On being sincere with dogs and why Elly can't quit it.

Of course, the need to tilt at windmills is the end result of a depressingly common phenomenon. As history teaches us, the more obvious it is to an outsider that an idea or a policy is a complete non-starter that only serves to make the lives of those who embrace it worse, the more rabidly said horrible idea will be embraced and defended. The prototype of this is watching someone suggest to the Round-Headed Kid that he's stupid to think Lucy will let him kick the football; the result is his defensive blathering that he WILL kick the football to the moon because the alternative of not blindly charging into another humiliation is scarier than having the ball yanked away at the last second by a budding sociopath.

This is why Elly can no more admit that Farley isn't a person in a dog suit who simply refuses to listen to her out of spite and selfishness than she can admit that she's stupidly pitting her children against one another. This is because she sees having to follow the advice of someone who actually has some idea of what dogs are all about as being a humiliation and defeat because of her need for credibility. Just as she won't admit that Mike isn't trying to eat her brain because she has to sacrifice her real credibility as a loving parent he can talk to on the altar of the fake credibility of not abandoning dumb ideas that don't work, she can't admit that Farley will never be a person and treat him like an animal because that would mean she actually did waste her time on a folly.