Nothing I have said in these four minutes to this point, or nothing I will say in the future, will make you as angry at me as you're about to be. I know this for sure. But, well, here goes.
I don't care about your dog.
I am sure your dog is cute, loyal, great with kids, kind to old people, vigilant about guarding the house, empathetic, and even has a working knowledge of String Theory. But I don't want to hear much about him or her.
Now, there are exceptions: you're being robbed. Your dog leaps in front of a speeding bullet, catches it in his teeth, disarms the intruder, mirandizes him, and manages to call 911? Fine, tell me about him. Otherwise, he's a dog.
Over the years, there appears to be some kind of trend that dog owners believe that dogs are people. Actually, they're accorded a status above people, because while they have all the privileges of people, they're also permitted to act like dogs. That is, they can jump on you, knock you over, slobber on you, and relieve themselves wherever they care to—actions I'm quite sure are not within acceptable bounds of human behavior, except at some college fraternities.
Alright, some background here. I'm not a dog hater. I had a great dog when I was a kid—a white mixed-breed my mother named Timmy after the young boy next door. But as much as we loved Timmy, we never thought of him as having human being status. We didn't take him on vacations—okay, we never went on vacations, but we never took him on car trips. He didn't dine with us. We didn't take pictures of him. We didn't put him on our Christmas card.
But now? Statistics show that between 42 and 44% of American households own dogs, and in an alarming number of those households, the belief holds that dogs are the same as children. I don't want to go too deep on this but there are theories as to why. One is that Americans tend to anthropomorphize everything. Storm is angry, rain is sad. And in a cruel world where we're always looking for something wonderful, there are dogs.
There's also much dog propaganda—cartoons, commercials, whatever—in which a dog is always presented positively; loyal, trusting, and most strangely, on the same wavelength as a human. "My dog? He gets me."
There's also the Europe factor. Dog lovers who visit invariably come back raving about how Europeans take their dogs to restaurants. My wife and I will never forget the amazing meal we had at an al fresco restaurant in Rome that was interrupted by the dog next to us...doing his business. The dog did nothing wrong, he does what dogs do, and do and do and do, which is why he shouldn't be lying right next to our table. A few hours later, we're at the Sistine Chapel and all I could think about was the aroma of our lunch, and not the spaghetti carbonara.
Yet more and more people I know let dogs dictate their lives. Have to travel? Bring the dog. Taking a family photo? "Oh, let Ralphie in. He'll feel bad if he's not included." No he won't, he's a dog. Some people even describe themselves as being dog parents. No you're not. There is only one type of being that is a dog parent: a dog.
Here's one way to grasp the reality that dogs are not officially members of your family. You own a dog, you do not own your family members.
Look, I know dogs do amazing things—they sniff out people that are trapped after disasters, they lead blind people, they furnish companionship to kids in hospitals and seniors in old folks homes, they trek hundreds of miles through the snow in the Iditarod. I love Lassie, I love Rin Tin Tin, I love my son's dogs. I just want them to be treated like dogs.
And one other thing. I say I really don't care about your dog; can I be honest? I care about your cat even less.
