For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved dogs. Our family dogs, my brothers’ and sister’s dogs, my parents’ dogs, just love ’em all.

I love chickens – grilled, smoked, still in shell – but I’m pretty sure I don’t want them living about 10 yards from me.

Dog – man’s best friend. Chicken – it’s what everything else tastes like.

I’ve never thought about comparing dogs to chickens, but the discussion surfaced on the Sierra Wave website comments section last week, so I’m game, if not poultry.

One poster offered this gem: “Dogs … provide a noisy emotional companionship for their owners, which I feel could be adequately met by a quieter human or cat companion.”

Dog dirt! Chicken pellets!

“Noisy emotional companionship“? Man, I do love coffee-table psychoanalysis. Here we go!

“Noisy”? Taz the Dog and I have lived next to a neighbor for almost five years. Recently, she said, “I didn’t even know Taz knew how to bark.”

“Emotional companionship”? Well, companionship, hell yes. Much like Gaylord Focker in “Meet the Parents,” I like coming home to a dog, tail wagging, happy to see you. Taz, alas, is not fully equipped to deal with my emotional issues, so I actually discuss them with humans when I’m not sobbing uncontrollably.

Now, if I want to talk swimming in the canal, doggie biscuits and sniffing rears, Taz is my guy, but otherwise I speak with family and friends, sometimes while I’m eating a chicken.

“Which I feel could be adequately met a by a quieter human or cat companionship”?

Oh, really. Some might be put off by the arrogance of this statement, but Taz told me not to start foaming at the mouth.

The same commenter also wrote: “I’ve been known to ask for the shotgun when barking keeps me up at night …” Lovely thought. Sounds to me like someone needs some emotional companionship. Myself, I scream at the top of my lungs, “Hey, shut your @!#$#%$ dog up!” Usually doesn’t work, but I feel better, without resorting to deadly weapons.

And I’d hate to think the poster may actually be happy to know that firing that shotgun would send Taz into a tizzy. Tazbo likes gunshots and fireworks about as much as I like double-bogeys. Our reactions are quite similar: Initial disgust, followed by heavy breathing, drooling and body convulsions, not necessarily in that order.

The first couple of years I had Taz I had no idea the 4th of July and New Year’s Eve were the worst days of the year for him, the loud, unseen noises turning him into an inconsolable blob of quivering fear, kind of like a human at an IRS audit.

But, you’ve just got be smarter than a 13-year-old dog. The last few years, I closed the windows, cranked some music and Taz doesn’t hear a thing, except, perhaps, the sizzling of some chicken fajitas.

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