Why So Insidious?

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“Why so serious?” – The Dark Knight, Christopher and Jonathon Nolan 

Why so cynical? Cynicism is truth. Cynicism is real. Scene: The cynical character confronts an optimistic, positive one. The positive character has no reply. Why does he just sit there and take it? The underlying truth is finally coming out, and the positive character just can’t handle it. We favor the cynical character, because, “He’s just being real with us.” He’s gritty, she’s so dark, and the cynical are no longer afraid to speak truth to power. The truth is that your precious, little world is awful, your neighbor is trash, and you’re probably no better. Cynicism is alarming, scary, hilarious, and so insidious.

“Harmful but enticing: seductive.” – Merriam-Webster.com’s definition of insidious.

Why so insidious? Want to write a best-seller? Bring the pain (muderporn). We readers crave a taste, a dose, and a heaping forkful of the worst elements of the worst moments of another’s life. We don’t want it too familiar, of course, yet we enjoy watching it from a distance. We may not bring it up in polite company, but if someone else does, we join in, and it’s difficult for us to hide the excitement in our voice. 

Why so violent? Violent narratives require a generous portion of brutality, but the most successful writers define it by clever and intelligent means. Undefined brutality is fine if we’re writing a mob narrative, or a historical recount of the Ku Klux Klan or Nazi, Germany, because they come backloaded with such a brutally violent history, but if we’re going to write about serial killers, we need to employ some level of poetry, symbolism, or some other form of intellect in their acts for it suggests the killer (and their writer) is surprisingly intellectual. In the cat-and-mouse game with the police, writers use law enforcement officials to define the serial killer’s intellect. “He’s obviously incredibly intelligent,” they will say at the outset, and at some point, in the chase, they say, “He’s too smart to fall for that.” If the writer can combine the killer’s savage sense of brutality with some ode to Geoffrey Chaucer, Dante Alighieri, Shakespeare, and/or Biblical references, it illustrates a shocking intellect that will lead to best-sellers, ratings, and clickbait. 

I’ve created fictional characters with whom I developed a mostly platonic relationship, and the answer to the question of what I was going to do with them didn’t involve whether or not they were going to commit violence, but how much? 

“We might develop a crush on non-violent stories,” I said to explain this predilection, “but if we’re going to fall head-over-heels in love, there has to be some violence involved, or at least the threat thereof.” 

Why so awful? We want to read/watch about awful people doing awful things to one another, with a dash of humor thrown in to further define, or even slightly contradict, their awfulness. At some point in the timeline, the awful writers began adding clever humor to add an element of the casual and the common place to their violence, and we loved it. If it’s not love we experience, it’s some complicated adherent. We’ll repeat a clever and humorous line with a chuckle. We might even knowingly invite such seductive characters into our home. We’ve all seen movies of enraged violent people, and it just doesn’t connect the way the calm, clever killers do. Look at our favorite performances, most of them involve actors portraying the most awful characters imaginable with a little bit of flair. The message to writers is clear: if you want gain, bring the pain, and it doesn’t hurt to add a little levity to their refrain. 

Why so artistic? Does art reflect society, or does society reflect art? Is society as evil as artists of modernity want us to believe, or do we interpret their attempts as beautiful works of art? Those who aren’t afraid to expose us to the truth of what’s going on in their neighborhood receive special accolades. Their exposes might be dark and negative but that’s their truth. Is it truth, or is it an embellishment intended to generate sales? I can see you, with your fingers poised above your keyboard, ready to defend your favorite book, movie, or TV show. Your reply will include something regarding how I can’t understand the plight of someone who might not experience the comfortable lifestyle I do. I’m not saying you’re wrong, but would you be so defensive if we were discussing a positive, uplifting narrative? “There’s nothing wrong with light-hearted fare, of course,” you might say, “but there’s no question that gritty, dark, and cynical are definitely more artistic.”

Why do repetitive? We love violence in our art, and we identify with cynicism as truth, but what is that truth? As we work our way through controversial, provocative portrayals of the truth, we often hear, see, and learn the same reportage, fictional and otherwise, over and over. How many times do we have to hear, watch, and read the same cynical exposés on the same institutions before we accept their portrayals as truth? How many otherwise beloved and trusted institutions in our society are the most corrupt in these narratives? There’s the member of the civil service, the man of religion, or military man you thought you could trust who turns out the most corrupt among them in our controversial and cutting edge stories. This trope is almost as repetitive as the all families are dysfunctional trope. We all understand that an author needs to introduce conflict, be it external or internal, but these tropes are repeated so often that most of us can pick out the good guys and bad guys in an ensemble narrative before the actors have read one word of the script. Through sales, we’ve encouraged storytellers to evolve to nothing but hardcore, unapologetic cynicism to appeals to our worldview. 

