Cathy Classics by Cathy Guisewite for June 26, 2020

If you don’t train your dogs and kids, they will train you. Keep your family close and your treats closer.

My sister and her husband have the most ill mannered dog I know. They feed it constantly, also. It is a Doxie with short legs. It’s so fat and heavy, it’s stomach drags on the ground.

This poor dog will suffer terrible back problems. It will also have a shortened lifespan.

Actually, I don’t think that Irving is entirely wrong when he first said that he and Cathy have spent years training their dogs. Yes, the initial training doesn’t take too terribly long (it only seems like it!) but you’ve got to keep at it if you want them to STAY that way. What good does it do to outside potty train them if you then become so lax about taking them out that they’ve got no choice but to “go” all over the floors inside your house? What about the “stay”, “come” and “heel” commands?

Then there’s tricks training if you and your dog are into that kind of thing. Mine was super-smart ….. so much so that by the time she was seven months old, I had no trouble at all teaching her how to wave, shake hands, fist bump (well, her paw on MY fist, anyhow!), do a “high-five” / “high-ten” and jump through a hoop — all of which I kept doing with her on a regular basis throughout the rest of her life until that dear, sweet little soul developed dementia around the age of 15 or so and just couldn’t remember how to do any of those things anymore. But up until that happened, the continuous “refresher courses” kept our “communication” skills sharp and was a really great bonding experience for the both of us. Consistency is the key to a well-trained dog and if you don’t keep up with it, then it won’t take long for all the hard work on the part of both you and your fur-baby companion to become completely undone and that can make for a very “naughty” dog indeed!

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Hi, rgcviper! :-)

lightenup: Hope you’re feeling better today, Sis. Love and hugs to you! (⊃｡•́‿•̀｡)⊃

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Hello and Happy Friday, fellow Cathy fans. Hope everyone had a really nice day today. Stay safe and well, everyone! ♥

Ugg, The parents don’t pay any attention to their children’s opinions on their own fur babies. It’s a good thing they don’t have a child(ren) or it would be a classic case of overindulgent, spoiling grand parents producing absolutely horribly naughty grandchildren, whereupon they can scold their children, saying how they should have had a firm hand and not permitted the back-talking, foul-mouth little gits to evolve. Yeah, that’s right, this set of parents create the conditions and then when it’s past the point of an easy retraining they start screeching how rude the children are and blaming…yes….BLAMING the parents.

And the truth comes out … slowly and [eye-roll]-inducing-ly. Hey—is that a word? If not, it should be!

HI, MOM. Happy Friday, “Cathy” Clan.

I have a real problem with untrained dogs…we have several friends who allow their dog to jump all over anyone coming in the door. Needless to say, I don’t do it often and if I do go to their homes, I wear grubby clothes. I love dogs, but I’m allergic to them, and I don’t want them to jump on me or slobber on me. They totally do not get it and the only thing they can think of to do is lock the dog up in a room in the house, so he howls the whole time I’m there. I actually did run into him in a hallway alone one time and I told him gently that if he sat down, I would pet him. He sat right down, I petted him and he didn’t jump or lick me. This is after the usual greeting at the door with the dog jumping and slobbering all over everyone who showed up. So he is easily trainable, they just don’t bother.