Training your Pet Man

Now I've had my Pet Man since almost as far back as I can remember. He was given to me by my mother when I was very tiny and was told to go out and forge my own way in the world with his help. He's not exactly Jeeves to my Wooster sadly since he lacks the wisdom of that that particular butler. But he's pretty good all things considered. but you know what they say. A pet is only as good as it's owner and it's taken me almost a year to knock him into to some sort of shape.

First of all there were the "Puppy Training" lessons. Yeh, right. We all knew they were actually man-training lessons. Right from when the trainer actually pointed it out with a smile and a wink to the various puppies on the first day. Valuable life lessons those where my particular Surf Dude had finally to learn that if he was going to be my personal servant he had better start getting some routine in his life. Otherwise he'd soon find out if I was unhappy. That means, breakfast, morning walk, afternoon walk, dinner and then treats throughout the day even for the simplest things such as sitting down and standing up. Truth be told, I don't think even the Roman emperors had it so good as us dogs these days.

But despite the good times, you can't let them slacken off and changes to the routine had to be punished, be it through landing a tactical little bomb around the house occasionally or howling my head off in the middle of the night. To be fair, these were two of the more extreme forms of punishment and I wouldn't want you to get the impression that I am spoilt or anything. I mean, as if! Thankfully he responded well to the training and I need to reinforce it with such nuclear options only very occasionally these days.

Last night was one such occasion and I'll tell you more in the coming days.

The Food Supplier

Let me introduce you to my Pet Man. He's pretty soft and very naive to say the least. I mean, let me tell you from the outset that he thinks he's in charge and what kind of folly is that, I hear you asking? But hey, I occasionally play along just to keep him keen and to be fair he certainly does a lot of hard work foraging for gravy bones and dog food and the like. So, let's give him the odd bit of obedience and servility now and again. He deserves it.

As for what he does, the answer it seems to me is not a great deal. Oh, but he does take great pride in the fact that he surfs rather a lot. Surf, surf, surf. It's all I hear. Now don't get me wrong. I like the beach and even a bit of catching waves myself. But when I meet up with my friends I have more interesting things to talk about than when the next easterly wind is due. To be really honest, the only wind I ever talk about with my friends is the you know what wind and for that you can never quite tell which direction it's going to blow next. Or for how long for that matter. Good thing we don't have dog forecasters on the TV trying to predict all of our winds. Where would be be then?

So, he's a surfer and I like to tease him by calling him The Surf Dude. Though more precisely I'd say he's a surf bum. Which is just about the best kind of pet a dog could ever wish for.