Why so dark, angry, and hopeless? To paraphrase a line from Cool Hand Luke, “That’s the way he wants it,” and we want it dark, cynical, negative, hateful, and violent. Most of us have no violent tendencies. We never have, and we never will. Yet, we won’t read a book, watch a movie, TV show, or play a video game that doesn’t involve at least some hint of violence? What does that say about us? If we are of a stable mind that isn’t easily influenced, I don’t think it says much, but is it human nature to think that the ultimate, or final, truth about human nature is that it’s awful, nasty, and we’re all headed for dark, gritty truth?

Why no happy endings? It wasn’t too long ago that the market demanded a happy ending, no manner how dark and gritty a fictional piece was. We enjoyed watching awful people doing awful things to each other, but we all knew that some over-the-top, big, sloppy happy ending was coming. We knew the movie would end with someone drinking an exotic, adult beverage with a tiny umbrella in it, in front of an impossibly white, sandy beach? Everyone knew that somehow, someway, it would all end happy for the players involved. It became a long-running joke. Those who concern themselves with such things say that there wasn’t one particular movie that brought an end to this, but a series of thematically complex narratives of the late 60’s early 70’s that challenged the whole idea of the necessity of happy endings in movies. If this is true, it was a long, insidious arc that led us to demand that our stories end in despair for the purpose of being true, while illuminating us about the despair around the world. When we watch happy endings now, they seem so anticlimactic that movie makers have responded by leaving one last hint that the bad guy/monster might might still be alive somewhere.  

“If you want a happy ending go Disney or some other manufacturer of dreams, cause you ain’t gonna find it here.”

I come at this from an advantageous position, because I led a sheltered life until I was about fifteen. I received a lot of grief for believing that most of humanity was good, and I still do, but when I was young and impressionable, my worldview encountered a special brand of the-world-is-junk, and a dose of everyone is a piece of junk. “You shouldn’t trust anyone outside your home,” they instructed me, “and you should probably be skeptical of them.” The contrast to everything I knew and believed couldn’t have been more shocking if it was delivered with defibrillator paddles. I initially considered their skeptical cynicism a romantic notion, and I was angry that my authority figures shielded me from the truth for so long. The more I learned this outlook, the more I embraced it, acclimated to it, and I accepted it as truth. The repetition was such that I knew if I didn’t adjust and assimilate, I would be nothing more than a naïveté who would eventually meet my demise as a result of some proverbial pack of wolves who would take advantage of it. As with all constant and repetitive messaging, it eventually reached a tipping point for me. Looking back, I probably needed that dose of cynicism to round out my wide-eyed optimism, but when the “theys” in my inner-circle continued pouring gasoline on this fire, I realized that, like uplifting positivism, there’s a point of diminishing returns of too much cynicism too. “Just because it’s awful, negative, and cynical doesn’t always mean it’s true,” I began telling my “theys” after I hit that tipping point. I don’t know if that revelation proved as shocking to them as their revelations did me, but they couldn’t come up with anything to counter it. 

When we seek the truth, we often get bounced around a bit, until we eventually find it nestled somewhere in the in-between. Are we more cynical or optimistic, or are we somewhere in-between, and what’s in the in-between? 

As the new saying goes, “If you ever want to know where you stand are as a culture, look to the major marketing firms.” They pour millions into researching human nature and the zeitgeist for the purpose of appealing to us in their marketing campaigns? When they create advertisements for their clients do they seek a truth, or something we generally perceive to be true? Marketing departments don’t necessarily seek to tell us the truth, but their extensive studies find a truth that we consider true enough to move products, and they have obviously reached the conclusion that our outlook is pretty bleak. They understand that times are tough, but their client is here to help. If we just purchase their new and improved product, we’ll find our days and nights bigger, brighter, and more productive, because we’ll have more time to do what we always wanted to do. They pay attention to our intricacies, and they’re saying that we have a negative, cynical and all hope is lost mentality. It’s The Beatles, “It’s getting better all the time. It couldn’t get much worse.” It’s Dickens’ “It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.” It’s the in-between.

