My Favorite Story

I have a client who I see every single weekday morning. They are my bread and butter, three dogs who are the charges of a bigwig in a certain large software company. I can't give too many details here I don't want to harm this relationship but I will say this is uber money beyond what most of us will ever see in our lifetimes.

The problem here is that I can't get through to dog or owner. The owner is used to throwing money at a problem and having it solved. They forget these are living breathing creatures with three individual brains. At first I tried an tried to get this person to work with his/her dogs. I would work with the dogs diligently for hours, leave homework and send emails. I couldn't quite figure out how these dogs would do so well for me and so poorly for the owner. Eventually I found the owner wouldn't work with these poor creatures. Still I tried.. I would tell this very smart person what to do...afterall I was hired as the expert right? And get a cold stare. Shudder.

Then came the firings. I was told that apparently "I don't like rich people" and was fired. Huh? I LOVE rich people! Especially when they pay me large amounts of money. I was hired back and fired about three more times. Why did I take it? Pots of money :)

The day I figured out I just needed to give up and keep my mouth shut went like this...

I had a crappy old Dodge Neon, all three dogs seatbelted into the back seat. I went into the bank or something and left a plastic pop bottle between the front seat. When I returned I saw nothing amiss and hopped on the freeway. All of a sudden something wet hit me in the back of the head, again and again. I tried to see what was going on in the back and couldn't. Dodging whatever it was I headed for the nearest exit. I turned at the light to see my pop bottle riddled with teeth marks, spinning on the back seat, spraying pop all over the car while three befuddled dogs watched it spin. Cackling like a mad woman I chucked the bottle out the window while wiping pop from my glasses. I thought "They will never train these dogs, just shut up and take the money" and we've been happy ever since :)