Laughter the Best Medicine Read online

  A READER’S DIGEST BOOK

  Copyright © 2012 The Reader’s Digest Association, Inc.

  All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction, in any manner, is prohibited.

  Reader’s Digest is a registered trademark of The Reader’s Digest Association, Inc.

  FOR READER’S DIGEST

  Project Designer: Elizabeth Tunnicliffe

  Manager, English Book Editorial, Reader’s Digest Canada: Pamela Johnson

  Senior Art Director: George McKeon

  Executive Editor, Trade Publishing: Dolores York

  Manufacturing Manager: Elizabeth Dinda

  Associate Publisher, Trade Publishing: Rosanne McManus

  President and Publisher, Trade Publishing: Harold Clarke

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Laughter is the best medicine : those lovable pets.

  p. cm.

  ISBN: 978-1-60652-400-8

  1. Animals--Humor. 2. Pets--Humor. I. Reader’s Digest Association.

  PN6231.A5L38 2012

  818’.60208--dc23

  2011033163

  Cover and spot illustrations: George McKeon

  Cartoon Credits: Ian Baker: 76; John Caldwell: 10, 44, 118, 176, 197; Dave Carpenter: 55, 63, 141, 165, 173, 208; Joe di Chiarro: 205; Roy Delgado: 15, 33, 93, 104, 128; Ralph Hagen: 111;

  Mike Lynch: 133, 139, 144, 159, 182; Scott Arthur Masear: 28, 49; Harley Schwadron: 20, 96, 154;

  Steve Smeltzer: 25, 68, 168, 192; Thomas Bros.: 73, 123, 136, 149; Kim Warp: 41, 58, 187;

  WestMach: 36, 81, 200

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  The Reader’s Digest Association, Inc.

  Adult Trade Publishing

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  Contents

  A Note from the Editors

  To the Dogs

  They are dedicated, affectionate, and oh so lovable. When our canine friends cross paths with humans, they make us roll over with laughter.

  Cunning Cats

  Cat owner or not, the laugh-out-loud antics of these capering kitties give us an entertaining look inside the minds of these fabulous felines.

  Tweety Birds

  Their uncanny ability to bond with people has given rise to the popularity of parrots, parakeets, canaries, and other exotic birds. And the unlikely things they do—and often say—are priceless.

  That’s a Pet?

  We open our hearts—and our home—to everything from fish and ferrets to rabbits, reptiles, and rodents. And the often hilarious trials and tribulations of these critters both great and small often leave us wondering why.

  Not the “Vet”

  Pets find nothing funny about an outing to the vet, and their diffidence often turns the trip into a riotous affair.

  Dumb and Dumber

  We’re not just pointing fingers at our cute and cuddly friends, but pet owners, too, can easily tip the intelligence scales in the other direction when it comes to caring for pets—and the dumber, the funnier.

  A Note from the Editors

  People are funny, but so are the animals we love—and our day-to-day relationships with them can be even more entertaining. From cats fined for littering to dogs that tremble at the sight of their own “Beware of Dog” sign, this book is dedicated to the companions we hold so dear—our pets.

  And it doesn’t just stop with cats and dogs. Sure, these furry friends rule the comedic roost, but within the pages of Laughter Is the Best Medicine: Those Lovable Pets, parrots, bunnies, hamsters, and even the occasional white rat are an endless source of amusement as well. Take, for instance, the scientist who crossed the carrier pigeon with a woodpecker and got a bird that not only delivered its message to the home of the designated recipient but also knocked on the door when it got there!

  By way of funny tales, quotes, and cartoons compiled from more than eight decades’ worth of Reader’s Digest magazine, this book brings to life the often funny relationships we have with our animals—and promises to make you laugh your tail off.

  “Honey, the dog learned a new trick and now

  I owe him twelve dollars.”

