In Praise of Honest Dogs— In Hope of an Honest President

We desperately need honesty.

I think I know what they meant now. For years I noticed the highest praise shepherds could heap on their herding dogs was to say, “That’s an honest dog.”

I can see now that they meant that that was a dog that gave all it had without excuses.

Of course dogs can’t speak their excuses, but they can try to hide their weaknesses by being rougher than they need to be. And of course sometimes sheep, especially cantankerous rams or protective mothers, can use their hard heads as weapons of destruction and try to grind a dog of a  third or quarter their size into the ground. So sometimes a good punch or bite to a nose is the only defense a dog has.

But an honest dog will use quiet power (see earlier blog post) to steer and control sheep, and not take cheap shots from behind by catching an escaping sheep by the leg or tail. A dog that moves right, with confident presence, doesn’t need cheap shots!

We need honest dogs, and we need honest people in our world.

We also need honest dog handlers. I know from experience how easy is, especially when other are watching me handle sheep with a dog on the farm, or at a herding competition, to feel ashamed that things aren’t going right, and to simply start venting my spleen. When I’m weak I have to pretend I’m in charge, even when things are going wrong, and so I yell. I stop asking my dog, and jump right over telling and insisting to the level where I just put up a “wall of sound” as one great shepherd told me. I remember working a dog that was quick to bite the sheep, and I did my typical loud growling at it, and this wonderful Welshman said, “You’re just telling your dog to bite harder.”

He was right.

We need honest dog handlers who know they can’t make things right just by getting louder, who know they need to handle with fairness and respect to encourage a good, honest dog. And we need honest leaders, just like that,  in our world.

And, please God, hear us. We need an honest President.

Whenever our current President speaks, he is covering his own weaknesses, by growling and grumbling more stridently. He covers weakness by biting harder and harder. He claims absolute authority that defies all our laws and traditions of the balance of power and shared wisdom. He covers all of his flailing by insisting that we live in a state of emergency, and  that “the enemy is within.” All of these are dishonest.

Who is this enemy within? It is the American people who make America a strong democracy. The  President and his followers may call them radicals, swine, dogs, communists, and downright evil traitors. They might see the prime objective of our military is to pacify these enemies crawling in the streets of cities with Democratic mayors. But all of these are people with hungers for peace and justice. They hold the promise of a more perfect union.

Of course this is all dishonesty born of profound inner weakness. Our enemy is not within. What we are tempted to see as black and white labels of conservatives and liberals, Democrats and Republicans, Progressives and Libertarians are all really people who are far more complex than that. They are actually all human beings. And only when our President and all our leaders stop yelling and start asking—only when they stop insulting and start conversing—will we truly, with the cooperation of all, make America great again.

We need honest dogs, honest handlers, honest people, and honest leaders. We need now, above all, an honest President.