A Weird Dog Saga: My Devious Plan Gone Horribly Wrong
Posted on July 12, 2017 2 Comments
I guess we were lucky growing up. Every dog my family owned was just plain good. Obedient, listening well, came when called, laid down when asked, house trained, never escaped from yard. Just plain old good. In fact, I secretly used to think people with bad dogs had somehow corrupted their essential good nature and somehow tarnished their spotless character through some terrible family behavior.
Similarly, I also owned a few cats, same story. Came when called, happy to see me, sat on my lap, generally cats who demonstrated traits you want to make you want to own a cat – well behaved virtually every minute of every day.
…Having owned three dogs and two cats growing up I couldn’t wait to have my own faithful companions first chance I got with my own family…
The rub was, I married a woman who was allergic to cats and dogs. Completely dashing my hopes on the rocks of broken dreams. I went along with this arrangement, resigning myself to my fate of dogless adulthood. Dutifully going about my lonely days and empty lapped evenings without one pant, bark, meow or purr for some time.
When we first got married we lived in a condo so the lack of a pet did not particularly bother me. We had not had our kids yet, I traveled more, we had movie nights, date nights! Hey, who needs a furry friend under these circumstances right?
Fast forward a few years, we have our first son, then our second, we move to a larger home, then a home larger still. I am starting to notice my wonderful date nights and world travel supplanted with trips to-day care and endless sporting events. Now the absence of man’s best friend started to pull at my heart-strings. However I am still the dutiful husband, honoring his wife’s “condition” she cannot be around any animal.
Then it happened…my wife decides to get, not one but two cats, she’s on the “Pet Finder” website at a fevered pitch and will not stop looking until she finds the purrfect (see what I did there?…still got it)
Long story short, she looks until she finds two healthy young Abyssinian cats, brother and sister, “King George” and “Queen Sophia” – they apparently have a custom of naming pure breed cats with unusual names.
Anyway, I negotiate the treaty with the Russian cat breeder who turns out to be very nice. We go to Brooklyn and we meet our new cats “George” and “Sophie”. My wife being from Europe immediately announces we are going to let these two, pure breed, cats run free outside, like we live on a farm.
Her rational “we do this in Europe” my defense “Well in America We Don’t!” does not seem to have the same weight in terms of decision-making power.
I am happy to have a pet anyway. The cats turn out to be really great and we all love them. They are the best cats ever. These cats are weird though, in that they come like a dog when called. So they are God knows’ where out in the suburban wilderness, you call their names and they come running, literally running to our door.
…George and His Benefactor Gabi…
Don’t get me wrong, I love the cats like everyone else in the house but after twice weekly visits to the allergists to have cats (by my wife) I am feeling a little slighted.
I bring up the topic of dogs to test the proverbial waters. “Hey how about we get a dog,?” I say casually.
My wife meets this comment with an incredulous look. Immediately firing back, you know I am allergic to animals!
Because I’m so mature the fact my wife was willing to get shots, for three years, to grant her own cat owning wish, has virtually no effect on my mood or behavior what so ever.
Just kidding, I like many men, am a man-child, who wants his own way too. I’m now holding on to my man’s best friend resentment daily. It is like a simmering pot, eventually this is going to boil over it is just a matter of time. I know this in the depths of my heart.
I wait a few months, with the disaplin of a monk. Then ask another way “Hey what if we got a dog and we have a dog house in the yard?” She quickly shots me down with the fact we live in the northeast.
I persist, undaunted “we can keep the dog downstairs only…” again my wife looks at me with a look of disbelief and say’s you don’t think I am going to endure another three years of those painful shots just to get a dog, do you?”
I say “of course not” because I am really mature and logical…Just kidding, I am in no way on-board with this logic and do, in fact expect her to do this.
I realize in this moment my more base childish nature will eventually win this battle. I will use my normal strategy of doing something I know, full well, my wife will hate, apologizing profusely and groveling for forgiveness”
Now I know my wife, she is a hard-headed Hungarian with a memory like an elephant. She will never let me live this down if I take this leap.
