Have You Thought About Self-Control?

From Mia Cope

In my last post, I asked my readers to contribute ideas for things I have or possibly could think about. I should have known that Daddy might have a suggestion. He insisted that I start with this one: SELF-CONTROL.¹

I’m not positive, but I believe that this may have something to do with the intensive training I have received since coming to Casa de Togo a little over a year ago. While I’ve learned a lot in this last thirteen months, it seems there is an unquenchable desire on Daddy’s part for me to pay attention to my surroundings and to apply my newly learned lessons AT ALL TIMES.²

To keep this post from becoming too lengthy, I’ve chosen to address the three most prominent areas Daddy seems to be concerned about. These are the frequently repeated “Don’t Commands.” Daddy wants to be clear that these are not behaviors that I am never to do. But he does want me to use self-control in certain contexts.

Don’t Shake

Let me be totally forthcoming on this one. I have a lot of fur. And I generate more every day. Even though Daddy thinks that I like to shake in order to distribute fur liberally throughout my immediate vicinity, he’s wrong.³

It’s true that I shake just before leaving the house. (I can see Momma reaching for the Swiffer Sweeper now.) And I shake just after leaping into the backseat of Daddy’s pickup. And I definitely shake in the middle of the night when I’m moving to my various sleepy-time places in Momma and Daddy’s bedroom.

But I shake in an effort to floof my fur and be more beautiful.

Still, Daddy wants me to exercise SELF-CONTROL and to refrain from shaking except when I’m in a suitable location. But I choose to be beautiful ALL THE TIME. So we’re just going to have to agree to disagree on this one.

Don’t Pull

This is one that Daddy simply can’t figure out. I’m a Husky. When you put me in a harness, I cannot keep from pulling. For hundreds of years, people have put Huskies in harnesses because they know we like to pull.

Yet Daddy thinks that I can turn this absolutely normal behavior off simply because he says “Heel.” “Heel, means walk next to my heel,” he explains over and over and over again. I’m not sure that he really wants that, though.

For example, this morning we were crossing Judge Ely Boulevard. Five lanes of race track traffic and hundreds of cars. I waited patiently for the light to change. And when that light went green, I leaned headlong into my harness and . . . pulled. It is my job to get Daddy safely across to the other side and that can’t be done in slow motion. And I certainly can’t make it happen if I’m strolling along next to his heel. So, while Daddy was repeating “Heel! Don’t pull!” — I calmly dragged him across the street and saved his life.

Don’t Dig

This is perhaps the most nonsensical of the Big Three Don’ts.

In truth, context really doesn’t matter at all to Daddy on this one.

After our walk this morning, I was zooming around the backyard. Zooming makes me smile and invigorates me. In fact, sometimes I generate so much energy that zooming alone can’t handle it. So I dig.

I have a favorite spot over in the corner of the flowerbed. It’s where Daddy has the beginnings of a compost heap and where he has dumped stuff and left it to decompose.⁴ So the ground is nice and soft and suitable for digging.

Daddy tells me not to dig there because he has plans for that compost. I asked Momma what he was going to do with it. “Dig it up,” she replied sweetly, “and move it to another spot in the yard.”

Really. That’s exactly what I’m doing now.⁵

The Bottom Line

I have thought about Self-Control. And I have determined that I have no recognizable problem. I am in complete control of my behaviors — in all contexts. The problem Daddy thinks I have with self-control is misbegotten. He has mistaken his lack of control of my good intentions and behavior for my lack of self-control. And that brings up another topic I want to write about soon: Have You Thought About Patience?

1. I normally don’t type in all caps because that makes it look like I am shouting. nor do i type in all lower case because it makes it look like i don’t care.

2. I put these in all caps on purpose because even though Daddy wasn’t yelling, he had that tone.

3. Daddy says that God knows things — everything, in fact. He even knows how many individual hairs make up my fur coat. Daddy thinks that God doesn’t list this skill on His resume because there are a lot of comings and goings of my fur and that there is no way to definitively pinpoint the number without having to update it eternally. I totally agree that God has a lot of better things to do. So don’t ask.

4. That’s not as awful as it sounds. Actually, he puts old food, yard clippings, and coffee grounds in a big, rotating barrel and doesn’t dump it until it’s pretty much an indistinguishable mish-mash of mush.

5. I admit that there are other places in the yard where my digging doesn’t have the same helpful results. But I need to go on record that I’m not digging because I don’t like the grass. I’m digging because I have something that needs to be buried. It’s a universal rule: if something needs to be buried, I am obligated to bury it.