In Which a Dog's Worth Is Examined

Once when I was in the dog park, a guy came up to the fence to look inside.  This is not unusual, as dogs playing is something of a spectator sport, and when the whether is nice there are often a lot of people who stop by and look in.  This guy looked on for about a minute before he started yelling at the top of his lungs.

"You people are disgusting!  CRAZY!  What do these things do for you?  You pick up its SHIT!  IF ALIENS WERE LOOKING ON RIGHT NOW THEY'D THINK DOGS RULED THE WORLD!  You are idiots!  CRAZY IDIOTS!" … and so forth.

Most people don't go around yelling about it, but I don't think this an especially unpopular position.  I mean, there are the cat-people who will talk endlessly about how cats are cleaner and smarter and smell better and aren't desperate for approval and on and on and on, but there are also the people who don't particularly care for any kind of animal and are just especially offended by dogs.  Perhaps it's because dogs don't often serve the useful roles in human society that they used to, when they helped with hunting, herding, retrieving, and guarding.

It seems like what bothers people most is that dogs have now come to fill a companionship role that they feel should be reserved for humans.  Somebody recently emailed me this more-than-ten-year-old article from Time, entitled Why I Hate Dogs, in which Joel Stein writes, "How can people love something so much that they're willing to walk behind it and retrieve its feces with their own hands every day? I have yet to meet a woman for whom I'd do that."  And people are often extremely put out by the level of pampering that dogs receive, particularly when it is something we associate with humans: "a dog on Prozac? RIDICULOUS!"

I am not immune to feeling this way at times.  Before I got Rosie, I was quite certain that I would never be one of the crazy people who treat their dog like a human and pamper her as such.  No dog clothes, no special presents, no calling her "my baby."  But then the first winter came, and she was cold, and her paws hurt from the salt on the sidewalk, and I maintain that if I hadn't gotten her a sweater and booties then I would have been a negligent owner.

And I call her a baby sometimes, I do, and I'm not so sure that's a bad thing.  I'm not an idiot, and I know she's a dog (hence the title of this blog), but what all these people are missing is the great joy of canine companionship.  Everything I put into my relationship with Rosie, be it better but more expensive food to keep her healthy, toys for her to stay entertained and engaged, or cooing and affection that let her know she is loved and wanted, come back to me twentyfold in the comfort, calm, and care I receive from her on a daily basis.

Sure, dogs used to live, by and large, in a very different way than they do now.  They used to sleep outdoors, work for their food and shelter, and maintain a very clear separation from their owners.  I don't understand whey this is necessarily assumed to be better for both the dogs and the humans, but I guess that whenever social behaviors change people always decide the old way was the better way because change is threatening.  I assert that neither is better, they are merely different; different ways of co-existing for different times, places, and people.