I think I have determined a good future career for myself. After much soul-searching (during which I found that old pair of jeans I thought I lost in ’94, as well as several of the morals I misplaced when I started college) I realized that the job I am well-prepared for, the one for which I am uniquely qualified, has been staring me in the face all along. I need to become a dog psychologist.
I grew up with neurotic dogs. My father even had a copy of How To Live With a Neurotic Dog, by Stephen Baker (a book I highly recommend, by the way.) I had one dog who would not go to the bathroom unless you turned your back and looked the other way. She could have eaten an entire box of Ex-Lax, but if you were watching her, she would quietly sit there and suffer, with that unmistakable look of “Do you mind?” That was the same dog who knew that “vet” is spelled V-E-T, and would hide under the bed if those three letters were mentioned sequentially. Another dog I had the privilege of knowing lived under the impression that if there was a body of water anywhere within a one-mile radius, that body of water needed to have a dog in it. This remained true even if that body of water (which happened to be the only body of water for miles) was a septic tank. Needless to say, that experience did not turn out well, for the dog or for the rest of the family. That same dog was also deathly afraid of thunderstorms, and had evidently decided that the thunder and lightning were incapable of harming him in the bathtub. Thus, every thunderstorm was weathered from the safety of the porcelain cocoon.
Now I’m all grown up, and I have a dog with… shall we say… issues. To him, chasing a ball is not a sport, it is a do-or-die mission that he must conduct until he drops from exhaustion. If he’s left alone in the house, he often shows his displeasure by either (a) leaving a big smelly present on the rug, or (b) finding anything edible (yes, beeswax candles and dry spaghetti noodles are edible) and destroying it in the most graphically violent way possible. He likes popcorn, but popcorn doesn’t like him (or the rest of us.) His insecurity borders on pathological, such that at times it feels as if I have grown an 82-pound hemorrhoid.
Yet, something like this 
makes it all worthwhile. Indeed, I have lived with, loved, and even treated all of these canine companions, and I’ll probably continue to do so. So why, I thought, don’t I make money at it? I think there are probably enough crazy canines out there with wealthy owners to keep me in kibble for years. I’m thinking $75 an hour, and you get to keep any presents the dog leaves me.
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