Geo, my software guru, dropped by yesterday and in three or four quick clicks fixed a display issue on my new TV/monitor. So wonderful to have young techie friends for whom all this stuff is intuitive.
And then he raced off because he needed to exercise his dog, which got me to thinking about that wretched dog, trapped in a relationship with an owner so cruel that he denies the poor dog a bone. Yes, that’s what i said.
See, a while back i’d made a run down to Gorilla Barbecue in Pacifica for a slab of ribs and had invited Geo and that pig Jeff to help me eat them. Afterwards i bagged up the bones for Geo to take home to the dog and learned that no, the dog was not permitted to have bones because he might get a splinter or something.
What!!!! For at least 11,000 years men have been tossing dogs bones, and the dogs have been loving ’em. Gnawing bones is the very essence of dogs. It is their nature and to deny them that is cruel.
And then i got to thinking what it must be like to be Geo’s dog. Oh horror.
How, i ask, would Geo like it if the roles were reversed?
You’d live your days in boredom and hunger waiting for your master to come home from work, and after a brief little show of affection and some token ear scratching, the master would mix himself a drink and consume it at leisure.
And then it’s Exercise Time. Oh yes, to be taken out into the park and run to exhaustion, over and over. Ten more laps around the field. It’s good for your cardiovascular system, and besides, it builds character.
Finally, when he’s tired of exercising you, you get to stagger back home, where he reaches into the double locked cabinet, pulls out an enormous bag of food pellets, shakes a feeble few into a big bowl, makes you perform some demeaning tricks, and then puts the bowl with its pitiful cargo within your reach.
When you’re starving to death, there’s no pride left, so you gobble the food as fast as you can, no matter that it’s cheap low-fat, low-taste, nutritionally balanced swill. It’s something to eat! and you can’t help yourself even though you know there won’t be any more until the next morning, hours after you’ve been awakened by the hunger pangs that dog your days.
Before then, in the evenings, he’ll reach down and run his hand over your ripped abdominal muscles and compliment your good health while you wish he’d just move his hand up slightly so he could feel your ribs sticking out.
The most you can hope for is that at some point you’ll somehow do something right and he’ll toss you a miniscule morsel that tastes good…or maybe it’s just something edible.
This is hell, you realize. Yes, in Guantánamo you have to put up with the occasional waterboarding, but at least starvation is not part of the torture and they give you enough to eat.
Had to scratch around to come up with a food-oriented pic, but here’s one from downtown:
Betcha Geo’s dog would love all three flavors.