Sleeping Dogs Never Lie
There’s a reason why scenes involving family dinners make for great TV. They are all built on the premise that someone will, eventually, kick the proverbial dog sleeping under the table. Said mutt will, consequently, send someone howling at another, who will then go yelping, tail between legs, out the front door, and into the night, not to be mentioned in the annual family newsletter for the next ten years to come. And all that, because someone, a long time ago, decided that it was best to let sleeping dogs lie when, clearly, it’s much more entertaining and, most importantly, freeing, to do the opposite. To polish that pointy-toed boot and give Rover a mordant nudge. To get down on your knees, inhale that soothing doggy scent, give him a good butt scratch and see what kind of toxicity he’ll release from whence he stores all that pent-up emotional baggage.
In all likelihood, you will find that Rufus happens to be sleeping on a carpet bulging with all the shit you’ve swept under it over time, too. What was once a solid ground for you to stand on, a familiar point of comfort to dig your heels into has become a landmine of lumps and bumps to climb every time you happen over it. Assuming the carpet is that plush little number making the transition from and into bed that much cosier or that massive square of boho designs connecting your living and dining area, that’s a whole lot of unnecessary effort you’re forcing yourself into on the daily. And perhaps you’re not even treading over those carefully collected hurdles but directly onto them, perversely relishing in the feeling of squishing their contents further down, until the insides spill out beneath your arches and further into the corners of this minefield of your own creation.
Not to mention the back pain you’re putting your poor ol’ dawg through. If it weren’t for those regular wake-up calls from his nearest and dearest, or even his own audible farts, the looming dread of instability that is your carpet of unspeakables, would probably make him turn to desperate behaviours. A dog’s favourite approach to obnoxiousness is, of course, to overeat on all things upsetting to the stomach. Naturally, then, there’s nothing better to snack on than the chaotic heaps and neat stacks and soggy pages filed away in that alarmingly sized cabinet towering over your living area and the darkest corners of your mind. He’s clever that way, you see, he instinctively knows when it’s time to purge, to regurgitate whatever has been irritating his gut, take a long hard sniff at it, and then let it go. He has no reason to keep it all somewhere on the back burner, on a simmer until it’s all about ready to boil over and burn hotter than it needed to be.
I wouldn’t advise poking a complete stranger’s sleeping dog, no. I mean what business is that of yours? Any dawg of your own or belonging to your intimate circle of family and friends – have right at it. The reason why people urge us not to wake these sleeping beauties, is because they assume it will brew up a shitstorm. Because they already know, eventually, it’s coming, whether they keep those four-legged friends placated or not, they just don’t want to deal with whatever this rude awakening might inspire now. What people who preach this phrase like to ignore ever so conveniently though, is the fact that, wide awake or fast asleep the bark or the bite is there, gnawing at him like the fleas on his back. So why put off until tomorrow what you can do today? Cause I’ll tell you one thing: sleeping dogs never lie. And they won’t sleep soundly until those muted truths are finally given a voice. They may be loud, angry, even desperate at first, but it’s the only way their power will weaken and fade over time.