Teaching my new dog old tricks

Gentle pet parenting

Jeffrey Denny
5 min readJan 18, 2025

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Jeffrey Denny

When you marry later in life, you don’t register for wedding gifts.

Except maybe for orthopedic, ophthalmologic, oral or other surgeries that start with oh! Or the wedding bills. You crowdfund ask, they crowdfund answer. Nothing personal, just transactional.

But as Miss Manners might sniff, that’s some fucking crass-ass shit.

Instead, since you’re combining homes and already hoarded enough stuff to fulfill the Gulf of America or the massive Apex Landfill in Las Vegas — yes, trash and Vegas is redundant — you post a registry of old crap people have to take away.

Even if out of sick curiosity or to feel superior they merely click on your old unused bread or yogurt maker, monogrammed silk napkins, slinky men’s boudoir wear and other gifts from your previous weddings, they’ve committed to taking them. Like when you click on a dating profile of a MAGA with six-pack abs raising a six-pack of Pabst and in loneliness marry she/her/hers.

But the best wedding gift I received this time around was a little dog.

His name is Tucker. No, not after the former #1 Fox News multimillionaire liar. Tucker the dog has more morals in his solid excretions. Tucker the dog just looks like a dog named Tucker.

Tucker is my new wife’s dog. He was a Covid dog. She got him before we met. And now he’s ours. As marriage goes, what’s ours is now mine if it requires responsibility. Not if she had a $300,000 Porsche 911 Turbo S. That would still be hers alone.

Since you insensitively asked about his ethnic identity, Tucker is a Cavachon, the unholy matrimony of Cavalier King Charles and Bichon Frisé.

Let’s interrogate he/him/their cultural intersectionality.

Many of Britain’s countless King Charles dating back to when Jesus Christ rode dinosaurs on the road to Damascus were cavalier.

Charles I tried to Trump-hump England, to “uphold in himself an unlimited and tyrannical power to rule according to his will, and to overthrow the rights and liberties of the people,” according to Oxford University, whose legacies were there at the time.

Charles II was a dog who baby-daddied more than Elon Musk. And of course, Charles III was cavalier with Princess Diana when he naughtily consorted with Queen Consort Camilla.

Turning to Bichon Frisé, it’s French for “bitter salad bitch.” Enough said.

The history of French and British royalty doing the Horizontal Bach goes back centuries and starred the legendary Mary, Queen of Scots and Francis, heir to the French throne. One that could never compare to the gilded porcelain seat of power surrounded by purloined secret government documents at a certain faux-Versailles Florida Palm Beach compound celebrating the ostentatious nouveau riche style of uggos who have far more money than taste and screwed lower classes for it.

But Mary, however, lost her mind due to justice-involved beheading because the British were jealous of French wine and cheese. If you’ve ever suffered British wine and cheese, you can empathize.

So yes, like his breeding, Carlson namesake and — come to think of it — the Trump spawn, Tucker is classic privileged white nepo royalty like an Ivy Gaza protestor but respectfully doesn’t try to pretend he’s not.

He also rolls in squirrel poop like Donald Jr.

You might be tempted to hate on Tucker because, being purchsed from a breeder, he didn’t rescue his dog mom. But maybe you’re projecting your inner self-loathing on a dog and a mom. Zoom your therapist. And if you call yourself a dog mom, heed standup philosopher Neal Brennan: “Really? You know who else was a dog mom? That dog’s mom.”

All to say that I’m now a dog dad.

And FYI to human breeder scolds and repopulation heroes, I lack children because I identified that breeding was more an avoidance than a need. And as a narcissist like every self-caring man, I’d be an awesome terrible human dad.

Plus, I saved the planet an estimated 400 million megatons of CO2-emissions that studies confirming my beliefs show children foully emit virtually every wonderful moment of every day, especially if you put them on planet-friendly diets.

To be a good dog dad, I read every one of the roughly 123,546,538 books on dog training, watched even more now-banned Tiktoks, and let Tucker sniff then attack Cesar Millan on X @cesarmillan. Like it always goes on X.

Nothing worked for me or, it would seem, His Majesty, King Tucker.

Then parents I know with irritating free-range kids gave me their dog-eared, Sharpie-highlighted book as if was assigned by their PhD professors who wrote it a copy of “The Gentle Parenting Book: How to raise calmer, happier children from birth to seven.”

As Amazon described this latest Parenting for Idiots, “Gentle parenting is different. … It means parenting with empathy, respect, understanding — and boundaries.”

The theory goes that gentle parenting can help children build emotional intelligence, social skills, confidence, independence and happiness, validate their feelings, help them develop self-regulation skills, understand the impact of their actions, and inculcate a resiliency mindset.

If gentle parenting can work to manage children who rule the household, then why can’t it work for a cute little dog like Tucker?

It did. Especially the advice to model behavior.

Now everyone except my wife is amazed at how I taught Tucker to be like me and do what he already wanted to do:

Lie down

Not on command; on his own volition. Which is most of the day. Seeing me on Zoom calls from dawn to dusk with colleagues who aren’t as smart or strategic as I am must tire him too.

Sit

It seems he learned this just by watching what I do the 16 hours a day when I’m not lying down.

Eat

Like me, he’ll gobble up anything, any time, even if it’s on the floor, smells bad, the Surgeon General says it’s deadly, or it’s unclear what it is or used to be.

Speak

Unlike most stupid men who are dogs, Tucker is also verbal like me, with the ability and willingness to express his feelings constructively like every woman does far better.

While Tucker can’t get on social media (yet; AI is working on it), he likes to give human and canine strangers a compelling piece of his mind when they have the temerity to walk past our house.

Ok, don’t bring the ball back

Like me, Tucker seems to have more appetite for squirrel poop than exercise.

I’ve sat down with him, asked if he was emotionally available, and discussed together many times that I can’t throw the ball again unless he returns it. As he quizzically tipped his head, I said in a quiet but firm, boundary-setting voice that there’s no goddamned fucking way I’m going to fetch the ball myself, dickhead.

That was bad dog parenting! We’re both still learning. Together.

Jeffrey Denny is a Washington writer.

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Jeffrey Denny
Jeffrey Denny

Written by Jeffrey Denny

A Pullet Surprise-winning writer who always appreciates free chicken.

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