Is there any difference between loyalty and obedience? Some people—in fact many people—seem to think that these two words, although having different meanings, should be treated as the same. Hence, when someone disobeys our wishes, then that amounts to disloyalty.
If, for example, I am the Prime Minister of Malaysia, and I made an announcement that Mr So-And-So should succeed me when I retire; and there is no need for the election process. I think we can all agree that it is an act of disobedience if a member of my party disagrees with my decision? But does it amount to disloyalty too? Maybe it is indeed an act of disloyalty to the Prime Minister, but I am not sure if it's disloyalty to the party.
Should the members of the party be allowed to object to the decisions of the President? Should those decisions be made by the members, perhaps through the voting system? In fact, shouldn't that be the case in a true democratic system?
Well, I am not the Prime Minister of Malaysia, and I guess I will never know if anyone in the party would challenge my orders if I were the Prime Minister. But I can imagine it must be great if you can get people to obey you unconditionally. The closest I get to that kind of power is over my dog, Boomer. I bought Boomer when he was about a month old. And I started training him myself when he was about 6 months old. It took an accummulated 6 months more or less to train him, plus the occasional "reminder" lessons.
This is Boomer during dinner. He gets one big meal each day. As you can see, he is not exactly underfed. In fact, I am planning to reduce his food so that he can lose some weight. He is slightly over 40 kg now. Anyway, it's been about 24 hours since his last meal. So you can imagine his hunger at this stage. But at this moment, I've given him the DOWN command. He can't even sit up. He must obey me unconditionally.
And this is after the SIT command. He's still not supposed to eat. He can look at the food, but not eat it. He looks at me pleadingly, but he shall not eat until I allow him to do so.
And finally, this is Boomer after the EAT command. He jumps up, and lunged forward to his meal. Usually, he can finish the whole thing within 3 minutes.That's what you call unconditional loyalty and obedience. But wait! I wonder if it has anything to do with fear of punishment?
Anyway, I think Boomer has the quality to be a politician; don't you think so?
3 comments:
I received an amusing question from a reader about this post. He asked me if Boomer obeys those commands from everyone, e.g. an intruder might give him those same commands!
I had a good laugh; isn't that a logical question to ask? If I don't have a dog, I would ask that question too!
Well, the answer is that Boomer doesn't obey strangers. I trained him that way. It is possible to train dogs in almost any way you like to. But it takes a lot of patience—maybe the same amount of patience as during the first few years of marriage, if you know what I mean.
Initially, I had intended to train Boomer to eat only when he gets the command to do so from me, and only me alone! But I decided against it in the end, because I found that impractical; I may be going outstation for a couple of days, and the poor dog will suffer!
Actually, these days, I hardly ever utter the DOWN, SIT, EAT commands. I just use hand signals and Boomer would know what I want him to do. It takes time, but possible to achieve. Each time you give the DOWN command, for example, do the hand signal too. When you have done that too many times, you can do without the DOWN... just the hand signal will do.
I happened upon this old post and I nearly thought I was looking at my own dog. We rescued a dog a few years ago and she looks alot like Boomer except for the size. She is only 17kg. Since she was a rescue we were never able to definitely know what breeds she is. The veterinarian says she is likely a shepard/basenji mix. I was wondering what Boomer is.
Thank you for your comment, anonymous friend.
There is a long story about Boomer, but let me just say that we had originally intended to have an Alsation. The person who sold us Boomer, apparently a professional dog breeder, gave his personal assurance that Boomer was a pure Alsation breed. Having no experience about dogs, we couldn't tell the difference looking at Booner at age 1 month.
However,as he was growing up, we noticed that his ears weren't erect like how Alsation ears usually are. We asked the dog breeder again. It was then that he said Boomer MIGHT have been a breeding process gone wrong! But by then, we have come to love Booner, so it didn't bother us that he wasn't a pure breed!
Boomer died of old age a few years ago (he lived up to almost 13 years), but the last 6 months or so of his life was rather harsh because his hind legs were extremely weak and he had trouble walking for too long (we were told by the vets that this is normal for huge dogs of the Alsation breed).
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