Today I’m going to brave the taboo topic of getting angry at your dog. Nowadays, if you so much as breathe a word against your dog, people look at you like you’re Michael Vick. And take one look at my dog Mick and you’d wonder what is wrong with me that I could ever get angry at him?

Let me begin with a quote from one of my favorite women, Beryl Markham. In West With the Night, she asked upon the birth of a foal, “Will it breathe when it is meant to breathe? Will it have the anger to feed and to grow and to demand its needs?”