My Shizu as Sermon Illustration

I've been working on a couple more substantive posts but haven't finished them, so I thought I would run a pulse through the machine.

After talking to some other Shizu owners, it has become clear to me that this type of dog was not bred to be easily potty trained. Our dog does okay--although now that a three foot long Great Dane pup often inhabits our kitchen, she is less likely to pine for the back door.

This morning my children informed me amid my other morning activities that our little "Princess" had left me a present on the stair landing. You generally need to catch these animals in the act of their dastardly deeds to create the desired Pavlovian environment, although that doesn't necessarily stop the yelling and chasing that often ensues from my mouth after such delightful experiences.

All that is background. I've often suspected that the small brain of this "lap dog" probably thinks--if they don't see me poop, they won't know it was me. Of course this is true of young children and adults too (I don't mean in reference to pooping on landings, but in general). I love the story my father-in-law tells about a dyslexic neighborhood kid who spray painted some profanity on a neighborhood wall. Everyone knew it was him because two of the four letters in the word were switched around. He was completely dumbfounded how everyone knew it was him.

Just to multiply the illustrations endlessly for fun, my wife's family have been genetically bred to have killer noses. They can smell things--even get sick off of smells that I can't even smell. So I can just forget sneaking some food off to myself when no one is around--they'll smell it and I'll be caught.

So where's the illustration? I suppose more than anything it's a lesson that honesty is the best policy. I have had children tell me obvious "stories" thinking they were pretty smart and that I would blissfully be fooled. There's always someone smarter than you. For example, God. "Be sure your sins will find you out."

When I was England I knew some college students who were geniuses. One in particular comes to mind who I suspected could lie his way out of a paper bag with the vast majority of people not even suspecting it. I wondered if it had become a way of life for him.

But there's always someone smarter than you and, in the end, a dumb person has the edge over a genius... if the truth is on his or her side.