She can also sniff out my schemes, like no one I have ever known. I need to exercise the discipline of the Samurai and be stealthy as a ninja.
I decide to lay low, I have been talking dogs too much, she is starting to give me the Elliot Ness interrogation look. I can see her looking for the bare lightbulb and chair to tie me up in, to beat the truth out of me.
So I am as disciplined as can be. I say nothing for months, then start to hatch my evil dog-buying plans. I should say, my evil dog(s) buying plan.
I spitefully decided if she gets two cats, then by God, I get two dogs too. I am “all-in” with this insane plan now, I have gone 5150 dog buyer now, I just don’t give a shit.
I realize she is going to probably murder me in my sleep for this one. I already pulled this routine with a piano, table saw, 1949 GMC pickup truck. I’m seriously running out of the forgiveness with this particular Hungarian.
I stealthfully acquire a secret list of hypoallergenic dogs off the internet to start to secretly interview my wife. I say to my wife, “Gabi, do you like poodles?, I hear they are really smart, what do you think?”
Immediately she says how much she hates poodles, then lists a dozen reasons poodles are no damn good.
…I lay low again, lying in wait with the next name on my potential dog buying list, next breed…
“Gabi, do you like Schnauzers? I think they’re really cute, what do you think about them?” Gabi immediately has a “Schnauzers are terrible” then recites a list of 12 reasons, adding a personal anecdote about her friend Judy, who had a Giant Schnauzer who literally leaped from the window of her moving car.
Again, with the purity and disapline of a monk, I lay low again and meditate on this. I am waiting for the next name on my list, to spring my trap. If I go to fast with the questioning “Sherlock” is going to sniff my plan out.
So I wait….finally getting down to literally the last breed on the list, Basenji’s “the barkless dog”. They do not bark, at all, they never bark in fact, they hardly make any noise at all, ever. They are just the right size and they are good looking.
I ask, “Gabi, do you like these dogs?” eureka, I hit pay dirt! “Yes I do (she says emphatically), they’re really pretty”
Literally, five minutes later I’m in our spare room, frantically searching for basenji breeders. I’m on a mission from God, to get these damn dogs. I am so ready!
I don’t want to take any chances, this operation is going to be found out, my palms are sweaty, thinking about my wife interrogating me. I will crack under pressure, I know this, name rank and serial number only.
So it goes like this, I find a breeder who has great dogs. I make some excuse to go on a southern business trip down and I make the run to South Carolina.
When I say this breeder was in the back woods, I am insulting the people who live in the back woods. This place in really in the boondocks. I go down an unpaved road for miles, met by stares that say “you’re not from around here are you boy?” to pick up the dogs.
I realize I am truly in crazy town when the dog breeders husband starts telling me about how they opened the farmstead when they realized the Illuminati were going to take over America. I decided, maybe it was time for me to go. Before I ended up in a ditch somewhere as a suspected Illuminati sympathizer.
So I get the dogs, they are cute as you like, they really do not bark, but they literally are the worst dogs ever.
My wife is as hot as a firecracker and really not happy with me. To compound matters, these dogs are digging out of the yard, literally every day, running the town. They never come when called, they listen if they want to and if they don’t like what you’re saying, forget it. They come in if they feel like it, when it is sunny. They hate getting their feet wet, so if it rains they hide in their dog house, then come inside to pee on the rug.
When they are not peeing on the rug, they are eating the furniture. So far, one couch, two Ethan Allen arm chairs, the piano bench (yes that piano – the ask forgiveness piano is actually dog chewed, by the SDK forgiveness dogs)
But we do love them, despite the fact my Dog’s act like cats and my cats act like they’re dogs.
…This is my little girlfriend Lily, my favorite of all…I tell myself she feels remorse for her misdeeds
This photo was taken moments before the devil took my pencil or a sock, or some other damn thing she decided to eat. No matter how many times I tell her, no matter whether I scream and yell or just try to appeal to her better nature, this dog is literally the worst pet I ever had.
She has escaped from the yard so many times, I can’t count. Her brother is equally cute and equally bad. They are now about 6 years old and they are now (mostly) house trained, they (kind of) don’t frantically chase the cats.
