Oration à la Valla

To my neighbours here assembled:

Since, undeniably, you are all - or purport to be - Cesar Millan, and since, moreover, I am nothing other than a lowly graduate student barely able, indeed, to manage her own life, let alone to be held accountable for that of another breathing creature, I must, with due reverence and respect respond now to your concerns about the means by which I parent my one and only dog, expressing nothing, as, I hope, will be clear, if not absolute appreciation for your fears and vexations listed here below. Let me be brief in stating their essence and more laborious in dealing with their cause since therein, I am told, is a resolution to be found.

Of your first concern that my dog is "unhappy": perhaps in your infinitely acute observation, you have found that my dog, more often when left in bad company than when left alone, whines, whimpers, and at times indeed howls, to signal what you might rightfully identify a general state of unrest. Your suggestion - silent, lest you offend me with your unsolicited advice - that such a condition be curbed, cured, and ammended with love, affection, freedom, adequate feeding, and play, I take with not a little sincere thanks since I, having in the place of a beating heart an unfeeling stone, and having rather than a brain, a malfunctioning muscle composed only of air and water, would never have thought to bestow upon my pet any of your recommended attentions. From the bottom of my unfeeling stone, then, may I convey my most genuine gratitude for this unfailingly perfect proposition.

Of your next concern that my dog is "ill-behaved": you will say, and I will readily admit, that at the heart of good behaviour is not only proper, but indeed sufficient - and that is not to say exaggerated - discipline. You will tell me that to make allowances is to show weakness, to permit frivolities is to sabotage and undermine any real attempts at asserting dominance, to be flimsy - that is, not rigid - is to relinquish control, and you will add that every slight bit of bad behaviour is to be firmly and consistently punished, and that only good behaviour is to be rewarded with gifts, tangible, palatable, or otherwise. Again, I give you thanks, for again, I hold with only the utmost admiration your very astute reasonings which, since it would be far beneath anyone of your excellence to state banalities, must be of the least trifling quality, and therefore not the smallest bit obvious to common layfolk like myself.

Since, furthermore, it would be incommensurate with your constitution to by the very same token present conflicting concerns (or at the very least, inconsistent methods to quell them), I must emphasise again my own criminal failings and reprehensible shortcomings as a dog-owner in their ever arising. And since, in your unending wisdom, you would never fail properly to examine all sides and facets of any given situation before jumping to conclusions, I must also now resign myself to view it nothing if not unwise, uncautious, inscrupulous, and self-indulgently excusing to consider as reasons for my dog's unhappiness her still young age, her particularly high-strung breed, or her clinical behaviour dilemmas, real or imagined: her ostensible separation anxiety and her reasonably assumed autism.

Finally, to those overly magnanimous few who insist on to any small degree acknowledging my difficulty and benevolence in taking up the responsibilty and commitment of caring for a dog once neglected, abused, and abandoned and now veritably scarred for life, I say both that your excessive generosity is embarrassing, and that it might best be reserved for the praise of those pet owners who leave their dogs to bark ceaselessly on their front lawns or to roll unabashedly in heaping piles of dung in the dog park, or, perhaps better, of those fantastical and ephemeral few whose pets are so perfectly saintly, that indeed they are never either seen or heard, such that their very existence might be doubted by less believing and worshipful parties.

With this, let me close now my address. And in post-scriptum, I beg your indulgence long enough only for me to add: I am walking the dog; she is not now nor ever was or will be walking me.