My Dog’s On A Diet And It’s Killing Us

My dog is fat.

Janku (pronounced Yan-Koo) is so fat, that strangers feel at liberty to say awful things.

We're trying to lose five pounds by summer

Once, a middle-aged lady sitting on a stoop blurted out, “She looks like a sausage that ate too many sausages!”

Another time, a college girl walking past with a gaggle of other college girls cackled that, “Her head is too small for her body!”

I barked, “She heard that!” over my shoulder.

The gaggle of girls giggled, but we were not amused.

The diet is not to appease these loudmouthed monsters. It’s because she’s 14 years old, and it’s getting harder for her to move. To go from sitting to standing involves a rocking motion that reminds me of a time this winter when I helped push a car out of a snowbank.

So, for the past two weeks, I’ve pared back her breakfast and dinner portions, rationed her cookies to three a day, and cut out all the extra plate-licking and bowl-cleaning.

We’re both miserable.

When's dinner?

She’s on me like a hawk while I cook. She trembles while I eat, tapping her feet and licking her lips. When I finish and carry my plate away without giving her anything, she wails.

If she could, I think she’d flip the damn table.

But here’s the kicker: This is all my fault. I answer her cries with cookies, pacify her boredom with bones, and ease my guilt about leaving her home alone by serving her chopped striploins and spicy green curry.

For 14 years, I’ve been building up a debt that now must be paid. Every forlorn whimper and bitter glance is merely interest on my debt.

Every debt must be paid

And so it is in life. Nature keeps a strict ledger book. You can do all the deadly sins you want right now, you'll just have to pay later.

If you eat too much, you get fat. If you get fat, you get sick. If you get sick, you die. At least this all happens slowly enough that you get lots of chances to stop it. Just know that it’s a debt with real compound interest. To undo the damage of overeating today, you don’t get to just eat normally tomorrow. You actually have to go hungry, and it will hurt.

When you borrow money, there isn’t much wiggle room. If you think nobody cares about you, try not paying your credit card for a while. Sometimes it seems like countries can rack up massive debts without consequence, but that’s just because the billing cycle is a lot longer than Visa's. Countries borrow against the quality of life of future generations. They will have to pay.

If you stay up late, you’re borrowing against the next day. You’re prioritizing whatever you’re doing tonight over whatever you could be doing tomorrow, when you’ll either be sleeping in, or working with a less-than-optimal mind and body. Make sure you stop to consider what you are sacrificing for that extra hour of Netflix.

Moral debt may be the hardest to measure, but it’s not cheap. Kill and you may be killed or at least forfeit life as you know it. Steal and you may be rendered isolated and penniless. Lie, cheat, abandon responsibilities or act with malice, and you may lose your dignity, reputation and place in society.

There’s wisdom in forgiveness

Jesus tells a story about a servant who couldn’t pay his large debt to a king. The king threatened to sell the servant’s wife, children and belongings to settle it. The servant begged for mercy and the king, moved by compassion, forgave the debt.

Later, the servant found a fellow servant who owed him a small amount, and grabbed him by the throat. The poor guy begged for more time to repay the debt, but the unforgiving servant sent him to prison.

When the king found out his servant had not extended the same forgiveness he had been shown, he sent him to prison too.

Jesus lets us know that God runs a similar system.

The king scolding the servant by Jan van Hemessen (c. 1556)

You don’t need religion to appreciate the wisdom of forgiveness. It's healing and leaves open the hope of reconciliation rather than the darkness of retribution.

But to be sure, not all debts can be quickly or easily forgiven. Janku was probably born to be on the heavy side. I mean, she beat cancer without losing a pound. Two weeks into this tortuous diet, she’s somehow managed to gain weight. It defies biology.

I simply take it to mean that the debt is a bit greater even than I thought.