I suppose I’m biased, having had, growing up, one of the most miserable curs (as yet)  known to man, a purebred miniature Schnauzer named Max, but compared to the dogs I encounter these days, Max was practically Lassie.  Due in part to a rather brutal version of toilet training by our housekeeper that involved hurling him down the basement stairs for every “accident,” Max could be left for a day or two without leaving any stinky surprises, at least in our house.  Neighbors weren’t so blessed, as we discovered later….  This being the early seventies, nobody walked dogs in those days, so all we had to do was let Max out, where he would poop in neighbors’ yards (never ours), chase cats, father lots of little Schnauzer-mix puppies, and beg for food, coming home only for meals.  Aside from a few doors ruined by scratching and the inevitable vet bills from fights, Max was a low-impact dog, and he knew his place.

Not so dogs today, who are raised by some sort of Benjamin Spock system wherein no behavior is too horrifying to be tolerated, and no expense too crippling to keep them around long past their usefulness by the veterinary “industry,” which no longer  allows a fed-up owner to put them to sleep, even if they have a terminal disease and/or the owner hates them.  Thus, self-destructive stupidity has been transformed into saintly “compassion.”  Rather than the other way around, today’s dog “owner” is now the dog’s servant, blaming themselves for the dog’s incorrigible behavior, and altering their lives for the worse to make the dog happy.  ”He chewed up my expensive new shoes because he was mad at me for being gone too long.”  ”She shit on my couch because she didn’t like the new food I gave her.”  ”He pulled the wallpaper off the wall because he was frustrated.”  No, those dogs did those things because they spotted you, as a dog owner in the 21st century, as a useful and credulous idiot, who will feed and support them whether they deserve it or not, and blame themselves, deservedly, for the fact that their spoiled and offensive dog ought to be dropped off at the nearest Korean restaurant, posthaste, for the good of all concerned.

Our capitalist system has obviously spotted this trend: once the Big Sleep, and even the rolled-up newspaper, became verboten in polite society, airlines could charge astronomical fees for transporting useless vermin hither and yon, every sort of dog pampering-enterprise could make bank, and the pet “industry” became as fat and happy as military contractors, not to mention those, like myself, who could make a nice living repeatedly repairing the damage dogs cause.  Dog ownership, like fundamentalist religiosity, is pretty much like walking around with a tattoo on your forehead that says, “Sucker,” and all manner of grifters have acted accordingly, as you’d expect.

That’s the worse aspect of this dog-worship, I think.  Dog owners have become just like the overly religious, in that despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, they still look with suspicion and even disgust on those who are too “selfish” and “cruel” to have a dog, or even resentfully respect those who choose not to have these flea-bitten freeloaders trash their homes and crimp their lives.  Thus, people who have made a completely irrational, costly, and often obnoxious lifestyle choice actually feel superior to those  smart enough not to.   That’s a problem.

Dog owners, like religious zealots, are entitled to whatever thin gruel of happiness they garner from their weird obsessions, I’ll be the first to admit, but both groups must accept the fact that no observable reality supports that decision, and behave accordingly.  If all dogs, and Christians, for that matter, go to Heaven, I’ll take Hell, if only because it will certainly smell better.

PS…  Happy Birthday to my brother, Turd, who was very excited when Joan and I finally took Max for the long night-night.