A Few Useful Clichés from Pearly-Girl

by Bill Cottringer

“Clichés can get old, but they don’t have to lose their punctuation as originally intended, when you find new and unusual ways to apply them.” ~The author.

     Pearly-Girl, author of “Pearls of Wisdom: A Smart Dog’s Tale,” is currently gathering good material from Wikipedia, my collection of good quotes, and various proverb websites , to finish her next book—“A Good Cliché a Day Will Keep the Vet Away.” This won’t be any form of plagiarism, because she will put her own personal dog spin on these further words of wisdom. And she is always sensitive enough to give credit to any human that is smart enough to say something important and useful that can cut down the plethora of useless information that is overloading people and even spilling over to the dog world. Words, words, too many words.

     So, this morning while I was getting prepared for our next snow storm, she asked me to throw out a few of her favorite ten clichés she uses to avoid unnecessary visits to the local Vet’s office even though he is a really nice guy. She wants to test the interest for her next book. If you have fun with this information, be sure and encourage her for more. She will be appreciative. And she listens to and takes constructive criticism well. You can contact her at pearlygirl167.gmail.com 

1. “You can get more with barking and showing a few teeth than just barking alone.” And this seems to work well for Pearly-Girl when she wants to protect her backyard territory from strange dogs and other four-legged creatures wandering down from the nearby woods, and even some suspicious people passing by with questionable motives.  Of course, she applies this cliché most when anyone tries to disturb her when eating breakfast or dinner, chewing on a bone, or obsessively sniffing out spots where she has pooped the day before, for disgusting reasons of recycling it.

     She actually got this barking and teeth defensive move from Al Capone, who used to say, “You can get more with a smile and a gun, than you can with just a smile alone.” That cliché certainly did pay dividends for Mr. Capone, at least before he went to prison for tax evasion and eventually died of a STD no less. The bottom-line here for Pearly-Girl is to always be over-prepared and under-confident. She learned that from Mohammed Ali who usually beat his opponents in the boxing ring with that philosophy.

2. “You can’t carry two watermelons with one hand.” When Pearly-Girl first read this old Chinese proverb, she had to scratch her head a bit and think about what this could mean. After eating a lite snack and taking a brief nap, it came to her. You see this was more of a human problem than one dogs had any difficulty with. It has to do with the myth of multi-tasking. Dogs don’t do this because they know this so-called ability doesn’t really exist. Instead, they practice serial multi-tasking, getting one thing done at a time, like eating, playing, running, gnawing on a bone, barking, napping, getting a belly-rub or pooping, but never in that particular order or at the same time.

    Dogs laugh at people claiming to be expert multi-taskers, because they know something important. That is that if you try to carry two watermelons with one hand, you are likely to spill them both, leaving you with nothing to eat. That is what happens with multi-tasking—you never finish one thing very well, but rather everything undone with mediocrity. So where is the value in that? There isn’t any. It is a waste of time. One watermelon at a time.

3. “When you run behind car, you get exhausted.” Here again, Pearly-Girl found this one on a proverb site broken down to country’s originating wise, and sometimes humorous sayings. This one is also from China. Dogs seem to have an uncanny sense of getting a double whammy like this double meaning of “exhausted” when they are doing something stupid like chasing a car from behind, when the wheels have more appeal and are much less exhausting.

     The main thing Pearl wants for readers is to consider the value of being more careful in doing anything that has more dire consequences than good benefits. That is dog logic. Her personal philosophy is to do everything in such a way as to get the best results in the easiest way, without any costly side effects. Another version of this is, “always take the path of least resistance.”

4. “If you don’t have what you want, want what you have.” PG heard this in one of the Rolling Stones songs, at least she thinks that is where she heard it. This cliché has saved her a lot of heartburn in the temptation, even for dogs, to always want more than you have. This is especially difficult for humans, since they can think so much about wanting and desiring more and more things and how “more” might make them more happy. But the happiness never seems to come from getting more of what you think will bring more happiness. It remains elusive.

     Dogs always know that they already have everything they need, which is quite a different thing than what they want. If you have everything you need, you don’t need to worry about wanting something else. Here’s a good example: If you can’t be happy “poor,” you can’t be happy “rich.” Dogs already know they are rich enough with so many things of enjoyment being available for free. Humans often miss that reality, thinking everything good has to cost a lot of hard-earned money, when it doesn't.

