Schroedinger's Dog (UnReal)

Should These People Be Allowed To Keep Animals?

Author: Aaron Rice
Date: 1996/11/25
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Gary Schroedinger, the lesser known brother of Erwin, for most of his life a builder, also managed to make his mark on history, though in a slightly different way. His problem was that his dog, when placed in a kennel in his back garden, would sleep quietly and happily during the day, and stay awake during the night.

Because of this, at night his dog would roam around alone, bother strays, dig up the garden, flatten the plants, and generally just manage to be bothered by everything, bothering everyone back in return. In fewer words, he was a messy, noisy animal.

Then, one night, Gary finally realised that he was totally unable to cope with this nocturnal bad behaviour, and after a rather angry neighbour threatened to poison his dog, he decided that something had to be done. First of all, he contacted his brother who, at first, was completely stumped. Erwin gave Gary a few ideas, most of which had been adapted from ideas to keep his cat from running away, and were admittedly quite effective [1].

A few of these ideas were to prove moderately effective, the first of which was to wake his dog continually during the day by throwing rocks at his kennel. This actually worked for about three days, until his dog finally caught on, and was to be found snuggling up in his master's bed, while Gary was outside in the cold, hurling boulders at an empty wooden box.

Finally, he got to the point where he could take no more, and, dog in tow, he marched to the vets for advice. He was informed that his dog was a night animal, and there was very little he could do about it, unless he would subscribe to the one treatment programme that would be guaranteed to work. Gary told the vet he would do anything to sort out this problem that was by now driving him mad.

And so finally the solution was found. The idea was that the dog would be placed on a flight to America and back leaving him, journey over, completely jet-lagged. This would have been entirely effective if the modern passenger aeroplane was available at the time, which it wasn't.

Despairingly, Gary moved to the country, bought a couple more dogs, and gave up on civilisation. He still received the occasional letter from his brother, Erwin, but never anything to persuade him to return. Rumour has it that he's still out there somewhere; the oldest man on Earth.

Even now, his dog is still remembered by the residents of his former village in an annual ceremony, and it is said that every year, a lonely old man will sit, throwing rocks at a dog kennel.

[1]

In exchange, Gary gave Erwin a number of his own notes, including some weird sadistic experiment involving a guinea pig, a box, and various other items that Gary was unable to acquire while going about his business. At his exchange, Erwin would laugh at his brother's inability to come up with anything even remotely scientific, while hastily scribbling the word "cat" onto his work. The rest, as they say, is history.

See also

• Schroedinger's Cat