A Lenten Reflection for both Dogs and Humans
This is our dog Ellie.
Yes, she has a tater tot on her nose.
“Leave it” is one of Ellie’s most popular tricks. The premise is simple but impressive: we put a tasty morsel on her nose and she will sit there, long-suffering but patient, until we give the word for her to eat her treat.
Leave it…
Leave it…
I tell you, this dog’s the hit of the party with her “Leave it” trick.
Ellie is a very good dog in general—patient, loving and great with small children. That said, however, she is not perfect. (What dog is?) Recently, in fact, she committed an act of such grave audacity that she has been banished completely from the kitchen.
Poor little doggie—she loves the kitchen and finds it to be the most enticing room in the house. She loves lying on the rug in front of the refrigerator, keeping one eye on her mistress who is chopping food at the island, and she loves being allowed to hoover the floor when we’ve finished dinner.
Well, no more. All of that changed the day we found Ellie standing on top of the kitchen table polishing off a Sam’s Club pizza. We’re talking the entire pizza, minus one piece.
Bad dog.
Kitchen privileges revoked.
Ellie must now wear an electric shock collar and receives a zap when she gets too close to the table. Lest you think we are being harsh in our punishment, you must know that this has been going on for a while–usually taking the form of snitching this or that off the counter (an entire avocado, Ellie?) or foraging in the kitchen trash. (Chicken carcasses covered with coffee grounds! Yum!)
Poor Ellie. Her fun, it seems, has been taken away.
And now that Lent is here again, so has mine. ☺
Lent is hard because I am always snitching—a little bite here, a gulp of that there—and the result is a stream of guilt and a skirt size that simply will not budge. I am thinking it’s almost too bad that I don’t wear a collar like Ellie’s—that it would be nice to be governed so efficiently when it came to my obsessive snacking.
Or how about gossip? Wouldn’t it be nice to get zapped every time we said something we shouldn’t? Okay, maybe not.
Luckily God doesn’t zap us when we screw up. Rather, He gently extends the invitation for us to be better—to pray, fast, and do penance as best we’re able, and to “leave it” when it comes to sin.
What He wants is for us to return to Him…heart, mind, soul and mouth
Have a blessed, beautiful Lent, everyone!
Ed. Note: One of the ways I keep my appetite in check during Lent is to close the comments on this blog. Thank you for understanding!
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