Frito Joe: an Iraq analogy

[teenagebambam]

When I woke up this morning, this seemed to make a lot more sense than it does now. Well, what the hell, here goes.

Our beagle puppy dog, Frito Joe, is a bundle of trouble. Has a mind of his own. Wild. We got him, and insisted on keeping him, against our own and others’ better judgment. But now, he’s ours, and we’ve accepted the responsibility for raising him up to be a good boy.

Frito Joe is crate-trained, and sleeps in his kennel all night. The trouble is, my partner and I wake up at 7 am. Frito Joe wakes up at 6. Wakes up whining. A soul-piercing whine, that cannot be blocked out by closed doors and roaring fans.

For the past several weeks, we’ve held our ground, determined that Frito Joe would stay in his kennel until 7 am, no matter how much he whined, because that’s what WE wanted him to do. No matter how much discomfort and sleeplessness it caused us, we were bound and determined that he would stay in that kennel until 7 am, because we were in charge, and that was the way we wanted it, and that was that.

Until this morning.

Worn down by the relentless, soul-piercing whine, I gave in. I shuffled into the living room at 6 am, and let Frito Joe out of his kennel, expecting that I would either have to remain awake, vigilant, keeping him out of trouble, or that I would go back to bed and wake up an hour later and find the house chewed to bits.

So what happened?

Frito Joe followed me back to bed, climbed in with me, and slept silent and motionless at my feet until 7. We both won.