  I keep five dogs in my backyard, in four houses of various sizes. One day, during a heavy rainstorm, I went out to check on my pets. The big house was occupied by one dog, the middle-sized house held two, and the small houses had one pet each. Satisfied that they were all snug and dry, I left. A little later lightning streaked across the sky and thunder boomed. When I peeked out the back door, all the houses were empty except the big one. In it were all five dogs.

  —JUNE CROSSLAND

  Our happy little fox terrier, Cookie, had a game all her own. Every time we climbed into our car, she took a head start to race us to the bottom of the hill. Down the driveway she would scoot, across our near-neighbor’s lawn, down the hill, across a basketball court, through a little gate, around our new neighbor’s house, and through her front hedge just in time to grin at us as we caught up a half block from home.

  Our new neighbor down the hill, upon meeting us for the first time recently, remarked, “We always know when you folks are going somewhere.”

  “How can you tell?” I asked.

  “Well,” she said, “it’s strange, but always just before you drive past our house, our cat climbs a tree.”

  —MRS. W. T. BOONE

  Our daughter was working as a telemarketer for a home-security firm. Once while she was reciting all the benefits of the system to a potential customer, he interrupted her and said, “We don’t need it because we have a big dog.”

  “That’s great,” my daughter replied. “But can he dial 911?”

  —EVELYNE DREEBEN

  “For sale: Eight puppies from a German shepherd and an Alaskan hussy.”

  —RICHARD A. HARMS

  Driving to work one morning, I heard an announcement on the radio about a lost dog. The deejay said the owner was offering a cash reward for its return. Getting to the traffic segment of his broadcast, the deejay asked the helicopter pilot who monitors morning rush hour what the roads were like. “To heck with the traffic,” the pilot said on the air, “we’re going to look for that dog!”

  —SUZANNE DOPP

  I’m a police officer and occasionally park my cruiser in residential areas to watch for speeders. One Sunday morning I was staked out in a driveway, when I saw a large dog trot up to my car. He stopped and sat just out of arm’s reach. No matter how much I tried to coax him to come for a pat on the head, he refused to budge. After a while I decided to move to another location. I pulled out of the driveway, looked back and learned the reason for the dog’s stubbornness. He quickly picked up the newspaper I had been parked on and dutifully ran back to his master.

  —JEFF WALL

  I was in a bank when a man entered with a rather large dog on a leash. When he asked if it was okay to bring his pet into the building, a bank official answered, “Yes, providing he doesn’t make a deposit.”

  —JOHN REED

  The drive-up window at the bank where I’m a teller has an outside drawer to accept customer transactions. A woman once drove up with her dog in the front seat, and the pet eagerly jumped over onto the driver’s lap when the car reached my window. He looked excited to see me. “Your dog is so friendly!” I said to the owner.

  “He thinks he’s at McDonald’s,” she replied.

 
—MARILYN BOURDEAU

  As a mail carrier in Florida, I was attempting to deliver a certified letter when I heard a dog barking furiously on the other side of a front door. I stepped away from the door as the homeowner appeared, and asked that the dog be kept inside. It was too late. The little dog started yelping and jumping on me. I froze. As the customer signed for his letter, he kept saying, “Don’t worry, he won’t bite you.” Just then the dog turned and bit its owner.

  —RAMONA OCCHIUZZO

  Whenever the alarm goes off after-hours at the municipal office where I work, the security company calls me at home and I have to go back and reset it. Late at night I got one of those calls. As I was getting ready to head out the door, my husband groggily said, “You’re not going down there by yourself at this hour.”

  Just as I was thinking, How thoughtful of him, he added, “Better take the dog with you.”

  —RUTH RODDICK

  A new restaurant near our office boasted exotic fare. And exotic it was. When our dessert arrived, my coworker sniffed her chocolate dish and grimaced. “It smells like cocoa,” she said.

  “It’s chocolate—shouldn’t it smell like cocoa?” I asked.

  More confused than I was, she answered, “Cocoa is the name of my dog.”