Charlie, Lily’s brother, is named after my Uncle Charlie, who ironically is a man that lived almost 100 years and I can think of nothing he did wrong his whole life
Progress report on these two…
They are mostly, sort of, not eating the woodwork anymore, and they eat (less) furniture and fewer pencils. We’re on the 8th Sony play station remote.
Lily has eaten so many pencils and so much paper, I swear she has a Russian novelist living in her stomach, working on his next great opus. But despite it all, we love them.
At the end of the day, bad dogs are better than 90% of most people I know and hell, they don’t bark, so I have to count my blessings – the funny thing is, even my wife now loves the dogs and they sit with her on the couch while she says how much she hates them and is still mad.
But I am still asking for forgiveness – only this time I have dogs to ease my pain and suffering!
How can you stay mad at this face?
My boy Charlie, the son who never gives me any lip, this guy is as silent as a monk on a sacred vow of silence!
Fear, Evolution and Human Nature
Posted on July 12, 2017 Leave a Comment
Reconnecting recently with an old friend by phone, we spoke about the subject of fear. The idea fear was actually hard-wired a leftover remnant of natural selection and evolution, the idea was in an article she 
read, fear was a natural part of human nature, natural selection had weeded out human beings long ago who did not have the right amount of fear. The idea fear was passed down from generation to generation to preserve the fittest of us and to protect the species from extinction.
Personally, having a background in sales I frequently projected, and mapped out strategy, reviewing possibilities and responses to several most likely scenarios.
In business this is a great advantage during strategic planning. Thinking of every eventuality, analyzing available data, market trends and mining conventional wisdom or other informed opinions to make predictions and plans for the future of your business.
This is exactly what you want in business, the ability to expand on these educated guesses, then properly prepare an appropriate response. The devil however is in the details, the problem with advanced strategic planning is it is hard to separate today and the present reality from tomorrow in your strategy, you don’t only think about the future of your company, you contemplate personal circumstances in light of the assumptions and think about consequences if the projections come true.
When you project success and anticipate a win, you may be brimming with confidence and optimism, full of good cheer. 
When you settle on a prediction one way or another, weather you like it or not, your mood sometimes begins to match your expectations. Feelings are not facts and your emotions can be deceiving. If you feel failure may be the logical outcome you might feel insecure or full of self doubt. I’m not a psychologist but I suspect this is pretty normal.
The problem with taking stock in your predictions when you’re engaged in an important relationship in business is that your fear may start to effect your feeling, and those feeling could cause you to broadcast these doubts to the rest of the world. In a difficult negotiation or contract dispute you want to negotiate from a strong position. You can’t walk in the room with a long face and a look of dread or desperation. Your competitors and customers will sense that weakness and take the upper hand. You must demonstrate confidence to inspire others to follow you and for customers have faith that you can deliver on your promises. You should be cautiously optimistic in team development meetings and positively influence the sales process. Your marshaling your troops to support your effort and you need them to give it all they have.
I thought about this topic’s effects on relationship building and sales development and came to the conclusion I wanted to make sure that I was doing every thing possible to maintain the proper perspective when engaged in strategy sessions. This negative side of projecting must be avoided. Undue worry and negative projections can create a self imposed limitation in a professional situation. The same holds true for personal relationships as well. If I have some unrealistic fear that has me worried or concerned it may effect how much I am listening and engaged with the people around me. Some of those people are very important. Like my wife and children, my colleagues at work or people in my community.
….this is the question that came to me as we discussed the topic. Am I negatively effected by feelings of worry or concern I may generate when I am planning something I suspect might not go as I plan it to? More importantly does this fear and worry cause me to give less than my full attention to my work, my colleagues, my friends or my family?
As we discussed this topic the necessity of realistic fear and healthy concern for dangerous or unsafe things was very clear. You cannot live very long if you aren’t afraid of anything. We recognized it was important to maintain balance when thinking strategically to be rational and concerned and not emotional irrational and worried.
