As humans, our obsession with weight haunts us every minute of the day. Many of us weigh ourselves incessantly, critique every inch of our bodies and constantly evaluate how “fat” we are in the mirror.
We place pictures of skinnier versions of ourselves on the fridge, we buy fat free dressing that tastes like water and low calorie rice cakes that resemble cardboard, and we compare ourselves to other humans, wishing we could just shed 5-10 pounds.
In the meantime, dogs lounge around, lazily contemplating the next meal or planning their next nap on the forbidden couch. My dog is no exception. She snores the loudest in our house, seems put-out when I make her go outside to run and tears apart the trash searching for food just as I rearrange the pantry each night looking for a snack.
The main difference between dogs and humans is that dogs just don’t care about image. After three months with us, our skinny, overly-energetic, little rescue dog blossomed into an overweight Puggle begging for more food throughout the day. Now, she doesn’t care that she can’t fit into the cute little dog dresses we bought her months ago, she doesn’t care that her belly almost scrapes the floor when she walks, and she doesn’t care that my entire family calls her the fattest dog on Earth.
Maybe, just maybe, we should just enjoy life as dogs do. Maybe we should learn to enjoy the simple, lazy things in life once in awhile. Maybe we should dig through the trash to find treasures as well.
– Shannon Philpott
Blog Entry: July 21, 2009
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Shannon Philpott-Sanders 
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