Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Odd Dream - not Ike related

Last night I had a super bizarre dream. I dreamt I was going to be visiting my brother Mat in Virginia who recently adopted Lab/Pit x. I sent him Katrin's Puppy Manual (in real life) and haven't heard a peep from him. This is not at all unusual in my family; we aren't SO close. And Mat is Mat on top of that.

Anyway, in my dream Mat was FURIOUS with me for sending him the puppy manual and I had gotten his dog's name wrong. My mother told me it was Grendel (from Beowulf), in my dream Mat told me it was Shylock. He was under NO circumstances going to use a reward based system to train Shylock. He thought that was the most ridiculous thing he had ever heard of, bribing a dog. And that I had the gall to suggest it to him infuriated him.

In my dream I asked how he planned on training his dog and he said he had a choke collar and the dog would "learn" just fine. Bear in mind this is not what my brother is actually like - he's a real mellow sort. I think this is based on the Performance Plus rental and some discussions I have had recently and the fact that I haven't heard from him since I sent him the Manual.

Anyway, I went off on how being physically corrected doesn't "teach" the dog anything, and can potentially create aggression issues, especially if the handler is new to the game. I warned him that a 4-month old puppy on a choke was very likely to end up with a damaged trachea, etc. I could not get through to him.

In my dream we could not reach any sort of middle ground/compromise and I cancelled my trip to Virginia!

2 comments:

Katrin said...

So odd (because I had a similar dream last night). It's amazing how somethings just bug you and bug you and bug you and then you end up thinking about it in your subconscious too! Ugh. Call your brother, make sure he is not doing that!! :-)

Jules said...

I know! I'll have to call him tonight.