My Turn: A Weighty Matter, by Levi

I have a bone to pick with the vet. Ordinarily, I enjoy picking bones (I am, lest you forget, a dog), but in this case, the sport of chewing is overshadowed by the seriousness of the issue at hand. According to our vet, Dr. Mengele, I assume, I need to lose weight! Me, Levi!



To further his agenda of starving dogs and cats, the vet said that Rocky and Erica were "a little overweight" as well. Chi-Chi's always been a fatty, but then it turned out she has diabetes and she's not nearly so fat now. In fact, I'd say she's just about right. Dr. Kevorkian would disagree. He says dad should be able to feel all of our ribs and spines easily. That's loony! Sure, he should be able to feel we have ribs and spines, but there shouldn't be anything easy about it. This is what I look like now:



I've heard it said that you can never be too rich or too thin. Maybe that's true about being too rich, but I can assure you, anyone thinner than me is dangerously thin.



"Why dangerously," you ask. "Aren't you engaging in hyperbole again, like when you compared the Fed Ex man to Hitler?" To that I say, "No, a hundred million times, No!"

I am not fat! This is what I would look like if I was fat! I do not look like that!


When that deranged vet says that I'm overweight, he's just demonstrating his ignorance. What he calls, "overweight," I call, "famine-proof." A smart dog like me knows trouble often lurks right around the corner. With an extra 10% or so bodyweight, I will be able to face that trouble head on, without crippling hunger thwarting my ability to plan and think clearly.



Let's suppose, for an instant, that, heaven forfend, dad and grandma ate some bad clams and keeled over dead. It could happen. Where would Chi-Chi, Rocky, Erica and I be then?



Certainly we'd be hungry, but we wouldn't starve to death. If we were what Dr. Crippen says is "ideal" weight, we would be so hungry that we would have no choice but to start eating dad and grandma immediately. Then, when help arrived, we'd look like the bad guys. That won't do. Levi never plays the villain!

With our famine-proof physiques, though, if sudden death overtook dad and grandma, we'd have at least a day before we had to start eating them to fend off death by starvation. We'd have a whole day to figure out which parts of them would be best to start with. We wouldn't have to just start eating willy-nilly, like "ideal" dogs would be forced to do. Also, maybe we'd be able to wait it out, until fortune smiled upon us once more.



In a horrible situation like that, it's possible someone could come save us. Or maybe dad and grandma would stop being dead and feed us, because we would be very hungry. But if dad and grandma stopped being dead, that would mean they hadn't been dead at all, just sleeping, maybe.



So, if we were maintained at what that crazy bastard vet says were our "ideal" weights, it could be a tragedy waiting to happen! Dad and grandma might be sleeping too long, and in our state of near starvation, the pack and I might think they were dead forever, and start eating them! Not only would we be in trouble, but it would be embarrassing. I do not like to be embarrassed.

So, in conclusion, dogs and cats should, ideally, be 10% above their "ideal" weights, so that they are famine-proof, and terrible mistakes happen less frequently. If a veterinarian says something different, he is wrong and a bad vet! He doesn't care if your dog eats you! Do you really want a guy like that treating your pets? No, of course you don't.



If your dog is more than 10% overweight, you still might want to be careful about trying to impose a diet on him. Talk with him, emphasize the health consequences, but whatever you do, let his weight-loss be his idea. When a fat dog is put on a diet he gets very hungry, and while I'm not saying a fat dog is going to eat you and your family if he gets extra hungry, I'm just saying it isn't something you want to find out about.

Editor's Note: I don't have a note today. This is just how Levi wrote it, and I think it speaks for itself. For more of Levi's interesting views, click here.


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