I haven’t poured tons of money into extensive research on humanity, but I think we could all use a healthy dose of something else, and it doesn’t have to be uplifting. It can’t be, because uplifting is cringe, but it could be something different. It could be something dotted with refreshing honesty without being overly cynical. It can also be something other than the college thesis paper, or dissertations, writers insert into every song we hear, and every TV show and movie we watch. When I watch these over-the-top insertions, I can’t help but think, “Hows about we just go for entertainment, so we can forget the serious, deep, and the meaningful for just a moment?” 

Wishing and Baseball

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“I wish my son was more aggressive at the plate,” a friend of mine said.

You wish your son was more aggressive? I could go through the list of pseudo-humorous things I wish I had, but you know that joke. I want things, and I need things, but I’d feel foolish suggesting that I wish something were true, because I know that that someone would turn on me and say, “Well, go get it!”

This has always been one of my least favorite responses because it’s obnoxious, tedious (because everyone says it) and true. Yet, who is more tedious and obnoxious, the person who says, “Go get it!” or the person who sits down and whines and wishes?   

Wishing is for small children and people who find genies in a bottle. For the rest of us, it’s a waste of breath, unless we’re going to “Go get it!” A couple of years ago, I wished my kid wouldn’t strike out so often. I wanted him to do better, so we went out to the backyard, then we left the comfy confines of home to open baseball diamonds and batting cages to go get it. Did we get better? We did, because we did it so often that it happened. 

Prior to all that, my kid was shocked and devastated by the fact that he wasn’t the athlete he thought he was, and aren’t we all? Our delusional dreams and projected images of greatness eventually, and painfully, hit a controversial wall called reality. I label the wall controversial, because soon after I told my kid he wasn’t better than he thought, I knew that would get me in trouble with positive reinforcement crowd. After I introduced him to the reality of the situation, we set about getting him better. The latter, needless to say, doesn’t happen after one, two, or three twenty-minute sessions. This is a time-consuming, frustrating, and eventually rewarding process.

I’m the type of guy who thinks, perhaps unreasonably at times, that everything is my fault. If I can’t access a website, for example, I think it’s my fault. It might have more to do with the site’s administrator, but that doesn’t stop me from thinking that I did something wrong. When my son struck out so often, I knew it was partly my fault. The kid was so young that he didn’t know how to do things himself. He had to be taught, and I wasn’t teaching him. I forced him to endure mind-numbing hours of hitting, fielding, and pitching so often that he begged for it to be over. He wanted to play Mario Odyssey, watch YouTube, and do anything and everything he could find that was less taxing. We called our workouts forty, forty forty. Forty hits, forty ground balls, or pop-ups, and forty swings. After doing this for years, when I now see a kid on a baseball field have trouble with the fundamentals of baseball, I can tell just how much time their dad has spent helping them get it.

My job, and your job, if you wish it to be true, is to source the problem and correct it. Baseball is a game, and ten and unders are going to make a ton of mistakes. If they make the same mistakes, over and over in a manner that cries out for resolution, I see it as my job to find a way to help him fix it. If you don’t have the time to personally see to it that the error is corrected, do you have the money to hire an instructor, and if neither of those avenues are available to you, what can you do to try to make it happen, other than sitting in the stands, wishing it were true.  

Some of us are visual learners, some are auditory, and others are reading and writing learners. If your goal is to help your child learn how to play baseball, there’s no avenue better than just doing it so many times that he learns how to do it. It’s what psychologists call Kinesthetic Learning, or what the rest of us call doing it. 

It’s possible for a kid to learn another way, I suppose, but I’ve never explored it. What’s the best way to learn Math, swimming, bowling, or baseball? They have to do it so often that they learn. Malcolm Gladwell suggest we can do anything to a decent level of prowess by investing 10,000 hours into doing it. It sounds so obnoxiously simple that it can’t be the solution, so we read books on it, watch YouTube videos, and invest in some sort of professional tutoring. All of these elements are instructive and can be used to supplement doing, but it’s so obvious that it hardly seems worthy of mentioning that nothing beats doing something so often that we do it better. 

***

Once our kid learns and earns a certain level of prowess, how do we take them to the next level? 

