Olive The Snorkie Teaches A Lesson in Judgment (Hint: Double-down on It)

I have the pleasure of walking Olive — the sweet and tiny result of a brief, yet torrid affair between a Yorkie and a schnauzer approximately five years ago — several times per week. She is a dainty and loving joy who simply trusts and adores everyone. Her very favorite thing in the world is a human with hands: The mailman, the building’s maintenance staff, the landscaping crew, other passersby we meet during our walks, etc. — she’s not picky. She loves all people equally and never thinks for a second about mistrusting someone.

Olive would jump into a weirdo’s windowless van, no questions asked.

Hm…

I was just about to get schmaltzy and suggest that we could all learn a lesson from Olive — something about how we should love each other, not judge and all that jazz — however, a few important facts came to mind regarding Olive’s lack of judgment:

1. She once leapt and exploded with excitement when we met up with a man who had just observed — with his own selfish eyes — his massive English Mastiff doody on communal property, then refused to pick up the fresh mountain (I mean that very literally) of feces; even though poo bags were less than five yards away. I mean, C’MON!

2. She can’t get enough of that crotchety woman who lives a couple of buildings over and yells at her husband — who usually hides from her in his car — in the worst Edith Bunker-inspired voice in the history of the world.

3. She is forever in love with the guy who sports ripped-up, stained sweatpants — do not think about the origin of the stains. Do not think about the origin of the stains — and gives off super weird vibes as he stands at the ajar rear doors of his windowless van, arranging its contents all day, every day.

Olive makes no judgments at all. In fact, she’d love nothing more than to jump into the creepy dude’s Weirdo Wagon™, strap in and go for a ride to wherever he’d like to take her, all because she lacks the ability to judge.

Instead of the “love one and all”/“judge not” lesson we expected when this all began, Olive the snorkie teaches us to judge as much as we possibly can all day long, pay attention to our intuition and definitely DO NOT EVER talk to the “athletically”-clad creeper standing behind his rusted-out, late-70’s model Dodge Tradesman. EVER!