The reasoning is clear, to insulate your strategic advantages for planning an operating at your peak, but most importantly to avoid the sense of dread that can accompany fearing future negative events. I know the future is outside my control to accomplish my Strategic goal of avoiding undue projection and worries I needed a strategy. To force myself to activate my rational mind and my will to make a strategic plan for better performance, and for a happier more balanced life.
…this plan seemed so simple, frankly I didn’t think that irrational fears or worries had that much sway over my emotions…keep it simple, don’t worry about the future, you can’t control it…
The decision not to worry about uncertain outcomes and future events without cause turned out to be a lot harder than I thought it would. I was not the pull the covers up to my chin and cry the sky is falling, Chicken Little, type, I am the variety that might recognize statistical possibilities, trends or opinions and have doubt, those doubts may occupy my thinking too frequently. Which required making a deliberate and conscious decision, replace my emotional reaction, with more facts, better logic and less conjecture, and identify when the outcome is so uncertain that it is totally out of my control.
…It’s harder than I had suspected to assert your will over your emotion and force your mind to swim against the tide of evolution and human nature…
To stop myself from fearing uncertain events in the future strategies I needed to tell myself the same thing over and over and over again…“I can’t change the future, so I can’t waste time worrying about it.”
New element of my evolving plan:
…refuse to give permission to indulge in projection that wasted time, or made me miserable. I caught myself falling into my old habits sometimes. I would then apply this new part of the strategy and rescind my mental permission to stop the progression that lead to the bad aspects of unhealthy projections…
If I was going to be truly “present” and actively listening to colleagues, family and friends I needed to make this kind of change sustainable. If I failed in my strategy I needed to restart my day, then and there, and try again, being more authentic and more present for the people in my life. Paying full attention to them in the moment with my whole mind body and spirit. This attention translated to more enjoyment of these moments and that was the underlying goal.
The more I thought about this idea, the more it made sense and the easier it became. If I noticed myself getting off track by projecting, I would restart my day, and reduce my strategy down to a few words and say this…
“No influence over outcome, no need to worry”
I realized even if I knew of some certain bad future outcome that I could rely on, worrying about that did not change that outcome or make things better. In this instance I could ruin my day for nothing, then adding insult to injury, sometimes find myself holding the emotional bag. Not only did the stuff I worried about not happen, but to compound matters, sometimes something great and unexpected would happen. This would cause an emotional boomerang effect. First I would be happy with the unexpected good news, then invariably it caused reflection on the wasted time and regret would replace the surprise and still rain on the parade of good news.
…as I realized the good effect of being worried less was positive so I decided to be more proactive, take more steps to change my thinking.
I developed another step, in the evolution of this new strategy, be more discriminating about information that was influencing my thinking and information I was using to make predictions in my life and in strategic plans…
I needed to be “in the moment” and “present” more often to get greater enjoyment out of life, not necessarily overflowing with optimism every minute , but living in the hear-and-now, more authentic and true to myself and true to those around me. What I mean is actively listening, paying closer attention with my full mind in order to make a more valuable contributions to the relationships in my life – taking part in that present moment with authenticity, with my full attention and full mind and experience these moments with my colleagues, friends and family with more depth.
…The next step in the evolution of my planning was to think about how I would go about changing the data I willingly took into my thinking on a daily basis…
…try to create a better data set to draw from, to make better decisions, planning the future…
The next step was to clear away extraneous info that influenced my mood, interfered with my judgment, or generally wasted my time. Cataloging things that occupied my time, Facebook, political discussion, arguments, TV, internet trolling to kill time, people who took more than they gave or who often made me frustrated. I decided to apply this logic every place I could. I routinely applied this logic at work to do good strategic planning, clean data gives you better facts and analysis and helps you make better decisions, good data in – good data out.
This would be my new strategy for sustaining this new way of thinking. I don’t mean to sound like a Pollyanna. I have normal concerns, and worry occasionally, but when I reduced the amount of negative information I allowed into my thinking, on purpose, I noticed less emotional and irrational info influencing my thinking. I had less to cloud the rational thinking and pull me off track.
I started to filter my own “data stream” more carefully, what I watched on TV, who my friends were on social media, who I followed on social media, or who I chose to speak to regularly, music I listened to, who I associated with at work and in my life and what conversations I chose to have. I cut free anyone and anything that I could I felt was not supporting my goals.
