My dog is deaf so I have hand motions I use to let him know when he can go “bye-bye” with us or if it is time for him to simply doo his “doo-ty”. Problem is that I use the same signals when he’s outside dooing business and should come back in or when it’s time for us to leave or when it’s time to eat. I don’t think he quite gets it. I just spent the last 10 minutes figuring that our poor neighbors probably wonder if I’m practicing to be a tarmac airport employee directing a plane down the runway. I know I look odd. But, as I became introspective about these hand signals, I had a funny thought. Zippy spends a majority of time ignoring my desperate attempts to motion him back inside. The hand motions DO NOT work–and an outsider would guess that he is not only deaf, but blind too. Maybe my dog just likes to play with my mind and act oblivious to my most obvious gestures. I guess it wouldn’t surprise me, also, to know that everyone else, including my dog and neighbors, know better and they’ve probably already accurately assessed that I’m just motioning myself to the loony bin. And after even further introspection, I had to come to grips with an even more convicting thought: If the hand signals don’t work (except to go bye-bye), why on earth do I continue to look like a fool? Sigh.
