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After our new dog destroyed part of our basement in September, we began to think about how to manage this mutt. Actually, I spent more time thinking about getting rid of the mutt, but since I was outvoted, my attention turned to coping.

Things worked out well for a while. I actually saw some income potential. After trying everything to contain Buddy, we finally found something that worked. We tied him to a tree using airplane wire. He dug, and I began to think of renting him out to people who wanted an in-ground pool. Skip the tractors, hire a dog.

So we have this big hole in our backyard. The other thing is that it is now winter, and it's getting cruel to keep him tied up outside while we're out. Even I don't want to be cruel. So we began to investigate options.

We discovered that people have opinions. We read up a little bit. But we finally decided to go to a pet behaviorist. That is after I was done mocking the idea. We went.

I had all kinds of questions. Is he Jungian? Gestalt? What did Freud have to say about dogs? But this guy is way too expensive and I am way to cheap to be that interested. So we got down to business, or at least we tried.

Things were going well until about halfway through the appointment. All of a sudden I noticed that he was repeating things, going in circles. I looked at my watch and instead of seeing the second hand swirl around, I saw dollars disappearing.

I was and am desperate, so I put up with talk of theories and I didn't say anything when I realized I could have got the same information in detail in a book, or from the one-page handout he gave us at the end. I tried to keep telling myself that I was getting good information, because I was. It is true.

I was told by someone that we could use the same principles on our children. Yes, some of them, but I'm going to stop a little bit short of spraying pheromones into the air for my children, or medicating them. For now anyway; I'll rethink the issue when they're teenagers.

I'm not sure how much further ahead we are at this point; time will tell. I do know that we are a lot poorer. And I have become one of the people I like to mock, taking their dog to a pet behaviorist. How sad is that.