“If you want your kid to advance, get him into a select league,” they say, and they’re right. But, and there’s always a but, a kid learns by doing. We can say he might get better playing a higher level competition, but what if he’s not having fun at the next level? My son is currently on a team composed almost entirely of his friends from school. On this team, my son plays, and he strengthens his relationships with his friends while playing. He looks forward to games, and he has a lot of fun playing in them. That’s far more important to me than advancing him to the next level with the hope that it will strengthen his abilities in such a way that he might continue to play baseball in high school, college, and the Majors. This is the dream, but is it their dream or ours? When we take a look at the numbers, we know that the chances of him playing beyond high school are minimal, and while looking at those numbers we need to ask ourselves who are we really aiming to please? Are we seeking a way for him to be the exception to these ratios for his eventual happiness, or are we looking to satisfy our dream of one day being one of those parents who have front row tickets to our kid’s first major league start? If we follow the plan of making sure he’s having fun, we’ll turn down that invitation for a select league to keep him in a league where he’s having the most fun. We also do this to prepare for the day when he meets the extent of his talent and ability, and our dreams come to a crashing halt. When this happens, we want to look at our son and say, “Well, we had a lot of fun along the way.” 

Last season, a kid named Jimmy received an invitation to advance to a select team over my son. My vicarious impulse was jealousy. I thought my son was better, but I’m biased. Jimmy was, at least, comparable to my son in talent. Flash forward a couple games into this season and Jimmy is not playing on that select team. He’s sitting on the bench. I have no idea if this is a commentary on Jimmy’s ability, compared to the rest of the team, but bottom line, he’s sitting on the bench, and if he’s not playing, he’s not learning, and he’s not advancing. But playing at a higher level lifts all boats. The classic example, in another sport, is Sidney Crosby. Crosby was the youngest brother always playing with his older brothers and their friends. Crosby needed to be better just to compete with them. Crosby became better, and he became so good that he was a first pick in the NHL Draft, and he became one of the best players in the NHL. Crosby, however, was playing against them, as opposed to riding the bench. My guess is this kid named Jimmy is experiencing some next-level play in practice, but nothing beats doing it in a game.  

The select teams also requires a greater commitment to baseball, and I don’t think this commitment will be advantageous. Right now, my son plays a number of sports and he is learning the art of taekwondo. If he commits more of his time to baseball, he will have to sacrifice those other sports. Why would we do this? He has a lot of fun doing all that other stuff too. I think playing those sports, and learning the art of taekwondo, provides him a well-rounded learning experience, and if he chooses a sport to focus on at some point, that will be a decision for him to make. Right now, he’s just having fun, and I see no reason to advance the needle. 

As with everything else in life, there are no easy answers, but there is one easy question. What are we doing with our free-time? Instead of watching the latest docu-drama on Netflix, or flipping through our phone for the next twenty minutes, why don’t we take a trip into the backyard and flip the ball around with our kid for twenty minutes a day, three-to-four times a week for a couple years. 

Baseball is baseball. It’s a sport, and some observe that the obsessive devotion to sports and games is trivial compared to all of the other, more important activities in life. If you think that, you’re right in general terms, but what are you currently doing with them that is so much more vital and crucial to their life? And what were your plans when you held them in your arms that day in the delivery room? Did you plan on letting them watch YouTube for another hour, so you could have a little more “me” time? What we’re talking about when we talk about baseball, soccer, flag football, or whatever ten and unders can do for a couple hours when they’ve not gaming, is committing to something so thoroughly that they develop a discipline, and a character-defining devotion. We’re talking about developing a discipline and a devotion to something they might remember, and they won’t remember conquering Mario Odyssey or flipping through various YouTube influencers. They will remember the days they spent playing sports with others, and the countless hours they spent playing in the backyard with you. It takes a level of commitment, a discipline, and devotion from both of you if you wish want him to get better, or more confident, the next time he steps on a baseball diamond, and that may prove trivial in the grand scheme of life to everyone in the world except for the two of you. 

Feed the Breed: The Beagle

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“Ask not what your Beagle can do for you. Ask what you can do for your Beagle!” 

When we purchase a puppy, any puppy, and bring them into our beloved home, it’s our natural inclination to focus on what that puppy can do for us. Some say that it’s a puppies job to bring love, happiness and an overall sense of joy into our home. We paid to bring him home, after all, and as with the purchase of a loofa, a barcalounger, or a toothbrush, we expect them to perform certain functions for us. If the puppy doesn’t perform to our expectations, we might even think of returning it. (Talking to certain employees at kennels, I’ve learned that this is a part of the business, as they offer a 90-day return policy to customers who aren’t happy with their purchase.) 

