How to Raise a Jewish Dog (4 page)
Read How to Raise a Jewish Dog Online
Authors: Rabbis of Boca Raton Theological Seminary,Barbara Davilman
Tags: #HUM007000
Dog pondering the contradictions of the Four Essential Messages. You can practically watch the transformation of consciousness
take place.
1.
You are beautiful, intelligent, talented, and wonderful.
2.
You are naive, unrealistic, and a fool.
3.
No one will love you as much as I do.
4.
When you die, they’re going to have to bury me with you.
These four principles, like all basic axioms, are simple and powerful. Once the dog has absorbed them into his view of himself
and of you, he will (whether he is conscious of it or not) begin to ask himself a series of important questions.
Your dog will wonder:
•
If I’m so intelligent, why am I so naive?
•
If I’m such a fool, how can I be so smart?
•
If I’m such a fool, why does the owner love me so much?
•
If the owner loves me so much, is it possible that she’s telling me that I’m smart but I’m really not?
•
What does the owner mean by “beautiful”? What does he mean by “talented”?
•
If the owner loves me so much, why does she tell me I’m a fool?
•
If the owner doesn’t love me all that much, why is he telling me I’m so intelligent and talented and wonderful?
•
If it will kill the owner if I die, does this mean I’m responsible for her?
These questions are important because once they start circulating in your dog’s consciousness they will replace the more primitive
thoughts with which the typical untrained (or poorly trained) dog is usually preoccupied.
However, in order to impart the Four Essential Messages to your dog, you will have to change your own Inner Monologue to that
of an Owner Raising a Jewish Dog. It should be something like this:
INNER MONOLOGUE: OWNER RAISING JEWISH DOG
YOU ARE SO CUTE I CAN’T STAND IT. DO YOU KNOW HOW CUTE YOU ARE? DO YOU? I JUST HAVE TO GIVE YOU THIS COOKIE. I JUST HAVE TO
GIVE YOU THIS COOKIE BECAUSE YOU’RE SO CUTE. WAIT, COME BACK. WHERE ARE YOU GOING WITH THAT COOKIE??? DO NOT BURY THAT COOKIE
IN THE SOFA! DO NOT B—— OH MY GOD, HE’S BURYING THE COOKIE IN THE SOFA. OH MY GOD, IS HE CUTE. DO YOU KNOW HOW CUTE YOU ARE???
NOW WHAT? YOU WANT ANOTHER COOKIE??? COME ON, LET’S GET YOU ANOTHER COOKIE. BUT YOU HAVE TO EAT IT. OKAY? PROMISE? HERE. WHAT’S
THE MATTER? YOU DON’T LIKE IT? ARE YOU SICK? WAIT, I’LL GET YOU SOME ROAST BEEF. WILL YOU EAT THE ROAST BEEF? OKAY, GOOD.
BUT YOUR NOSE ISN’T WET. SHOULD WE GO TO THE VET? LOOK AT ME. WHY AREN’T YOU WAGGING YOUR TAIL? WHERE ARE YOU GOING? COME
BACK. WAIT. DO YOU STILL LOVE ME?
You can see that this Inner Monologue has several things in common with the Baseline Inner Monologue of the dog: It’s primarily
emotional. There are very few abstractions and a lot of urgency and joy and insecurity and pride and worrying about food and
hysteria about health. Also note how it is directed not to the owner himself or to some hypothetical listener (like the Inner
Monologue of the conventional owner), but
to the dog.
“I love you so much, how am I supposed to go to work? ” By the end of our Program, some owners are so bonded with their dogs
that they have difficulty leaving the house.
Dog typically responds to overwhelming love by thinking, I love you, too, but go already. The mailman’s coming and I have
to get ready.
An owner whose Inner Monologue resembles this one has learned, as we say at the Seminary, to “meet the dog halfway.”
Assuming your own Inner Monologue resembles that of the conventional owner more than that of the owner raising a Jewish dog,
how are you to alter yours to suit our system?
Again, we must stress: You don’t have to be Jewish, in either the religious or the cultural sense. You don’t have to convert
to Judaism, or study Jewish texts, or take any kind of formal Jewish instruction.
In fact, altering your Inner Monologue from whatever it now is to one more like the sample we’ve given you is fairly easy.
All it takes is a few minutes every day, in the presence of your dog. The basic technique is as follows:
1.
Stand or sit near the dog, at a distance of no more than two feet. The dog can be sleeping, eating, looking out the window,
or engaged in any other activity in which he remains relatively stationary.
2.
While staring fondly at the dog, say silently—to yourself, but verbatim, these explicit words—the following series of propositions,
which we call the Ten-Point Cycle of Incipient Hysteria.
The Ten-Point Cycle of Incipient Hysteria
1.
A dog is a miracle and having one is a blessing.
2.
I can’t believe how happy this dog makes me.
3.
This is too good to last.
4.
In fact, who am I kidding? It won’t last.
5.
It won’t last because either something will happen to me or to the dog.
6.
Either a disaster will take place or some crazy son of a bitch will come and do something horrible.
7.
And even if the dog lives a long life, he’ll probably get cancer. Would I do the chemo or just the radiation? Then there’s
the prednisone issue. And what if something happens to me? Who will take care of the dog? No one will love the dog as much
as I do. The dog will die of a broken heart, just as I would if the dog himself died.
8.
Why does it have to be this way? I’ll tell you why. Because that’s the way the world is.
9.
And don’t talk to me about a heavenly reward afterward. There is no Heaven. This is it. This life is
it.
