Find a new leg. Make a new friend.

If it weren't for us dogs pushing you, you humans would be the most uptight species on the planet. If we like you, or your leg, we'll do one of two things: hump it or pee on it. And we don't apologize. While it doesn't always pass the "polite company" test, there is some elegance to its honesty. And, I'm wondering if, at the risk of crossing the "polite company" boundary, we all shouldn't be a little more assertive when it comes to living, or trying to live, with our arthritis. Get a leg-up on our disease, to put it in terms I can understand.

We keep a lot of pain to ourselves because of a lot of us don't have the easily recognizable symptoms of the disease. We allow people to assume we are arthritis-free, only to wind up apologizing, explaining, complaining or being perceived as lazy, later on. This doesn't sound like a good plan to me. Sounds like we're peeing on our own legs.

With dogs it's easy. We can smell arthritis in another dog, but then, we smell lots of things in lots of places that humans can't, and won't go. Your loss.

But if you know that people can't smell your arthritis, you need to find a way to tell others you have it without whining or signaling a high-maintenance relationship.

This means you don't accidentally spill 13 different kinds of pills on the carpet when someone comes over, and then spend 15 minutes explaining what each one is for. It also means not talking endlessly about your operations - no matter how interesting they are to you, or how painful they were, or how competent or incompetent the hospital staff was, or how much it did or did not cost. And don't keep your old joints in a jar where anyone else can see them.

However, it does mean that you need to let people know your situation before they ask you to help them move the piano. It means finding the right way to put the disease on the table in a credible, factual, perhaps humorous, and logical manner - and this means never having to say "I can't because..." Once you say this, you're on the defensive. I had an aunt one time who used to say, right after dinner, "I can't help with the dishes because I have to go to the bathroom. (Yes, dogs have aunts, but we don't pronounce the word like the little six-legged insect.) And with her, going to the bathroom wasn't as easy as lifting her leg. It took hours and at least 3 flushes. But the point is that she was on the defensive, and even if she had a good excuse (which she didn't) we wouldn't have believed her.

You have to be proactive and assertive. Don't wait to be put on the defensive. Start up a conversation:

"Need to stop by the pharmacy on our way home; better take the truck."

"Cracking your knuckles does not cause arthritis."

"I'd love to run in the marathon, but my plastic joints are out of warranty."

"Wouldn't it be nice to be pain free?"

Or, work it into a conversation:

Politics: "I know Bill Clinton can come across as sleazy sometimes, but speaking as a person with arthritis, I can tell you, he gave us the most hope with his healthcare initiatives and his compassion."

Automobiles: "Ford Explorers are nice looking, but speaking as a person with arthritis, I have to tell you the seats are something out of the Marquis de Sade design studio."

Food: "I don't think hydrogenated oil does my arthritis any good."

Vacations: "I find that traveling on a plane without NSAIDS or stronger is the equivalent of reclining my seat and asking the person behind me to extract my wisdom teeth."

Any one of these statements can move the conversation in the direction you need it to go to proactively discuss arthritis by explaining, not complaining.

Once you've gotten this far (dogs get this far with one sniff), you can then send your friends letters and emails just before elections and explain why they should vote for the pro-arthritis candidate, whose name you can give them (hint: 99 percent of the time, except for Zell Miller, the Democratic Senator from Georgia, it'll be a Democrat). Now you're mobilizing your friends to work on your behalf, and you didn't have to hump their leg to motivate them or pee on it to attract their attention.

Ain't life grand when you're in charge?