ohmidog!

Sure, I’m all for “Take Your Dog to Work Day” (which is today) but I have a better idea.

“Make Your Human Stay Home Day” (and I do expect to receive any and all profits associated with the concept both now and in the future) is not meant to replace Take Your Dog To Work Day.

Rather, it would be an additional day (a weekday, of course) on which all employees with pets are encouraged to stay home (with pay, of course) and spend some quality time with their dogs.

Employees without pets would be similarly excused from work if they promised to spend the day visiting their local shelter, considering, at least, adopting a pet.

That means the only people at the office would be those who don’t like dogs, or don’t have room in their life for a dog, or think dogs are disruptive — the sort of people who oppose Take Your Dog to Work Day. Coincidentally or not, these are usually the cranky and mean-spirited ones. So, in addition to getting a day at home with your dog, you would get a day away from them.

Unlike on the weekend, which most humans fill up with activities, some involving the dog and some not, this day would be all about your dog — not about showing him off, or thrusting him into a strange environment, but about you spending some quiet time in his world.

On this day, you would be encouraged to lay in the grass, take extended naps, bark at the postal carrier, chase a squirrel or two, sniff everything in existence and, if you are in really good physical condition, lick your own loins.

Because Make Your Human Stay Home Day could have an adverse impact on professional dog walkers, whose services would not be required on this day, we suggest you go ahead and pay them anyway because they probably deserve it.

If the concept proves as beneficial as I anticipate, we could extend it, and start having “Make Your Parents Stay Home Day.”

That, as well, could result in happier, closer families and, more importantly, another paid day off.

We expect some opposition to our idea from corporate America and from executives who, though they stay home whenever they please, don’t look kindly on their workforces being diminished, unless they are the ones ordering the diminishing.

Until we get this concept up and running, we continue to throw our full support behind Take Your Dog to Work Day, which you can read a good account about in today’s Baltimore Sun — where I used to work, and which didn’t take part in Take Your Dog to Work Day, which may be what inspired my genius idea for Make Your Human Stay Home Day.