Suffer Now or Suffer Later

I am adding a new slogan to my arsenal, where the first two were:
1. "I'm not there yet," and
2. "By [almost] any means necessary."

Slogan Three is, drumroll please... "Suffer Now or Suffer Later [or both]!"

One thing I've learned from parenting my two dogs is that you can discipline them fervently when they are young or for the rest of their lives. My neighbor has a golden retriever so good that you'd think he drugs it. The dog can be staring down a beef-coated squirrel in a tree; if the owner whistles, the dog comes trotting home immediately. But, no drugs, he was just very firm with it as a puppy and now it knows better than to cross him. My husband and I, schmucks that we are, tried our best to discipline our dogs when they were young but weren't consistent or firm enough. Now you need a squirt gun to walk into our house without getting dog-attacked. We weren't willing to suffer then by disciplining them, so everyone suffers now!

There are so many examples of this in parenting. I need to stick to my guns more than I do - with the dogs, with my child[ren], with everything. Because one day the kids will be bigger than you are, and they'd better have learned to trot home when you whistle by then. :)