Every few months I take the wife’s dog to the groomer for a wash, cut and a blow dry. Notice I said wife’s dog and not family dog or my dog. No self respecting male would take a dog to a groomer. A hose in the back yard with some dish soap from under the sink worked for the mutt I grew up with. As for a grooming every few months – she was lucky to get it done once a year.
The dog in the house is a shiatsu. All the promises of not impacting the family budget went out the window when she ate a wasp the first week. That trip to the vet wasn’t cheap. I figured if the dog was dumb enough to eat a wasp, then natural selection would take it course.
The dog food, the treats, the grooming and the accumulation of toys, never seem to cost real money when I ask. Maybe there’s a stash of crappy tire money hidden in the house I don’t know about. That’s not real money, is it?
The groomer relayed a story to me during the last visit. It seems a phone solicitor for a Winnipeg mayoral candidate called her and asked if she was voting for Brian. The groomer being interested in the upcoming election asked for the candidate’s platforms. The solicitor told her to look on the candidate’s web page for the information.
I figured it must have been a crank call. After further discussion with the solicitor, the groomer realized the call was for a Brian in the Winnipeg Mayoral election and nothing to do with Grande Pointe in the municipality of Richot. The groomer spent time trying to convince the phone person the Winnipeg Mayoral election didn’t have anything to do with Grande Pointe.
I confess the story is third party and might be an exaggeration. The groomer has never been a person for hyperbole. Now that I have managed to knit a theme between the two stories, I’m going with what I was told. Both the dog story and the phone solicitor story have things in common.
To actually convince someone to get a dog, you have to make promises like a politician, knowing you will never follow through on them. How else could you sell the cost and commitment?
Once the dog or politician takes up residence, only medical issues will ever see them go. A dog maybe has a 15-20 year life expectancy. Some politician have been dead for years and they just don’t know it.
If you received a call from a candidate’s representative who didn’t have any knowledge of the platforms for the person they were working for, and required phone schooling on the boundaries of the city, would you vote for them? The candidate is probably the runt of the mayoral candidates litter. Maybe they can find a good home in the federal senate. I understand there is an opening now; that pack of dogs had three put down this year.