Are some of us barking mad?
View(s):A funny thing happened on the way to the dog show. The dog, who was man’s best friend, became human. It used to be said that woman, before she became man’s equal, would have to prove that she was his superior. That the same thing has happened with Canis lupis familiaris is being discussed in the dog pound. The chief executive has gone to Belarus, the human-rights commissioner has gone to town, and the country has gone to the dogs. Or so the wagging tails – I mean, tongues – seem to be saying.
First, there was this ad I saw in the newspaper. It showed some cute creatures with their manes groomed and ears all silky – and the dogs were kind of pretty, too. In many cases the pets looked like their human handlers and persons of the advertising model ilk.
The caption took the cake… or the dog biscuit, as it were. It seemed to say that certain canines were the most outstanding personages of the year. Don’t press me too far on that point. The ad was kind of hazy, and I was kind of woozy. Anyway, the cuties were nice to look at. And the human beings were not bad-looking, either, in a feline sort of way (but let’s not bring cats into this, let’s not.)
Then there was the odd little news items about dogs in the constabulary’s stables. (Do I mix my species? Pardon me, my dears, your breeding is showing.) Time was when a dog biting a man was news. That didn’t last longer than it took Great King Tut – the first Pharaoh to domesticate poodles – to cry “Mummy!” when the mutt (not his mother, Nefertiti!) bit his highness in his lowness.
Then there was the age of rags and yellow journals, when news was ‘A Man Bit A Dog’. That didn’t last very long, either. Dogs have been treated rather inhumanely by their so-called best friends ever since Lassie was made to look and act dumber than her ‘owners’: “What is it, girl? What’s wrong? Do you think she’s trying to tell us something?” (Let’s see, dumbo. If she’s barking her head off and running around like a mad dog – pardon my English, lass – you can bet your stereotypical dumb-blonde bottom-dollar that there IS something wrong and that she IS trying to tell you something!)
Where was I? Oh, yes. The dogs in some police kennels in an unnamed island republic. News is that they have been – wait for it – joined in connubial canine bliss by some avant-garde folks in the constabulary’s upper echelons. ‘Wormed, weaned, and wedded.’ I can see dog-breeders and the kennel clubs having a field day over this. Quick, while we’re on the subject of dodgy doggy-dos, what do you call an unmarried female dog which has puppies out of, er, bredlock? Ah, yes, life is.
Wonder what’s next? Bridle showers (pun and spelling both intended) for horses? Honeymoons for bumblebees? Virginity tests for olive oils? A parliament of baboons? Wait, one out of four is not bad. Add a fifth: a maverick politico offering to marry a crusading iron lady…
Perhaps I should spare you the last vignette: Puppies abandoned by the wayside. Not the cute and cuddly kind that get picked up, spruced up, groomed, and airbrushed for glamorous ads. But the dirty, damaged, and dangerous (think rabies, potentially) ragamuffins who get shoved into drains and left for dead. Thankfully, soft hearts and firm but gentle hands more often than not come to the rescue in a country where dogs are top citizens, and… – no, I had better not say what comes naturally and ironically next!
All these happenings in the week gone by got me thinking.
Who’s dumping all those cute but unwanted puppies with impunity? Why do we often treat animals better than human beings? What is it about dogs that makes friendship with them not simply a relationship with survival value, but that which gives value to survival? Have some of us lost all sense of proportion that we conduct nuptials for hounds, while hounding decent citizens out of house and home and livelihood? How will the state deal with its stray dog problem in the run-up to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting?
My guess is that with the bloodhound of a human-rights champion breathing down our necks fondly and/or leaping for our jugulars, cute ads and canine weddings will not be so much the concern of the powers that be or the champ in question. It’s hard to decide, really, whether the civic-minded creature in question is a gun dog, a guard dog, or a lap dog – pardon my un-UN-ese. And CHOGM is going to gun down canine nuptials and castoff doggy litters quicker than it takes to say doggone backwards in Chin(t)a(na)-speak.
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