Sometimes the world’s best therapists have fur and four legs.

From border collie Tasha, Barb’s previous furry therapist.

Sit. Stay. Good readers…

Barb says the world needs to hear my life story. In my experience, the world has never been particularly interested in anything I barked. But I can always use the royalties for extra doggie biscuits and my retirement investment portfolio, so here goes.*

*[NOTE #1: Barb heard that Millie’s Book, Barbara Bush’s transcription of the life and times of First Dog Millie, made well over a million dollars while Last Week Tonight with John Oliver Presents A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo has made over $4 million. So Barb thinks she could do the same with my story. (Of course, Barb also thinks she’s over five feet tall, a woman could be POTUS, and Angel from Buffy the Vampire Slayer survived that last showdown with the forces of Hell. And she’s pretty sure there’s no such thing as calculus in the real world. So Barb’s credibility on…well, anything but calculus… is debatable.] 

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My name is Tasha Taub and I came to live with the Taubs on Mother’s Day some years ago because Barb used to tell her family she wanted a dog. And not just any dog, but a border collie, one of the smartest and most trainable breeds on the planet. She got me.*

*[NOTE #2: Since then, Barb is more careful with her gift requests. She now tells her family she only wants presents weighed in carats, or requiring expensive add-on riders to their homeowners insurance.]

Of course, over the years, I’ve made a dogged attempt to train Barb, but it has been a thankless and unrewarding job. While still a puppy, I took her on hourly walks so she could admire the beauties of nature which inspired artists, writers, and philosophers to create timeless masterpieces. But did Barb spend this time in communion with nature, in refinement of the classical ideal, or in anything that didn’t involve a demand for me to ‘go here’? Let’s just compare our walks to those of other great writers:

BARB to Tasha: “Go here so I can get back to the presidential debates.”

SHAKESPEARE to his melancholy Great Dane: “Go thee here, where ladysmocks all silver-white, Do paint the meadows with delight…”

BARB to Tasha:”Go here and I’ll give you a biscuit.”

WORDSWORTH to his mutt, Coleridge: “Through primrose tufts, go here, in that green bower…”

BARB to Tasha:”Go here and I’ll give you a chew bone the size of Vermont.”

KEATS to his dachshund, Endymion: “Go here in the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun…”

BARB to Tasha: “Go here and I’ll get you your very own sheep.”

Tasha to Barb: “Nailed it!”

It’s not like I didn’t do my best to educate Barb. I taught her to walk while holding a leash, throw the ball, and give my ears a proper scratch. But I had to accept her limitations. She would just never be any good at the important stuff: garbage eating, crotch sniffing, privates licking, dung rolling…

As I outgrew puppyhood, I used our therapy sessions to encourage Barb to develop a dogmatic interest in aspects of world affairs:

• The Homeless—should they really be kept in crates and euthanized if they aren’t microchipped and nobody claims them?
• Civil Rights—are leash laws a violation?
• and especially Reproductive Rights—First Dog Millie was a teen-aged single mother. Just saying… I don’t know where Millie stood on the Choice question. But I only went out one time with a traveling Golden Retriever, and Barb had me spayed. If I were Barb’s kids, I’d sure be nervous about dating.

Unfortunately, with maturity, has come a decidedly less svelte figure. Still, I thought the vet was barking up the wrong fire hydrant when he gave me some literature on “Obesity”. But one look at Barb, and I knew for whom those brochures were really meant. I pawed through the literature for relevant information to help Barb. “The most practical way of evaluating your pet is to check the fat over her rib cage.”

As it happens, I had a chance to check out Barb’s rib situation almost immediately. Because we lived in the Midwest and it wasn’t the afternoon they hold spring, we were were having a weather situation. It’s not that I was afraid of thunderstorms. I just felt it would be easier to protect Barb from them while she was holding a 60-pound hyperventilating stress-incontinent border collie. But as long as I was up there, I did a quick rib check. The results were, to say the least, alarming. 

“If you can feel fat between the skin and ribs or the ribs are difficult to feel, your pet is overweight. If the ribs cannot be felt, your pet is obese. In some pets, a large abdomen that hangs down or protrudes to the sides, indicates obesity.”

I did what dogs who get such bad news during thunderstorms do doo. While Barb cleaned it up, I decided to bone up on the suggested treatments for an overweight, politically obsessive pet.

• Step 1: Evaluate the pet’s diet and activity level. For Barb, activity seemed to involve overconsumption of news coverage involving presidential candidates, permanent residence on the sofa during election years, and ice cream or (on particularly bad days and/or during presidential candidate debates) mojitos.
• Step 2: Put the pet on the high-fiber, low-fat, less calorie-dense Political Diet. In Barb’s case, this meant blending shredded newspaper reports of presidential candidates’ speeches with a skim-milk latte. “Using this approach,” the brochures approved, “your pet can continue to consume approximately the same volume of politics as usual and achieve a comforting sense of fullness.”
• Step 3: Be resolute. According to the brochures, home management of the Politics Diet would require the vigilant cooperation of every member of the family. A gentle “Down, Barb,” from the Hub was enough if she begged to watch News Hour. But if she fetched the paper and tried to read anything but the comics, he had to be firm: “Bad Barb. That’s a bad girl. No politics.” If she whined pathetically and looked at us with those big eyes, we had to swat her gently across the nose with the newspaper and remind her that it was for her own good.
• Step 4: Be firm. “Dieters can be sneaky,” warned the literature. Barb tried to hide under the bedcovers with the portable TV tuned to PBS or the BBC. She would even stop total strangers in front of Baskin-Robbins, begging for their opinion of the President and/or a scoop of Jamoca Almond Fudge.
• Step 5: Seek professional assistance. If the above steps aren’t successful — for example, if your pet develops an unhealthy desire for elected office in the Parent-Teacher Association or even worse, local school board elections—you should seek help immediately.

Somedays, when I thought of giving up on Barb’s therapy, I would tell myself, “She’s had a good run.” If worse came to worst on election day, there were only three things left to try. 

1. We could make the old girl comfortable with a tub of Chunky Monkey and a Sex and the City marathon.
2. We could put her out of her misery by isolating her in a place that knows no politics, like New Zealand, or that bathroom in the basement that nobody ever uses (because it’s a bathroom in the basement).
3. We could distract her with the promise of a vacation.* 

*[WARNING TO BARB’S FUTURE THERAPISTS: to see why you should NEVER choose number three unless you have a ridiculously large amount of paid up life insurance and a high tolerance for vomit, watch for our upcoming book, O My Dog! by Peri Taub, PTWP (Pandemic Therapist With Paws) —as typed by her person Barb Taub, whose opposable thumbs might as well be useful for something besides opening dog food…] 

Meanwhile, Kassandra Lamb has a fantastic new story starring an immensely-talented young border collie therapist named Dolly. You could read Barb’s review below, but really: there’s a border collie, so how could it be anything other than terrific?

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