Think. Bark. Think.

There is a difference between dogs and people.

Dogs think then bark then think again.

People talk, then think, then talk some more.

It's why when a dog bites there is blood and when a parent yells there is snickering.

It's why talk is cheap.

It's why little dogs (which are most like people) are likely to yap incessantly and bite very rarely - and humans like that in a dog, of course.

So what this means is that verbal communication has been severely devalued. (Remember when George Bush was in Japan and told the Japanese people the yen was going to be devalued when he meant that the yen was subject to deflation?) Sorry to digress, but that was an example of free thinking, not idle chatter, just for the record.

I think humans talk like we pee, but we're more effective at marking our territory with pee than they are with verbosity. A few humans have succeeded at carving a lasting impression from just a few words, and it's those people we admire, or more often, drive to clichÈ status. Remember "The Right Stuff"? There was a time when I couldn't go to a mall without hearing someone tell me how I needed to put together all the right stuff. Thanks. Col. Yeager.

So the point of all this is that words and barks can be powerful. We can lift people up or destroy them with a few chosen words. We can make them think we are the smartest ones in the world, or we can allow them to think they are the smartest in the world.

We've been generally abusing our power and it's time to bark, and bite, when you mean it, and lick and sniff the rest of the time.