Excerpt From
Raising Boys Without Men

It was the Fourth of July. At the picnic supper following the day’s festivities, Cooper, almost 8, filled his plate with corn on the cob, potato salad and the rest of the traditional spread – everything minus the hotdogs. Aware of his bottomless appetite and his prior fondness for franks, his family tried to press a hotdog on the freckle-nosed boy, who had spent the day dribbling a soccer ball, hitting balls on the public tennis court by the house, romping in the playground, and watching a funky Independence Day parade in Sausalito. Surely he should be starved! Quietly but insistently, and for the first time in his life, Cooper repeatedly turned down the hotdogs. That evening, the reason for his refusal finally surfaced. He wasn’t sick. He hadn’t suddenly evolved into a picky eater or a vegetarian. He wasn’t trying to be ornery. Having seen two costumed dachshunds dressed in rubber buns – complete with plastic squiggles of ketchup and mustard the length of their long skinny backs – in the parade that morning, he had put two and two together and, observant boy that he was, decided that eating dog just wasn't for him.