Some of those people have come back into my life again, some will not. I limited the kind of news and editorials I read and other media I consume. If I have a choice to read fiction or non fiction, I would choose the later – avoiding more biased news on the left and the right. Limiting my speech on controversial subjects. I have found I am enjoying my life more.
..I worry less and care more. I have better perspective and judgment, I am more calm in general, have more time to think, am frustrated less and make more informed decisions that I base assumptions on during planning.
…The natural consequence of this new way of thinking is I am less jammed up about projecting about the future because I’m in the “present” more of my day…
Today a colleague from work looked concerned the first thing in the morning I contemplated saying something but decided it was none of my business. I went about my business, but the truth was it was fear, in that moment, I was afraid she would feel intruded upon, or worse, she would say “what the heck are you talking about, I’m fine” then I would really look foolish. I recognized this was the same kind of thing as the strategic fears ruining my day.
I saw her later the same day and decided to stop what I was doing and ask her “are you OK?” She immediately seemed relieved – told me she was a bit overwrought, she was in need of encouragement. I put my arm on her shoulder and gave her a word of encouragement. I could sense her burden lifted in that moment, a little bit, she had a listening ear and empathetic heart, reaching out authentically with a small gesture. Human nature recognizes sincerity and earnestness, she knew I was concerned for her and my concern was appreciated. It is human nature after all, when someone cares for us, we notice this.
The amazing thing about this small exchange was my own burden seemed to be lighter too. The great paradox of living in the present more authentically and giving of yourself more was, the more I gave of myself with my full mind and intention, the more I got back. The more I shut out negativity, the more room in my mind and heart there was for positive things I want to focus on and would rather spend my time on.
…The more I give of myself to the people around me, the more the people around me reciprocate, weather I ask them to or not, which makes life more enjoyable, more full of joy, who doesn’t want that?…
The more you do for others in their time of need the more your own needs become relevant to those around you – this thought experiment offered much needed perspective, as a bonus, the world seems like a better place to live in – If I can remember to be more present and authentic – it’s better for me and everyone else I come into contact with.
If you like this short article and you would like me to do a series of pieces on fear… please be sure to “like” and “share” this blog post and please follow my blog at
https://andrew-walker.co/ – I can use the support and encouragement.
Why Terrorism Always Fails
Posted on May 22, 2017 Leave a Comment
In light of this latest terrible attack in Manchester UK, I wanted to make a short post to assert what all good people know is true. Terrorism always fails. England stood up against Nazi buzz bombs, the Blitz of WWII and good people always prevail. A lunatic with a gun, a knife or a bomb may strike fear in our hearts but they also reveal the charter of good men and women who will not allow this type of madness to win. You may win some small skirmish some insignificant battle but you will lose the war. These mindless terrible, cowardly acts will only focus our attention. All eyes will be on the cities you hide in as they are razed – more people will needlessly perish who do not share this zeal. Ultimately terrorist die in flattened cities accomplishing nothing, remembered only as tyrants and lunatics who came from cities erased from maps. For what? Good will prevail – period – God Bless Manchester UK – our hearts and minds are with you in America.
Interesting news facts 5/2/2017
Posted on May 2, 2017 Leave a Comment
- Harvard reports they’re looking to include more minority business cases to study in Harvard Business School to help students develop a greater understanding and an appreciation for successful business’ in minority communities in America.
- At the same time, business is reporting business school graduates are coming into industry unprepared, without a developed ability to reason and write effectively, necessary skills. Business schools are attempting to use integrated approaches to teaching the material with a greater emphasis on things you might concentrate on in the study of humanities, like a History or English Literature major.
- My personal takeaway is and has always been learning facts alone without any context from history or ability to fully express a rational argument to forward your interests in life and business leaves a person very one dimensional. Who needs or wants an employee who can only recite facts without the ability to interpret deeper meaning? If we can’t learn lessons from history we are damned to repeat it – now more than ever.
- I would like your perspectives, what do you think?
Andrew J. Walker 