For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for January 28, 2024

Nope, just Yelly Elly in top form.

Clapping tends to scare a dog because dog hearing is thousands of times more sensitive than ours. A sudden, sharp, close run of sounds like that is both startling and scary and since it’s coming from you, your dog is fearful of what you may or may not do next. If appears that it gets the same reaction from April.

That said, you can put one of those painting aprons on a kid when they are using finger paints. And maybe encourage your child to use a particular area to play with their toys that does not include the stairs. And maybe put the cookies out of reach inside a child-proofed cabinet. But what fun is that?

None of that is nearly as much fun as following your kid around, waiting for her to do something wrong, and then clapping and screaming “No!” to scare her silly. Look how happy Elly is. She is having so much fun. I wish all parents could be like Elly and enjoy parenting as much as she does.

Elly doesn’t seem to know much about teaching or dealing with any species. But I guess if she did she’d be producing non fodder for the strip.

Nice to see April speaking grown-up English, instead of “baby talk”.

Works on kids and husband’s too

If that’s how Elly “trains”, I wouldn’t blame either April or Eddy if they bit her!!

I don’t know why, but mothers love to clap hands when attempting to get a child’s attention. Perhaps it’s a subliminal warning. “This time it was my hands. NEXT time it will be your BUTT!”

Oh my! Does the label on the green can read that it contains fingers?

Can you imagine seeing that on the store shelf when the shelf stockers don’t really care about seeing that every label reading ‘paint’ faces outwards!

Years ago I was the temp secretary to a woman who was the pure embodiment of evil. One day I went to the snack machine (which was right around the corner from my desk) to get a snack. A friend was there & I said “Hi”. At that very moment, Ms. Evil came around the corner and shouted, “KAREN!!! clap clap I need you RIGHT NOW!” I was mortified. (That’s not even the worst thing she did; there was the spider incident, which is too long to post here.)

Maybe it’s just me, but the art on this one seems a bit ‘off’ on today’s strip. I was thinking that maybe this was done my current-day Lynn instead of 1995 Lynn so I looked back to the corresponding 1995 strip and, sure enough, there’s no strip from back then. Does anybody have any idea why it would be replaced?

Same thing training April.

Who is “Clap”?

Elly, don’t get the pup and April confused.

I bet John jumps when he hears that “clap” and the loud “No !”

Training puppies and training little kids is pretty much the same. The biggest difference is the puppy usually learns faster and obeys better.

No, the thing is that this method works with puppies and small children.​

April would not want to spoil her appetite in the seventh panel anyway. Just thinking about Elly’s tofu burgers. Yum yum!

i need to try that with my hyperactive puppy!

Well, it looks like it works for April, too! haha! :D

I highly doubt it’s THAT loud and startling.

When my son was in Pre-K, (‘71) the parents were to volunteer 1 day a week. One time the kids were more excitable than usual and wouldn’t go down for their naps on time. I had to leave for work soon so, I clapped my hands loudly to get their attention. The teacher freaked and said not to do that. Maybe she had nothing else to do but, I had to leave.

Intelligent, articulate April is back.

You train kids and puppies with rewaRD TREATS.