with pie, right?”
Grady: “Darn.”
And there you have it. Chapter and verse.
Dawson Earnest Huntley
President & CEO
Abolish the Crate Federation