His job is to play with us, cuddle with us, provide a general sense of companionship, and do all the things a puppy should do. If he fails to comport with how we think a puppy should act, we see it as a failure on his part, and we might seek professional assistance and advice for him. Most of us do not consider what we can do for the puppy to make them a happy, more well-adjusted dog who doesn’t mind comporting to our standards. We might give him a big backyard to run around in, toys galore, chew sticks, treats, companionship and love, and anything and everything we can think of that would make a dog happy, but we don’t think beyond all that to what we should be doing to build a symbiotic relationship with our new puppy. 

“Feed the breed,” I now say. “Feed the breed.” I list this as a consideration for all dog owners to consider, but it’s specifically tailored to Beagle owners, because I have a Beagle, and I love Beagles. I write this for all dog owners who now see that that beautiful, little puppy they just brought home, who now plays in what we might consider an almost mean-spirited manner. There were times when my Beagle, Max, bit a little too hard during playtime, chewed up some of my precious items, wouldn’t leave the other dog in our home alone, and he was a naughty little boy so often that he added to some of the wrinkles and the grey hair we now sport. My puppy acted as if he was almost (and I normally hate to assign human characteristics to a dog) frustrated. 

When I write, “Feed the breed,” I’m not suggesting that you feed your Beagle bunnies, or that you need to let them catch and devour bunny. When I suggest that you feed the breed, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to watch them feed. If you’re anything like me, it might make you uncomfortable to watch your beloved Beagle actually catch and devour a rabbit. I’m suggesting that you do some research on the breed you purchased and feed into the breeding of your dog.

When I went online, searching for answers to my naughty, little Beagle, I kept seeing this short characterization, “Beagles were bred to chase bunnies.” I didn’t think too much about it at the time. Prior to purchasing a Beagle, I owned a Puggle (part Pug, part Beagle), and that Puggle loved chasing rabbits. Among all the other things he enjoyed, he enjoyed chasing rabbits. So, when I saw that line, “Beagles were bred to chase bunnies,” I continued to skip it with an “of course” in mind.

Friends and family told me Beagles were hunting dogs, and I saw some evidence of it, but Max was purchased to be a family dog. I didn’t want a hunting dog. I wanted a cute cuddly, overly playful dog, and the fact that he happened to be a hunting dog, bred to chase rabbits, was to me an asterisk on the list of characteristics I found. I read it, and then I went onto reading all of the other characteristics I wanted to learn about more. Notice the emphasis on “to me” and “I wanted”. I wanted him to be what I wanted him to be, and I failed to consider what he might be in a larger context. I failed to consider the idea that a Puggle might love to chase rabbits for the sport of it all, but a Beagle needs to chase bunnies in a way that is (again, I cringe when I assign human characteristics to dogs) fundamental to his constitution.  

We took him on those small, daily walks, fifteen minutes a day that every Beagle owner prescribes for those who want a happy dog, I noticed that he huffed every inch of ground beneath him. (A Beagle doesn’t sniff the ground, he huffs on it.) He still exhibited signs of frustration. We took him on more walks in other areas, and in those other areas there was some evidence of bunnies. Even with that, he remained the dictionary definition of a high maintenance dog. I could go through all of the various characteristics and incidents to illustrate how high maintenance Max was, but I think I can summarize my mindset with a comment I began making, “I think I made a huge mistake purchasing this dog.” I walked him constantly to get some of his energy out, and he spent a majority of the rest of his time outside, in our big backyard, running around playing and barking with the neighboring dogs. A human, knowing the general characteristics of a dog might think Max landed in a canine version of nirvana, but he was still always on, and he continued to be somewhat frustrated.  

When I walked him, I walked him through our neighborhood, and the idea that he was bred for hunting rabbits was obvious. He would freak out when he occasionally caught some stray scent of a bunny, and I saw that, but I still didn’t catch on entirely.

It wasn’t until I made the decision to take a long walk into areas with a large bunny concentration that I saw the other side of Max. When he’s in rabbit-infested arena, Max develops tunnel vision. If humans approach him for a quick pet, Max doesn’t even acknowledge their existence. He’s in the zone. Other dogs run to the fence barking and wagging their tales, ready to play. They might as well be on another planet as far as Max is concerned when he’s on the hunt. When he catches a scent, he begins huffing the ground (as opposed to his usual sniffing), and there are times when he huffs the ground so hard that he begins sneezing (as often as twelve-to-fifteen times in a row, some of the times, blowing mucus and excess saliva all over the place). He pulls on the leash to continue to huff every inch of that select ground, and he pulls with all his strength on the leash to signify that he’s far from done with this area. On frequent occasions, he lays out on all fours to anchor himself to the ground, until he’s done covering every square inch of that scent. 

