Humor

A Puppy’s View of Humans: Those Sweaty Fonts of Salt, Sunscreen, and Love

Keke’s response to the human’s view of puppies

In A Human’s View of Puppies: Those Cuddly, Adorable Balls of Innocence, my human penned a special edition of Keke’s Guide to Training Your Human in which he provided his myopic view of puppies as conspiracy-laden infiltrators of your home.

Let’s face it: We really are lovable, cuddly, and charming, but does that mean we’re bent on total world domination? Come on, people, we’re just puppies! We have four little paws, while you have five-fingered hands with opposable thumbs and feet the size of a sasquatch’s, wearing boots that could trample our poor little bodies in a heartbeat. And often do!

In Ken’s diatribe, he claims we want to dominate your food, your furniture, your floors, and your constant attention. He further broke down his arguments into the following sections:

Teething

As Ken himself pointed out, it’s no fun for anyone when growing a new set of chompers. Yet he’s saying we deliberately chew on things while you’re away just to punish you for leaving us all alone in the house. Are you kidding?

FAKE NEWS, people. It’s the other way around. You’re the ones walking out on us and leaving us alone in a scary house, surrounded by cages, harnesses, cats, and computers that beep at us incessantly when we’re trying to take our afternoon naps. Some humans have gone so far as to subject us to three hours of non-stop Gilmore Girls on Netflix while they’re away, in a crazy attempt to distract us from their absence.

Wake up, people! Do you really think we’re so stupid that we won’t notice you’re gone? You, our confidant, chef, head waiter, and best friend?

What do you think we’re going to do while you’re gone, organize a RAGER across the neighborhood, and hire lap dancers to entertain us while we steal your leftovers and poop on your carpets? Give us a little credit for decorum and self-respect.

We love our homes and would never violate your trust. Besides, we can’t even reach the refrigerator door handle, and even if we could, we don’t have the thumbs to open it. (Note to self: Befriend the pit bull on the next block, I hear he once broke down the pantry door in his house, devoured a box of Tortuga Golden Rum Cake, and was found lying on the floor drooling and mumbling about twin Swiss Mountain Dogs when his humans got home forty-five minutes later. Now that’s what I call a party animal!)

House training

First of all, let me say that this whole “house training” thing is ripe for misinterpretation. (It’s ripe for other reasons, but let’s not go there now, okay?) The very name implies an in-home introduction. You know, welcome the newcomers, let them freshen up, give them an orientation. Common courtesies can go a long way toward getting off on the right paw.

When I started house training, I tried to freshen up the place. A little dab of poop over here, a little spritz of pee over there. Despite my best intentions, it did not meet with The Management’s approval. But hey, whose fault is it if they don’t know how to communicate properly their instructions?

Then we moved on to the second phase, commonly known as “Praise and Punishment,” which is something like “Pride and Prejudice.” A little different, but takes just as long to get there. I wrote about this in Part 2 of House Training for Puppies.

You humans think you can bribe us with treats or punish us like caged beasts. But as Elephant Man (John Hurt) once famously said:

I AM NOT AN ANIMAL!

And the misunderstandings don’t end there. Humans are supposed to reward a puppy’s successes immediately upon demonstration of good behavior, lest the puppy misinterprets what she’s being rewarded for. But humans conveniently “forget” to bring treats when they go outside, so we wind up getting rewarded for walking back into the house.

As Captain Kirk said in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan:

Khan… I’m laughing at the “superior intellect.”

Constant attention

Lastly, Ken whimpered like a baby because we puppies get all the attention from the “chick magnets,” and he’s stuck sucking his pacifier while watching the puppies get all the attention.

I mean, really? Are you listening to what you’re saying? Wake up and realize the rightful owner of the attention is ME!

Hey! Don’t drift down smartphone alley or start browsing the refrigerator for last night’s pizza leftovers when I’m talking to you! Good boy, now go cut up a slice of pizza for me and stop this nonsense.

And make sure my slice has plenty of pepperoni on it.

Here’s a related story you might enjoy:

You might also consider following Keke’s Guide:

Tagging some of my favorite authors on Medium (please let me know if you’d like to be added or removed): Lu Skerdoo, Trisha Faye, Dawn Ulmer, Jay Squires, Freya V. Locke, Patricia O'Neill, Laurie Leiker, Judy Haratz Cohen, Jan Sebastian 🖐👩‍🦰