Elbowing in on the search for a silent dog
When mankind started developing dog breeds it was primarily for a purpose. Dogs were bred to retrieve, chase, trail, flush, guide, point, tree, herd or protect. As far as I know, at no point was a dog ever bred to be library friendly. My new pup, for instance, would be summarily executed by librarians in less liberal countries.
I happen to think that not breeding a silent dog ranks high among mankind’s greatest mistakes – or at least that’s what I thought at 4:55 a.m. this morning.
Admittedly, the Librarian breed of dog would have limited uses. But, if you bred them with say, a golden retriever or lab, you’d have a dog that would retrieve your book from the shelf or remind you that you are about to be fined if you don’t return it soon. A good one would commit the Dewey decimal system to memory and not hog the computers.
Certainly, the purebreds of this type would probably need reading glasses after a few years, but every breed has its faults. And yes, if you didn’t train it correctly, it might also gravitate towards trashy, romance novels or books ghost-written for illiterates like Trump. Then again, if you did train it correctly, it might eat them. So, there’s a selling point.
Regardless, we missed the opportunity. Sure, it is fun to hear a puppy bark incessantly at 4:55 a.m. because the sun is almost up and it’s getting a little impatient to greet the day. But I would also argue that the elbow to the ribs you get from your partner in bed at that time probably offset all those benefits.
That’s why if any breeder of dogs is listening, I’m asking you to consider trying to breed for silence or at least for sleeping in. I’m not a geneticist, but I’m guessing you could probably do the latter by somehow acquiring the DNA of a teenager or that of the partner of a person whose dog wakes up at 4:55 a.m.
It would even be fun naming these breeds. For instance, I’d love to be one of the first to own a Mississippi Snorer, English Late-riser or a Canadian Hushpuppy. Or even a Great Monk dog – a breed that I am envisioning takes a vow of silence until it sees a heathen cat.
Don’t get me wrong; I am not trying to silence the joyful bark of a puppy at 4:55 a.m. I am pro-freedom of speech – just ask my pup. I just wish my pup would take an additional hour or two to collect its thoughts before dispensing them to the world. That would be nice.
Having said that, I’d pay top dollar for a English Silent Spaniel or a Labrador Serener. Just saying.
There are probably many dog trainers out there who would tell me that I should just teach my dog to be quiet at 4:55 a.m. by continually ignoring it. Believe me, I have tried – but a man can only take so many elbows to the ribs.
Instead, I get up and
greet my pup with a few hugs and then feed it and take it for a walk. Now before you go on and say that all this is encouraging this behaviour, let me just say I am trying to build some goodwill between us. You see, she’s got this fantastic dog bed, and if this continues, I might need a new place to sleep.
Plus, if I do ignore her, she might have an accident, go back to sleep and then blame the other dog later. And I’m just not a fan of letting sleeping dogs lie.