  —CYNTHIA ZHANG

  My sister-in-law, a truck driver, had decided to get a dog for protection. As she inspected a likely candidate, the trainer told her, “He doesn’t like men.”

  Perfect, my sister-in-law thought, and took the dog. Then one day she was approached by two men in a parking lot, and she watched to see how her canine bodyguard would react. Soon it became clear that the trainer wasn’t kidding. As the men got closer, the dog ran under the nearest car.

  —DANNY ARIAIL

  My wife found this flyer taped to a neighborhood telephone pole:

  “Found, male yellow Lab, very friendly. Loves to play with kids and eat Bubbles. Bubbles is our cat. Please come get your dog.”

  —ROBERT CHAPMAN

  What’s the difference between a man and a dog running?

  One wears trousers and the other pants.

  —MARIE TERRIEN

  “When are you getting the windshield

  wipers fixed, Harold?”

  Who could resist this sales pitch my ten-year-old daughter, Courtney gave, describing what her future would be like. She told me she would have three dogs.

  “Why three?” I asked.

  Courtney said that when she slept, she’d have one big dog to rest her head on like a pillow, and a small one cuddled under each arm.

  “Oh,” I replied, “So if you’re in bed with the three dogs around you and in your arms, what about your husband?”

  Courtney was quiet for a moment as she thought this through. Finally she said, “He can get his own dog!”

  —WALLY VOGEL

  Our dog, a Shih Tzu, was missing, and we

  advertised on the radio and in the paper.

  Several days later, a woman called.

  “I think I have your dog,” she told my wife,

  “but I don’t know what a Shih Tzu looks like.”

  “Point your finger at the animal

  and say, ‘Bang!’” my wife told her.

  In a few minutes the woman was back on the line.

  “The dog fell over,” she reported.

  We had found our pet.

  —BILL MORRIS

  Friends of mine sold their country home to move to the city after arranging for the new owners to keep their dog that they said was an excellent watch dog.

  On their first night in the city, they received a frantic phone call from the new owners. “Please come back and collect your dog,” they begged. “We’ve been out for the day and it won’t let us back onto the property.”

  —NORMA KAWAK

  At the end of the day, I parked my police van in front of the station house. My K-9 partner, Jake, was in the back barking, which caught the attention of a boy who was passing by. “Is that a dog you have back there?” he asked.

  “It sure is,” I said.

  “What did he do?”

  —CLINT FORWARD

  A man and his dog entered the hardware store where I work. The man turned right, toward housewares. The dog turned left, toward pet supplies. The man returned to the checkout counter with kitchen tiling. The dog returned to the checkout counter with a fleece toy. The man paid for both, and they left, each carrying his own item.

  —KENT MILLER

  Once while riding the bus to work, I noticed a man at a stop enjoying a cup of coffee.

  As we approached the stop, he finished drinking and set the cup on the ground. This negligence surprised me, since it seemed to be a good ceramic cup.

  Days later I saw the same man again drinking his coffee at the bus stop. Once again, he placed the cup on the grass before boarding. When the bus pulled away, I looked back in time to see a dog carefully carrying the cup in his mouth as he headed for home.

  —VALERIE A. HUEBNER

  I was editing classified ads for a small-town newspaper when a man called to place an ad.

  “It should read,” he said, “‘Free to good home. Golden retriever. Will eat anything, loves children.’”

  —ELLEN YOUNG

  Recently, my husband and I went to the movies. When the film ended, we sat for a few minutes discussing how disappointing it was. When we stood up, we overheard another couple having the same discussion. The man said, “For that we left the dog alone at home?”

  —LOIS DAVIS IN THE NEW YORK TIMES

  I had just come out of a store when the blast of a car horn scared me. When I turned to yell at the rude driver, I found a large white poodle sitting in the driver’s seat of a parked car. When the impatient dog honked again, a man came scurrying out of a shop, shouting, “I’ll be there in a minute!”

  “Did you teach your dog to do that?” I asked the man.

  “Yes,” he answered in exasperation, “and now he won’t let me go anywhere!”

