Dog Gone It

Well, this didn’t take long. Two blogs in and I’m going to focus in on a dog story! I guess we all saw that coming. After all, once I agreed to take on a third dog in my house I pretty well secured my status as the crazy dog guy.

But you know what? I make no apologies. I’m proud to be a crazy dog guy. If I could “liberate” all of the dogs currently living in shitty environments with despicable people and bring them to live on the wide open dog farm I have envisioned in my head, I would do it in a heartbeat!

I absolutely love dogs. For the vast majority of my life I have had at least one dog in my house. When I was born, we had a dog named Spooky. In elementary school into High School, it was a chow chow named Harry (or Hairy…either way works). Next it was border collie Gracie and a little Westie named Lucy.

Once I struck out on my own it took a while to take on the responsibility of looking after the life of another living being. But once I ended up with a wife and kid, I figured I could probably make this dog thing work. How hard could it be? Of course it helps move the process along when the wife exploits your weakness for cute dogs, shows you a photo of dog faces like the ones below, and asks if we can keep them.

As you might imagine, the question is always a formality as she has already made up her mind. If I’m seeing a picture of a dog, we’re getting a dog.

That is the exact process for how we ended up with those first two dogs in the photo. For the third one she didn’t even bother with a picture. I arrived home from work and as I pulled into the driveway, Wife was holding the little guy and claiming to be looking for his home. Please, spare me your good Samaritan tales, wife. We may be looking for his owners right now, but we both know he’s part of our herd now. It’s only a matter of time.

I think it took 24 hours to find Rolo’s owners and discover they were looking for a new home for him anyway. Lucky for them (and Rolo), he landed with the crazy dog guy!

Here’s the point. There are crazy dog people everywhere! We love dogs more than most people and go to ridiculous lengths to make sure they are loved and taken care of. Seriously! Our family even has “dog rule” in our house, meaning that if there’s a dog(s) in our lap we shouldn’t have to move for fear it could disturb the endless slumber of these beasts. Never mind that if they move, they’ll fall asleep wherever they may land within seconds!

Admittedly, we spoil the hell out of them because, let’s face it, they love us back more than any person ever could!

This is why it boggles my mind and shatters my heart when something disgustingly tragic like this happens. This horrible thing happened only two blocks from my house. I can’t even wrap my mind around it and can only think it’s more a result of a deeply disturbed human mind than simply a desire to torture animals…not that that makes it any better.

I just don’t get it. To deliberately bring harm to another innocent living thing is an act as old as time, but it is never something that gets easier to deal with. In the case of dogs (and really, any animal), there are countless people like me and organizations out there who would take care of them if you can’t or don’t want to. There are humane ways to put an animal down if it’s suffering. Never, under any circumstances, should a life end like that. Just a horrible thing…and maybe another reason to love dogs more than people. Without opposable thumbs, dogs couldn’t do something like that. But if that day should ever come, you better hope you respected “dog rule”.

Anyhoo, that got a lot heavier here than I expected. To bring some balance to things, here are some dog videos that I watched this week…