Running for Your Life: Thurber Sketch

It’s May and I’m back to running Thurb, our impassioned manic mutt, Old UnReliable (That’s him at right), for the past six days, he’s been in “school” with the redoubtable Tyril, the dog whisperer of Brooklyn http://bit.ly/JcOKY4.

We’ve tried everything, of course, well everything but Tyril and the e-collar, but now that's what we're doing: paging, nicks and constants – not shocks, you understand, but carefully chosen mood adjusters, with an agreed-upon outcome that will satisfy not only M and me but Thurb and Tyril. Because if Thurb is going to be our dog then he has to be a pet we can manage, not one that we walk with trepidation, eyes in the back of our head, anxious in such a way that Thurb picks up on it, because dogs, especially finely bred hounds (or so says our pal, Tyril) like Thurb sense everything, don’t they? Body smells of anxiety and fears, such that only ramps up Old UnReliable’s own innate fear, because on the first day of school Tyril diagnosed that that was what was setting him off: fear. Not feeling secure in his body when confronted by anyone or anything that stirs his poor anxious soul. (And even in his own home, or in our bedroom, you know when he gets that look, it can only be a second and then .¤.¤. Watch out !!)

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