10.
That’s why you have to value and embrace every possible source of happiness that comes your way. Like, for example, a dog.
Studying the Ten-Point Cycle of Incipient Hysteria. Dog (right) is perplexed by owner’s behavior and wonders why brushing
her teeth has become such an ordeal.
Intone these propositions silently, in order, over and over, maybe while washing the dishes or brushing your teeth. You will
notice that the last one leads smoothly back to the first. Make a photocopy of the Ten Points and keep it with you for ready
reference. After a couple of days you won’t even need it anymore; you’ll have committed the propositions to memory.
After about a week you will notice that your feelings about the dog will have changed. Before this process, you may have regarded
the dog with a combination of many different emotions such as affection, exasperation, amazement, annoyance, and love. Some
you may have felt strongly, and some not so strongly. Now, however, you will notice that your feelings have grown fewer in
number but greater in intensity.
And, as your feelings change, so will your thoughts. Your Inner Monologue will start to resemble the one of the owner raising
a Jewish dog. Because, of course, that’s what you’ll be!
You will then be ready to master the techniques discussed in chapter 3, such as “Situational Martyrdom,” “The It’s-All-About-Me
Spotlight Grab,” and “Prolonged Being-Very-Disappointed-in-the-Dog.”
Case History: Roxy
BY RABBI MARY-MARGARET
Roxy was a twenty-five-pound beagle-terrier mix that Lily saw running around the street in Simi Valley, California. Being
an animal lover, Lily had stopped to help move the dog out of harm’s way when another Good Samaritan gave her the dog’s name
and address. Lily was told that the dog was always escaping and that the owners either didn’t care about the dog or were going
through a rough time in their lives and were too overwhelmed to bother. Lily took the dog back to the house and rang the bell.
“Is this your dog?” she asked. The man said “no” and slammed the door in her face. Lily had no choice but to take the dog
home with her.
But Roxy, an alpha, was not particularly nice or friendly to the other dogs in Lily’s world. So Lily decided to find Roxy
another home. She searched, in vain, for three weeks. Finally, one day at work, Lily realized she was looking forward to going
home and seeing Roxy. That was when she accepted the fact that Roxy was now her dog. Lily stopped off on her way home from
work to get the dog an ID tag from the pet store. But when she arrived home she discovered, to her horror, that Roxy had escaped.
It took hours of frantic phone calling and walking to track her down.
Thus began one of the most endearing Jewish dog-owner relationships in the history of the BRTS, and the one that most completely
embodied the Seminary’s principle of Ultimate Ownership Martyrdom: “As soon as you commit to loving them completely, they
leave.”
Once you have transformed yourself (via your Inner Monologue), you will be ready to transform your dog from a wild animal
into a Jewish dog, outwardly obedient, inwardly self-conscious and intelligent, and emotionally inseparable from its owner
(you!). By the end of our training program, your dog’s Inner Monologue will go something like this:
INNER MONOLOGUE: JEWISH DOG
WHAT’S WITH ALL THE
SQUEALING
? JUST TO GIVE ME A LOUSY COOKIE? ALWAYS WITH THE SQUEALING AND THE YELLING BEFORE GIVING ME A COOKIE. I NEED THIS? OKAY,
I HAVE TO TAKE COOKIES WHEN THEY’RE OFFERED BECAUSE (A) THEY’RE FOOD, AND (B) SHE’LL STOP SQUEALING. EVEN IF I’M NOT HUNGRY
I TAKE IT AND PUT IT IN THE SOFA FOR LATER. BECAUSE, LET’S FACE IT, I HAVE TO. FOOD. THIS MAKES HER SQUEAL AND YELL MORE (ABOUT
THE SOFA) AND THEN—THIS IS SO TYPICAL—WHAT DOES SHE DO? SHE TRIES TO GIVE ME ANOTHER COOKIE. BUT I’M NOT HUNGRY! IS THAT SO
HARD TO UNDERSTAND? SOMETIMES A DOG IS NOT HUNGRY (ALTHOUGH I HAVE TO TAKE THE COOKIE ANYWAY BECAUSE IT’S FOOD). AND SO I
HAVE TO BURY THAT ONE IN THE SOFA, TOO (MORE SQUEALING AND YELLING), AND SUDDENLY IT’S THE VET! OR SHE BREAKS OUT THE ROAST
BEEF (EXCELLENT FOOD), WHICH, EVEN IF I’M NOT HUNGRY, HOW CAN YOU TURN IT DOWN? YOU CAN’T. YOU CAN’T SAY NO! TO ROAST BEEF.
SO NOW I’M EVEN LESS HUNGRY THAN NOT HUNGRY AND I HAVE TO LIE DOWN. MORE SQUEALING. MORE “VET.” MORE TOUCHING ON THE NOSE
AND YELLING AND SQUEALING. I’M NOT SICK, I’M FULL. BUT THAT MAKES HER INSANE. I EAT, I DON’T EAT, IT DOESN’T MATTER. THERE’S
NO PLEASING HER. EVER.
Thus, the relationship between the Jewish dog and his owner is entirely unlike the relationship (if you can even call it that)
between conventional dog and owner. In a conventional relationship, the owner imposes his needs and desires upon the dog,
and the dog, within certain limits, alters his behavior in compliance with the owner’s desires. In the relationship between
a Jewish dog and his owner, the owner adores and badgers and torments the dog. Then the dog adores and badgers and torments
the owner.
Is there a name for this kind of relationship? There certainly is. It’s called love.