5. “When you are in a hole, quit digging.” Liking to dig a lot, dogs sometimes have difficulty with this one. But their way around this smart admonition is that they usually dig holes for a good reason, like getting under a fence or finding a bone they buried last year. This useful cliché is meant more as a warning to not make bad things worse by continuing to do the things that put you in the hole in the first place.

    Pearly-Girl has had psychological training and knows that certain things need to happen to start getting out of a hole that you accidently stepped into or got pushed into. The first thing is to stop trying to dig deeper to get out. That makes no sense. You have to first take ownership of doing something to get yourself in the bad situation and then start doing something else to get above ground. When you do those two things, the way out of the hole gradually and suddenly appears.

6. “A Ship in the harbor with calm waters is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.” Pearly-Girl realizes this is much more for humans than dogs, because humans think too much about things like conflicts, problems, challenges and adversities. They just take a situation as it is and deal with it the best way they can, without over-analyzing the process or outcome. Of course, not having much of a memory and always living in the now moment helps a lot.

     Although it is natural to want to avoid something that is usually painful like conflicts and problems, it really doesn’t help because the unresolved ones usually come back again with more vengeance the next time around. Adversity is as much a part of life as gravity. The only thing dogs don’t understand is why solving an adversity successfully just brings a more difficult one your way. That is certainly not a tasty treat reward for doing a trick.

7. “A closed mouth gathers no flies.” But occasionally dogs like to chase and gobble up large horseflies for the protein; it is the bees and wasps they try to avoid. Most of the time though, they don’t say much and the only time they use their mouths is to bark or eat. On the other hand, humans usually use their mouths much more than their ears and that is a bid odd since they only have one mouth and two ears.

    The main caveat of this cliché is, silence is Golden.” But the caveat of this caveat is only when it serves a good purpose like you don’t know the answer to a question, don’t want to say anything bad or inappropriate, haven’t really reached any conclusions on a matter and don’t want to offer a premature opinion. Strategic silence is best when your enemy is making a mistake or trying to correct what a wrong a person is saying when he or she doesn’t want to be corrected.

8. “Tomorrow is often the busiest day of the week.” This is a Spanish proverb and it is more about a problem that dogs don’t have—time management. Humans generally let time manage them rather than vice versa. Of course, dogs aren’t part of this past-present-future time continuum with memory or worry problems. They know they can't escape from the forever now moment.

    “Why do today what you can put off until tomorrow” just about guarantees it won’t get done because tomorrow’s agenda is already too full. “Strike while the iron is hot” is a much better way to free up some time tomorrow. And the more work you do today to finish things, the more time you will have for the fun things tomorrow. In the meantime, Pearly-Girl is pleased that she on has one time—now, without a memory to invent times that don’t exist only to worry about or worse yet, fear. Big Elk and brown Bears are for that.

9. You cannot get to the top by sitting on your bottom.” Being a dog though, sitting on your bottom is just fine if you don’t have any top in sight. But Pearly-Girl being a very clever dog, understands that there are no results without effort. You can’t have your dreams come true , without doing something to make them happen. And, dogs have found a marvelous way to communicate what they want. They use their eyes which can’t be misunderstood.

     Depending on the size of your goal, your action plan has to be of equal size. With small goals you can remind yourself now and then, but with big goals it is better to write down the specific actions that need to be taken to get where you want to be, step by step. “A thousand-mile journey begins with one step,” comes to mind with Pearly-Girl, and her eyes are always that first step. Another thing that comes to mind, is Steven Covey’s smart warning, “Don’t get to the top of your ladder only to find out you have placed it against the wrong building." “Better late than never” doesn’t work well in this situation.

10. “I can resist everything but temptation.”  This cliché is Pearly-Girls all-time favorite. When my wife and I eat breakfast or dinner at the table or on the couch watching a favorite TV program, Pearly-girl is right there begging with her eyes for a scrap of human food to supplement her dry dog food diet. Bacon, chicken and steak are her biggest temptations that she has zero resistance for.

    Since dogs can’t reason about this, I’ll offer her a few hints on how to escape this conundrum. Maybe if you work on resisting the smaller temptations that don’t have any fatal consequences, you can build your will power to resist the bigger temptations that can have fatal consequences if they are not resisted. But like anything, you just can’t tell your mind to do it, without practicing with your hands.

“Some clichés are half-truths and it is a good idea to know what the ‘yes, but…’ is on those.” ~Pearly—Girl.