First, do not, under any circumstances in a disciplinary situation, make eye contact with your golden retriever. Don’t be fooled by those big brown eyes. Make contact and you become jelly. Make eye contact and the Great Scorekeeper in the Sky will declare "game over" and chalk up yet another victory for canines over Homo sapiens.

In a disciplinary situation with a golden retriever, there will be no Robert’s Rules for this kind of meeting. Oh, dammit, face it, if the situation is between you and a golden, you’re going to lose.

In the end, things will remain as God intended; but at least you can fall back on that Canadian/Protestant chestnut of, "It’s not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game."

Case in point: I wanted to vacuum a narrow hallway in our house. Said hallway was also one of our golden retriever Fletcher’s 153 favourite post-breakfast/pre-lunch napping spots. What to do? It was my house; I paid for it; I wanted to vacuum it. But here was a huge pile of orange fur, gangly legs spread out in four directions, long, bushy tail covering at least four square ceramic tiles, ridiculous floppy ears, a big, moist nose and the aforementioned killer brown eyes, each the size of a ping-pong ball.

Now, being a Canadian vacuumer and Fletcher being a Canadian dog, I apologized. "Sorry," I offered. "Excuse me, I wonder if I might, for just a teeny, tiny moment, ask you to move so I can vacuum here. Sorry." No movement. Remembering my no-eye-contact rule, I repeated my request (to Fletcher’s left ear), demonstrating subtly that I had Electrolux backup. No movement. No acknowledgment that my name was on the deed to the property. No acknowledgment that Susan and I had adopted him from the Kingston Humane Society, putting food in his stomach, a roof over his head, daily walks at Lemoine Point, paid his vet bills, sacrificed 97% of Sealy Posturepedic square footage to his hulking, snoring, golden mass "¦ no response to my authority preordained to have dominion over the beasts of the world.

Step 2 requires some bluntness and the dropping of common courtesies. "Fletcher, please move so I can vacuum the hallway." That becomes: "Please move so I can vacuum here." Becomes: "Move it!"

If at this point your dog is still unmoved, wagging his tail, grinning at you with his patented am-I-or-am-I-not-totally-adorable grin, you may have to stoop to stooping. Get down on your knees, gently grasp his elegant ears, put your forehead up against his big, knobby, wooden forehead, look deeply into his big brown eyes and humiliate yourself. Become a blubbery mass of pathetic humanity and beg him to move. Yes, beg. Whimper if you have to; admit to your sack cloth and ashes status. Prostrate yourself to the Mighty Golden "¦ and then go vacuum somewhere else.

Your golden, to his credit, will not breathe a word about your humiliation. It will be "your little secret," your "what happens in the hallway, stays in the hallway." Throughout the whole process, your golden will maintain his faux I’m-just-a-big-goofy-dog shtick. Do not be fooled. Behind the grin is a will of steel; and you, you pathetic Homo sapien, will lose every time. Forget about "having dominion over the beasts."

Fraser Petrick is a retired educator and a former member of the Whig-Standard Community Editorial Board. He lives in Kingston.