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Basic Rules for Dogs Who Have a Yard To Protect

NEWSPAPERS: If you have to go to the bathroom while playing in the front yard, always use the newspaper that's placed in the driveway every morning for that purpose.

VISITORS: Quickly determine which guest is afraid of dogs.  Charge across the room, barking loudly and leap playfully on this person.  If the human falls down on the floor and starts crying, lick its face and growl gently to show your concern.

BARKING: Because you are a dog, you are expected to bark.  So bark--- a lot.
Your owners will be very happy to hear you protecting their house, especially late at night while they are sleeping safely in their beds.  There is no more secure feeling for a human than to keep waking up in the middle of the night and hearing your protective bark, bark, bark...

A woman told a marriage counselor that her husband's complaint that he leads a dog's life is probably well founded.

"He comes in the house with muddy feet," she said, "tracks across my clean floors, barks at nothing, growls at his food and makes himself comfortable on my best furniture."

Thanks to Walter McLauren for this pun.

Once there was an opossum named Pogo, a philosophy enthusiast, particularly drawn to existentialism. He devoured works by Jean-Paul Sartre, the mind behind "Huis Clos" (No Exit), which later inspired the famous lyrics in "Hotel California" – "You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave."

Pogo, as we'll call him, had a peculiar aspiration: reincarnation. He yearned to shed his opossum form and return as something higher.

So, he dashed across the road, meeting his fate under the wheels of a truck.

However, much to his disbelief (he didn't have faith in Jesus like that old country singer Barry McGuire), when he awoke from his planned end, he remained an opossum. He had hoped for a raccoon, or something more.

Undeterred, he tried again and again, each time encountering a different type of vehicle but unfailingly reverting to his familiar opossum self.

Realizing this cycle was leading him nowhere, he decided to head to Nashville where he joined forces with Willie Nelson and contributed to the creation of Nelson's chart-topping hit, "On the Road Again."

"I would not paint my house on a Sunday - not because I am in bondage, but because I am lazy."

- Fred Schmidt