Ask Toto A Question # 14

Dear Toto,

I am a young boy suffering from the onset of early male-pattern baldness. My only friend is my beagle. He's a nice enough dog, I guess, but he seems to have an overly rich fantasy life. There are times I've caught him pretending to be a WWI fighter pilot, a tortured author, even a vulture! Is this behavior normal? (I'd ask my therapist, but her advice often isn't even worth the incredibly inexpensive nickel per session that she charges.)

Sincerely yours,

CB

Hi CB! I gotta ask you, what’s with you humans and your therapists, anyway, huh? Let me see if I understand this: you pay someone to listen to you talk about your problems, and then they tell you what to do? You know, I do that for free. Dorothy tells me all her problems, all her secrets, all her dreams, and I wag my tail and lick her face and it makes her smile, and that’s all FREE. Why would you PAY someone to listen to you when you have me? Well, you don’t have me, you have a delusional beagle. But still. You know what I mean.

As to your question – is your delusional beagle normal? Let me counter with another question – what IS normal?

Dogs don’t understand therapists, and we don’t understand normal. Some of us chase our tail for DAYS. Is that normal? We sleep close to 12 - 14 hours a day, is that normal? We greet you when you come in the room with so much excitement, it’s like we didn’t just see you leave five minutes ago, is that normal? A lot of us like to lick our…well, is that normal?

Your dog has a rich fantasy life. That just means your dog is extremely independent, and doesn’t need you to keep it entertained, which is rare, but normal isn’t part of the equation when you’re talking about dogs. We’re all pretty weird.

Besides, I’ve seen your dog flying his doghouse over the farm once or twice. He’s pretty badass.

Thanks for the question!

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