Dogs like things that smell.

There's just no two ways about it. Given the choice between something with a strong odor and something that doesn't, they always seem to go for the one you'd least expect. Put blue cheese and muenster cheese out and they pick the blue. (of course, they WANT both, but if they have to choose...) Offer them day old dog food or fresh and they usually pick whatever smells the worst. I think I know a little bit about this, as I have 5 dogs running around my house. Put your hand out and the first thing a dog does is sniff it. They see you, they watch you, yet it's not how you act but it's how you smell that determines if you are friend or foe, food or feeder. Your hand too clean, they don't trust you. Smell like a dog, you're "in", at least with them.

Our smallest dog, a sassy 5 pound pomer, has a very strange habit. It's winter in New England, and I have to go out and break the ice in the dog bowl. I throw the ice out into the yard, often into a fairly deep snow bank, and forget about it. But that ice will haunt me, because my little dog with a big attitude will go out, find hunks of it, and drag it back into the house to chew on (and melt and leave puddles for me to step in with my socks). I have tried giving her "clean" ice, something from the freezer, but she is simply not interested unless the ice smells bad. Dog bowl water smells like dog breath, which makes dog bowl ice attractive to dogs. Yuk.

Ok now that you are wondering why I am talking about a topic so disgusting, let me make a simple (and still disgusting) parallel. I took exception to a conversation I heard not long ago from someone at church. "You can't really have any fun being pure", they claimed. The person went on to say that the "spice of life" made things all that much more appealing. Not that we should outright wallow in the filth of sin, but a little "flavoring" makes for a bit more fun without outright endangering ourselves, right?

Well, hey, dog water is mostly clean water. Would you drink it? If you had a reservoir of water at your house (say, 1000 gallons) and I put in a teaspoon of some diseased sludge, would you still drink it? Would you let your own family drink it? Wouldn't you be nervous about contracting some fatal disease? Doesn't the thought of having something even a little impure kind of turn your stomach? You'd drain that tank and you'd scrub it and sanitize it before you used it again!

If you had guests over to your house, maybe someone you had great respect for or high regard for, like your grandfather or the governor or maybe even Jesus, would you offer them dog water to drink? Do you think they would even accept it, knowing what it is? Why is it that anyone can think a little "flavoring" of this world in their lives is not a risk, and leaves them still acceptable to God?

As for saying being pure means you can't have fun. Well, I've got two news flashes for anyone that thinks this. First off, where does it say you were created to have fun? Even our constitution only suggests the right to the pursuit of happiness, it does NOT guarantee it. Wake up! Some people have hard, hard lives, and that's the way it is. The second is this: you can have lots of fun being a Christian. Paul was, for Christ's sake, put in prison, beaten, threatened with dangers, and rejoiced! Maybe we should experience some of that ourselves before we decide we're not having any fun!

Randy