  —NANCY E. HAIGH

  A truck ran a red light, almost sideswiping our car. As my husband veered away, he threw his arm across me, protecting me from a possible collision. I was ready to plant a big kiss on my hero’s cheek when he apologized. In his haste, he admitted, he had forgotten it was me in the front seat and not our black Labrador, Checkers.

  —APRIL COLE

  QUOTABLE QUOTES

  “So many of Lassie’s fans want to ask: Is he allowed on the furniture? Of course he is—but then, he’s the one who paid for it.”

  —JULIA GLASS

  “I dressed my dog up as a cat for Halloween. Now he won’t come when I call him.”

  —ROOFTOP COMEDY

  “Dogs don’t bark at parked cars.”

  —LYNNE CHENEY

  “You own a dog; you feed a cat.”

  —JIM FIEBIG

  “Don’t accept your dog’s admiration as conclusive evidence that you are wonderful.”

  —ANN LANDERS

  “We give dogs time we can spare, space we can spare, and love we can spare. In return, dogs give us their all. It’s the best deal man has ever made.”

  —MARGERY FACKLAM, AUTHOR

  One dog to another: “What if the hand that feeds us is surprisingly tasty?”

  —PETE MUELLER IN BARK

  “If dogs could talk, it would take a lot of fun out of owning one.”

  — ANDREW A. ROONEY, FROM NOT THAT YOU ASKED (RANDOM HOUSE)

  “I wonder if other dogs think poodles are members of a weird religious cult.”

  —RITA RUDNER

  “He’s a high-tech watchdog.”

  My friend has a golden retriever that responds to music, and seems to especially like opera. The dog is appropriately named Poochini.

  —JERRY SIMON

  My sister’s dog had been deaf and blind for years. When she started to suffer painful tumors, it was time to put her down. As I explained this to my seven-year-old son, he asked if Jazzy
would go to heaven. I said I thought she would, and that in dog heaven, she would be healthy again and able to do her favorite thing: chase squirrels. Jacob thought about that for a minute then said, “So dog heaven must be the same as squirrel hell.”

  —JUDY SUTTERFIELD

  As the stranger enters a country store, he spots a sign: “Danger! Beware of Dog!” Inside, he sees a harmless old hound asleep in the middle of the floor. “Is that the dog we’re supposed to beware of?” he asks the owner.

  “That’s him,” comes the reply.

  “He doesn’t look dangerous to me. Why would you post that sign?”

  “Before I posted that sign, people kept tripping over him.”

  —L. B. WEINSTEIN

  A French poodle and a collie were walking down the street. The poodle turned to the collie and complained, “My life is such a mess. My owner is mean, my girlfriend is having an affair with a German shepherd and I’m as nervous as a cat.”

  “Why don’t you go see a psychiatrist?” asked the collie.

  “I can’t,” replied the poodle. “I’m not allowed on the couch.”

  —JOHN W. GAMBA

  Did you ever notice that when you blow in a dog’s face he gets mad at you, but when you take him on a car ride, he sticks his head out the window

  —ROBYN CAMPBELL-OUCHIDA

  Why It’s Great to be a Dog

  • No one expects you to take a bath every day.

  • If it itches, you can scratch it.

  • There’s no such thing as bad food.

  • A rawhide bone can entertain you for hours.

  • If you grow hair in weird places, no one notices.

  • You can lie around all day without worrying about being fired.

  • You don’t get in trouble for putting your head in a stranger’s lap.

  • You’re always excited to see the same people.

  • Having big feet is considered an asset.

  • Puppy love can last.

  —DAWN DRESSLER FROM THE SUN, BREMERTON WASHINGTON

  We were going out of state for six weeks and asked the neighbors’ nine-year-old son, Mike, to care for our dog. We explained that the job required feeding, grooming, walking and, most of all, plenty of love and playtime. Then we asked Mike what the job would be worth to him. “I’ll give you ten bucks,” he said.