What Could Possibly Happen?

When I look back on some of the weirdest times in my childhood, I’m flabbergasted how poorly the adults acted.

If anyone watched the series, Mad Men, you may recall the scene where Betsy was driving the family station wagon, while her two young kids were jumping from the middle seat to the way back and back to the middle, like circus performers. What could possibly happen?

Or my favorite, scene where a pregnant Betsy and her gal pals were sitting around the kitchen table drinking martinis and smoking cigarettes while their kids were upstairs doing who knows what. Suddenly one of the kids comes into the kitchen with a plastic bag over her head, the air sucked out of it, plastered to the her face, and Betsy screams at the kid for taking the bag off of her dry-cleaning garment, totally ignoring that the kid’s face was blue!

My own parents were a little clueless too. When I was a toddler my parents purchased a crib with wheels. What could possibly happen when that curious toddler climbed up the side rails and managed to push the crib away from the wall? No worries, I only fractured my clavicle, and maybe sustained a little brain damage.

Then I got screamed at by my erstwhile favorite aunt because she caught me, the same toddler, now with her arm in a sling, dancing in the living room with a pair of scissors. And screaming at a baby instead of the parents was going to prevent this in the future?

But I think my most mind boggling and a little traumatizing, event was when my mom and her sister put me, a 5 year old, in charge of my 3 year old sister and our cousin. When the kids stuffed all sorts of things into the toilet and flooded the bathroom, I was reprimanded for not being a good babysitter!

So what the heck does any of this have to do with dog training? Well of course, I will digress.

Our dogs are very similar to human toddlers, in that they have the same learning capacity. This, while it’s good news for teaching the dog words, where to go potty, and how to play fun games, for example, however, I don’t think it would be a good idea to leave them home alone, unless precautions were taken to make sure they were safe. 

If you read the labels on some products such as your hair dryer, there’s a warning that says something about taking this into the shower could cause electrocution. I’m guessing that someone did this and sued the manufacturer for not warning our big brain humans that electricity and water probably not a good outcome for showering.

Likewise, when I consult with my clients, I always give them warnings when it comes to things that could possibly happen, mostly because I’ve experienced too many events that could have ended much worse than they did, such as the following:

I was on my computer and my dog was on the floor behind my chair, flopping around like a fish, and I wasn’t paying attention because I was engrossed in my writing; fortunately I turned around to see that one of his toenails was caught in the ring of his collar! Now, I remove my dogs’ collars before I leave them alone.

Another time, my cat, who had never shown any interest in the  bathroom sink faucet, decided to play with the handle which opened the hot water valve. Who knows whether he would have gotten burned and or flooded the bathroom, but he is now locked out of the bathroom when I leave the house.

If you’ve been keeping up with any of my recent posts about my newly adopted dog, you may recall that he got his head stuck under my bed. That incident, prompted me to close off access to rooms where any of my animals could be injured.

And even as cautious as I am, things still happen such as when my senior dog, whose eyesight isn’t as good as it once was, tried jumping off my canopy bed and got caught in the decorative netting. I took a picture, reenacted using a fake dog, just to show where my dog landed. The fake dog, however, doesn’t convey the distress on my senior dog’s face, not to mention what I looked like trying to untangle him. Seriously, he looked like a tuna caught in a net!

My message to all dog-parents, is to always ask yourself, “What could possibly happen?” Hopefully, you’ll do whatever it takes to prevent an injury or a tragedy by taking simple precautions, and please don’t bring your hairdryer into the shower!

HAPPY TRAINING & ENRICHMENT

© Fran Berry CPDT-KA, UW-AAB all rights reserved 2025