One of the websites devoted to dogs wrote, “Beagles can tell us where bunnies were, but they’re not as proficient at telling us where they are.” This, in my humble opinion, is because they obsess over the ground where “they were” to the point that they might not be as concerned with where that trail leads.

When Max hits a trail that he knows a bunny has spent some time on, he yips, barks and howls en route to the suspected location. (Have you ever heard a Bloodhound’s howl? It’s that.) Max gets so loud that it can prove embarrassing, at times, as we might fear that unsuspecting and uninformed onlookers might think we’re beating our poor, little puppy. “Is he okay?” a concerned neighbor asked from the foyer of her backyard door. I saw her standing there seconds before, and I think she was watching my actions to see if I was beating my dog. The near-screams coming from Max were that intense.

“Thank you for your concern,” I waved. “He just caught the scent of a bunny.” She smiled politely and all that, but I could tell she wasn’t thoroughly convinced, and she slowly re-entered her home watching us to try to spot a reason to call the Humane Society on me.  

My advice to the dog owner who might want to explore the extent of the characteristics of the Beagle, is make sure you carry dog water bottle on these walks, because your Beagle will obsess over these little areas to the point of excessive exhaustion and dehydration. The typical dog owner will want to move on after a while, but it can prove difficult, and almost impossible to convince your Beagle to move on. (Our new ritual of walking in bunny areas, can take a forty-five minutes to an hour.) 

Prior to these long walks in rabbit-infested areas, we tried everything we could think up to make this dog happy. We even went so far as to consult his veterinarian, who told us that he was a puppy, and you should start to see these puppy characteristics subside around aged two. Well, aged two came and went, and he was still high-strung, mean-spirited, and he exhibited some levels of frustration. After these walks, which we do on average three times a week now, I’m happy to report that when I am eventually able to convince Max to move on and begin the long journey home. He returns to our loving home a more normal, less unstable, satisfied and less frustrated dog. By feeding into his breeding, I now have a dog who doesn’t get into things, bite too hard, or display any of the other naughty characteristics I’ve listed above. He’s now an exhausted, less frustrated, and satisfied dog. 

Read the Breed

It’s human nature to expect a child, a dog, an entertainment system, or a loofa to perform according to our expectations. Unlike a loofa or an entertainment system, children can be complicated, frustrated, or dysfunctional in some minor ways that require attention or treatment. We know that, and that’s why we developed the aphorism, “Parenting is one of the hardest jobs in the world.” We don’t expect raising a dog to be as complicated. Yet, like children, to a far lesser extent, all dogs are different. Some are naughty, highly intelligent, and bred different. 

Having written everything I have thus far, let me say that the idea of returning a dog, even one as obnoxious, high-strung, and even mean as Max could be on occasion, was the furthest thing from my mind. I know I’m different, but I would’ve considered that an epic fail on my part. I did my research not to find information to support my thesis that I made a huge mistake by purchasing him, but to find out how I failed and how to rectify it. I have heard tales of bad dogs though. If you have what you consider a bad dog, you think there’s something wrong with your dog, or you pointed your finger at the word frustrated and said, “It’s that,” or “I’m not sure if it’s that, but it’s something like that, that we’re dealing with here.” Bad dog, or something wrong with your dog, can be a description relative to the dog, their owners, or some complex combination thereof. Nobody is saying you’re wrong. There are bad dogs, just like I’m sure zoo keepers can probably tell us there are bad meerkats, bad, mean, or otherwise obnoxious butterflies, and otters. There are also, believe it or not, some bad humans, but with humans we often do extensive research before reaching a final conclusion. That’s the advice I would give all Beagle and dog owners, read the breed and feed the breed. Do some research on your dog, read through their characteristics to find out what makes them tick and feed into that to see if you might be able to use some measure to ease their frustration and make them happy before you reach some final conclusion on them. The best thing I ever did was learn more about my Beagle, and how I could feed into his breed to make him happy, because he’s done everything in his power to return the favor ever since.