Volume 2: Episode 3
Being a husband isn’t just about being a good spouse. No, there are many other aspects of husbandry that are crucial to success. Housekeeping, dishwashing, handyman stuff, dog training and more. The housekeeping thing I am notoriously bad at. I can live in a mess and I do. It would be helpful if I inserted a photo of my home office at this point. It is nearly identical to my office when I was gainfully employed. There are papers strewn everywhere. Photographs are lying flat, scattered across a dresser because whenever I close a drawer, one or more falls over. And yet, I choose not to move them or remove them because each is important to me. It may not appear so to the casual viewer since they have nearly all collapsed into a heap, but never-the-less, they are important, and must be there even if they aren’t properly displayed. Photos of my kids and grandkids and wives. All whom I adore.
But what inspired this chapter of Husbandry is my complete failure at dog training. My dogs are my companions. That’s it. We hang out together. I have two dogs. A big one named Max and a small one named Cyrus. They are self-taught. Neither my lovely wife nor myself have spent more than ten minutes training our dogs and as a result they are happy-go-lucky, do-as-they-please animals. They can both ‘sit’ on command if they are offered a treat. And they will both happily go into their crates when we go somewhere; again, if they are offered a treat. But other than that, they are totally untrained.
That means that when my wife and I are gone, our dogs are crated because their behavior is less than perfect when we are out of sight. Max is a natural hunter. Or, more accurately forager. He is nearly deaf at this late stage of his life, but his nose is still very skilled at locating food sources. Butter, if left on the kitchen counter, is fair prey for this ferocious forager. Anything resembling food, or what maybe used to be food, but is now a waste product destined for the landfill, is fair game for Max. And Cyrus is very content to follow Max’s lead since he is too short to get to a table top or kitchen counter. He depends on Max to drag food off the counter to the floor where the two of them can share it. So, when we leave the house, our dogs cheerfully get into their crates because they know they will receive a treat.
As I age, it seems I spend more time in the bathroom than I used to. I don’t know why this is true, but it is. I can complete the Sudoku puzzle, both crossword puzzles, and study the bridge column from the morning’s paper while I am in the bathroom, which gives the dogs a significant amount of time to exhibit bad behavior. Cyrus is content to rip up his toys and leave a fibrous mess all over the living room. But lately, Max has developed a taste for paper. He recently devoured a novel that was left on the hearth. But last week he demonstrated his new found political bias by eating my ballot. I was planning on voting for all three measures on the ballot but Max was apparently opposed to them and proceeded to try to prevent me from voting.
To get a new ballot I had to call the County Clerk’s office. They wanted to know why I needed a new ballot. Apparently, they aren’t very receptive to mailing out multiple ballots to citizens. They have a rule: one ballot per legal voter. So, I had to explain to them that I needed a new ballot because my dog ate the original. When the Clerk stopped laughing, she finally agreed to send me a new one. So, too bad Max; you can’t steal my vote.
Husbandry 