Sometimes you’ll hear someone say, “He treats her like a dog,” usually when someone is especially mean and nasty to someone he supposedly cares for.
Let me tell you how I treat my dogs.
Dejah is prone to allergies, especially food allergies, so she is on a special diet of “hydrolyzed protein,” which means it’s a specially formulated hypoallergenic dog food to improve digestibility.
Summer is prone to bladder stones, so she is on a special urinary tract diet designed to dissolve the stones. If the stones don’t go away soon, surgery is the only other option. But she seems to be better since I switched to a new brand of treats. More on that in a minute.
I would rather not divulge how much I spend on dog food and veterinary bills, but I believe it’s worth it to keep my girls healthy.
Dejah likes to climb into the other easy chair while I’m watching TV, and Summer usually sleeps in my bed. Most of the time she curls up in a corner of the bed near my feet, but sometimes she gets there before I do and sprawls across the end of the bed — on those nights I sleep horizontally, or kind of diagonally actually.
We live on a three-acre lot, but Red and I built a fence to create a backyard area where they can play without fear of any predator-type critters in the woods, and so they don’t wander away from home.
At least once a night, and often twice, Dejah will whine to go out. She is 12 years old, which is elderly for a golden retriever, and her bladder is not as strong as it used to be. And so I get out of bed and let her outside for a few minutes at 1 or 3 a.m.
When Summer was a puppy, it was a challenge to get her to come back into the house, so I started to bribe her with treats — Beggin’ Strips or Blue Health Bars. These past few months after the bladder stones were not going away, I switched her a few weeks ago to a special veterinary-formula treat. Dejah still gets the cheap stuff, and Summer seems to love her new crunchy treats.
I’m not saying this to complain or to lift myself up as anyone special. This is just the kind of thing that dog owners do for their furry family members.
I’m just saying that being treated like a dog can be living like royalty. I’d like to suggest we come up with a different metaphor to describe the jerk in the first paragraph.
