5-year-old: How come dogs don’t have to go to school?
Me: They can’t get jobs.
5: I want to be a dog.
— James Breakwell (@XplodingUnicorn) August 8, 2017
This is a picture I took this morning of our dog, Mia:
Mia is two years old. We have an older dog, Snickers, who is a mutt, and also very sweet, albeit he is in the old, stinky phase of his years.
If you use Twitter, I highly recommend following @XplodingUnicorn. His tweets about his children are charming and deeply funny. This particular tweet produced many commenters saying yes, dogs do have jobs–Mia herself is a “working” breed, and when we take our walks around the neighborhood we are on patrol–she is calm, focused on us, and very well trained. However, when she’s in the backyard all bets are off, and she does what she wants. In fact, she does what she wants most of the time. She’s having a pretty great life. And here is the thing: the other working dogs are having pretty great lives, too. They are truly engaged, happy, and feel purpose–they want to do their jobs and get the occasional belly rub.
How would you frame this for students? To show that yes, there is work in life, but it can be joyful? We all want this– we can learn a lot from dogs.
Cats– well, we can learn how to not give a darn. There’s time for that, too.
