A human is for life not just for Christmas!

Dogs, particularly young pups who are nervous about being adopted by the right people, are always sending me emails about this subject. “Rusty, how will I choose the right human?” “Rusty, can you tell what a human is like from their smell?” Almost every day I get an email from a pup on this matter. They know they are getting a bit older. They know they will have to leave the nest and move in with a human family soon and of course, they are nervous.

Selecting your human is possibly the most important thing you will do. A cat might get up and leave if their human does not treat them in absolute luxury but a dig is different. A dog has a reputation to maintain. A dog has to look after its human. When times are bad the dog must console its human. What is even worse is that if one of its humans argue with another who has to console both of them? The Dog!

There is a myth among dogs that you should choose a human that looks a bit like you or smells good. However, sometimes when they first meet it is not obvious that the dog and the human will soon become the closest of friends and one day everyone will comment that they have started to look uncannily alike. Humans, have also this ridiculous habit of destroying some perfectly good odours and replacing them with very strange perfumes and soap and stuff. No-one has been able to understand this.

As I am sure you have guessed I have some good advice for these pups. They should not worry about selecting the right human. You cannot select your human. Something just happens!

Humans have the same idea. They keep thinking everything is logical and they want a dog with a brown patch and a nice personality and not too noisy and does not eat their slippers. They then get a dog like me or you and of course, we eat their slippers and are very noisy.  Humans should know better. The best relationships they have happen by pure chance. There is no logic in deciding which family a human child gets born into. It just happens!

We don’t select our human, we just find ourselves in a new family. If we are lucky they will have some very old, very smelly slippers to get our teeth into.

Rusty.