Natural Selection

Thrice Wolves and Moon

My namesake uncle hates dogs. He also boycotts Wal-Mart for being on the top of the Fortune 500 heap all while historically providing limited benefits to their workforce. This has led to my favorite "blue moon" line frequently recited at family gatherings,

"I'll do that when Uncle Bob buys a dog at Wal-Mart."

Just when you'd think the country's love affair with canines couldn't get any stranger, I read an article in a local newspaper which suggested that on Mother's Day we should recognize dogs that gave birth. As a society, we're against cruelty to animals, but are we really? We swipe their children at birth, rip the testicles out of the males, perform hysterectomies on the females, then leave a pack animal alone in a crate while we go to work. All this by people who claim to be dog lovers?

Oprah took a picture with a woman and her two dogs in a stroller on Mother's Day. She uploaded it to Instagram with the comments,

"Jill and her fur children. #Happy Mothers day to Mothers of all varieties of children!"

Now, I'm not one to equate children and pets, and I especially don't like it when the childless do so. Pets are not children. First off, if the cost of treatment becomes excessive, no one ever suggests putting down a child. It's not normal to chain a child to a tree, leaving a metal bowl full of water while we go off to work all day. We also don't queue up another child when the eldest gets old. A lot of people employ this "dog on deck" strategy when their main pooch is ready to check out. You also don't get worms or giardia from your children. Some people believe that dogs suffer from ADHD, but I believe that dogs just don't have a long attention span because, well, they're dogs.

Dog's bark all day because as pack animals they don't want to be alone. I think it's cruel to crate a dog indoors or chain it to a tree. Just because your dog is happy to see you at the end of the day doesn't mean it's not affected by solitary confinement. I find barking dogs both sad and irritating. Nature has lent me a hand with noisy, unattended dogs. People who tie their dog to a tree then go to work for the day have found that this is not a safe practice when living close to nature. The problem is when you live up against a nature preserve, nature sometimes pays you a visit, and nature can be heartless. Some nature found its way into my neighbor's yard and ate Dinkles the Dog for dinner. My neighbors came home to a skeleton tied to a tree.

Once a neighbor introduced himself to us with a dog in tow, a friendly lab who in the middle of the introduction squatted to take a dump on my lawn. When he finished his business, he did that cat scratch thing to cover his tracks, but all he managed to do is mess up my grass. I thought as a human I should try this. You know, go over to someone's house to introduce my family,

"Hi, I'm Bob. This is my wife, Chris. Our boys, Aidan and William. I'm gonna shit on your lawn now."

Then bring out the Nutella fun factory. First impressions are so important.

After the dog finished pinching, he got bored and started to clean himself. Dogs have no shame. They groom their bits and pieces. They ride your leg. They indiscriminately crap. Anything goes for a dog. Nature is a big party in which the strongest gets to shit on the weakest and everyone just plays along, you know, kind of like middle school. In the wild, one animal is always taking advantage of another. They even play it safe by going after the young, the weak, the sick, the old. Nature always seeks an advantage, an opportunity to exploit the unwary.

Mahatma Gandhi said,

"The measure of a civilization is how it treats its weakest members."

In nature, the weakest members are treated as lunch, and that works for them, but it doesn't work for us so stop referring to a pet as your child.