There simply is no way to say this politely. My dog likes to “mark” her territory.

That is, she pees on things.

She pees on the grass around the mailbox, because other dogs have peed there. It’s some kind of ongoing pee contest to see which dog can out-urinate the other. This is apparently a big deal to a lot of dogs, because the grass around the mailbox is dying.

She pees on shrubs, she pees on every corner of the back yard, and she pees on the places we visit.

Whenever possible, she also leaves a more permanent reminder of her having been around, if you know what I mean. She’ll leave a pile of post-Kelsey in as many areas as possible, and the vet tells me that’s just part of being a dog.

She’s got her territory, and the way she tells all the other dogs that it’s her space is to “mark” it with Kelsey leftovers.

Since I’ve been married long enough to say this, it’s kind of like the way a woman will paint a house that has perfectly good paint on the walls. She moves in, and none of the paint is right. A guy? He hangs up the same, neon-lit beer sign he had in college and calls it home decor. But a woman? She sees the paint on the walls as another woman’s ... “mark.” And that just won’t do.

So dark blue turns to bright yellow. Dark stain gets a painstaking whitewash. The pastels go wild, and the wilds calm down. Wallpaper goes, paneling gets painted, and the painter gets tired.

The only difference in paint and what Kelsey does just boils down to raw materials. If Kelsey had a paint brush, maybe she’d mark her spots with paint. Then again, she’d probably use only yellows and browns.

I took Kelsey to our place in the woods the other day, all 20 acres of it, and watched in amazement at all the marking. I’m telling you, the dog turned into a marking machine. Somehow, she knows the land belongs to her. And only God knows how many deer, possum, snakes and other critters have been across that land in recent days.

Kelsey was determined to let all those other animals know that a new woman had moved in, and by golly, the paint in those woods was changing.

Never you mind that Kelsey doesn’t actually own any property.

She doesn’t own the 20 acres, she doesn’t own the mailbox, she doesn’t own a single shrub. But she claims them all, and on some days, I think we’re going to have to refill her with intravenous fluids just to keep her going.

This, my friend, is a picture of greed. And speaking candidly here, greed stinks. In terms of what the dog does, it literally stinks. But Kelsey doesn’t seem to notice the grossness of it. In fact, every day God gives her another opportunity to pee, Kelsey keeps claiming things that aren’t hers to claim.

Maybe that’s what Jesus had in mind (now there’s a transition for you!) when he talked about greed. “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and selfindulgence!” (Matt. 23:25) After watching Kelsey’s “marking” ability, I’ve got a really bad image of what was on the inside of those cups!

In another place (Matt. 6:19), Jesus urged his followers to store up treasures in heaven, because all the things we store up on earth, to put it in a translation Kelsey might understand, decompose. OK, Jesus said “rust,” but it’s basically the same compost.

On another day, Jesus told the story of a prosperous man who wanted to build bigger barns to store more of his stuff. But the man died overnight when God declared him a fool for thinking he owned things that were never really his. (Luke 12:16-21). Turns out, such a person is no more in charge of the future, and no more in actual possession of things, than Kelsey.

Greed stinks.