Don't accept your dog's admiration as conclusive evidence that you are wonderful.
Real life is sometimes boring, rarely conclusive and boy, does the dialogue need work.
Of course, the person I was fleeing most fearfully was myself, for I drive, and I'm burning a collapsed barn behind the house next week because it is much the cheapest way to deal with it, and I live on about four hundred times the money that Thoreau conclusively proved was enough, so I've done my share to take this independent, eternal world and turn it into a science fair project.