Dogs. People seem to love 'em. I like dogs just fine. Other people's dogs, that is. Don't have one myself. Doesn't mean I’m not sympathetic to dog owners’ love for their animals. A blind man can see how beneficial is the relationship between canines and humans, especially those blind men who are led around a black world by seeing-eye dogs.
These past weeks dogs seem to be in the news quite a bit. There’s a bunch of unlucky hounds and one very lucky dog indeed. The ones with all the bad luck were those pit bulls with the bad fortune to be cruelly exploited in the dog-fighting schemes of Michael Vick and his low-rent posse of “sportsmen.” Apparently their idea of sport is to watch two of these dogs tear one another limb from limb in a small fighting ring for their amusement. Just in case the bloody carnage was not interesting enough in and of itself to these ghouls, large wagers were placed on the outcomes of these fights.
Pretty sick, no? But wait, it gets better/worse. If some of these dogs lucky enough to survive one of these barbaric spectacles didn’t show these sportsmen enough “heart” in the heat of “battle,” they were coldly executed by strangulation, electrocution or drowning by so-called humans. Even the dogs rescued by the authorities will have to be euthanized (executed) since their training makes them extreme risks to humans. No upside to the story at all.
Whatever jail time the perpetrators of these crimes serve won’t save a single one of these hapless animals or stop other “sporting types” from running their own dog fighting operations. Apparently there’s a demand for this sort of thing. It takes a decent amount of money to run of these rings, from kennels and dog food to psychotic “trainers” to finding out-of-the-way venues to hold these contests and providing tight security from the authorities who tend to frown on such goings on.
The public is pretty pissed off at these people, understandably I suppose. The dogs themselves must be cursing their ancient ancestors for ever hooking up with humans in the first place back in the prehistoric mists. Life in the wild could not have been any more cruel and savage than the fate met by these dogs. At least they could claim to be their own masters and not the tools of human breeding schemes and exploitation. If I was a dog I’d be thinking: Let em’ fetch their own dead ducks out of the water and guard their own damned backyards from threats, who are almost universally human predators anyway.
Humans have been in control of dogs for thousands of years and have been served wonderfully by them. And what do the dogs get out of it? If they’re lucky, like one tiny Maltese, they get twelve million dollars. When Leona Helmsley died this past week, that’s exactly what she left to Trouble, her designer bred pocket pooch. And how dumb is that? The dog could give a crap less about the 12 mil, and there’s two grandchildren of the billionaire who got squat. I could almost understand if these grandchildren had an urge to strangle this particular dog. Not that I condone it, mind you, but I’d understand the urge to do so if I were the one stiffed out my inheritance by three and half pounds of fluff and attitude.
And I’m not crying the blues for the grandkids of a billionaire. Odds are they’re already set for life, and probably have their own designer pets that they dote on like they were children. It’s just that I’d like to see some of the public outrage shown towards Michael Vick and his cronies shown towards the killers and exploiters of humans. Where were these people with the signs and the slogans when Donald Rumsfeld was calmly explaining why he didn’t care about the body armor or vehicle shielding of our soldiers, our beloved sons and daughters? Why no outrage that the United States was torturing prisoners like the Gestapo? Do we love our dogs more than our fellow humans?
When nations in Africa practice ethnic cleansing (genocide), why do the body counts have to get up into the hundreds of thousands before anyone gets pissed off? And then what happens? Committees are formed to study the situation and months and maybe years go by before anything is done about it. Meanwhile people are being slaughtered no less cruelly than in the dog rings.
And what about North Korea? Everybody rants about their two-bit nuclear program but ignores the fact that the people of North Korea have been horribly suffering for decades. A goodly portion of their population is brain-damaged from starvation as youngsters. There’s no cure, either. Maybe because people in Korea eat dogs as part of their diet they get no sympathy from the kind of people who Michael Vick outraged. Only a guess, but the kind of outrage displayed over atrocities was a very heartening sign to me, an indication that America is getting over her numbness and shell shock and starting to care passionately once again. And if we have dogs to thank for the opening of our hearts, well then that’s one more service these loyal beasts have provided to humankind. Thanks, pooches, and sorry for the grief.
Author’s note: For a dog’s point of view, click on the stories and essays on this web site and read my short story “I’m Not Your Dog.” – Bob Crespo
