Sparky was crying a little bit after I had to lecture him and put him in jail for getting into the trash.

I’m a bad parent.  No, not parent.  Dog owner doesn’t feel right either.  I’m not trying to instill good habits or protect him from the world.  He’s an adult with agency.  If Sparky wanted to smoke, I wouldn’t buy him cigarettes and he’d have to do it outside, but otherwise, it’s his decision.  It’s like when Hickman stays with me.  I want him to be comfortable and I enjoy his company, but he can make his own decisions.

After camping, the trash bag from the camper was accessible to Sparky.  I heard some rustling in the other room, but he is always doing something wacky, so none of my business.  Eventually, I found that he’d chewed through the bag and lapped up a bunch of barbecue sauce. 

When I would take my students to Cedar Point for Physics Day, there were two primary rules.

  1.  Don’t do anything that reflects negatively on North Royalton High School.
  2.  Don’t be late meeting up at the end of the day.

One year, Jess and I were in the back of the park, near Rip-Cord.  Three of our students were talking to a cop.  Our students had changed into morph suits.  A morph suit looks like this:

Cedar Point has a rule prohibiting guests from wearing costumes.  It has something to do with their affiliation with Hanna-Barbara.  Jess loaned one student a jacket to cover the suit, then traveled to the lockers with that kid to get their clothes. 

It was a violation of rule #1, so I had to punish them.  They could serve a week of detentions, or bring ice cream for the class.

That’s how I feel about Sparky’s infraction.  The bag was right there, he chewed a little hole, didn’t scatter any trash or get barbecue sauce on anything.  I’m not going to feed Sparky garbage, but if he eats some, well, that’s on him.  I didn’t lecture him, just pointed out the hole in the bag and put him in jail.  In that photo, Sparky was laughing, but tried to cover it by licking his paws.

I left him in there for 5 minutes.