Stray Dogs Deserve Back Rubs

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | 1/14/5 | Mark Morford

[SmithL]

We kill millions of pets every year
Who cares if a few get posh shelters and humane laws?

OK. So I tend to think people who insist on calling themselves pet "guardians" instead of "owners" are exasperating and a bit wrongheaded, and that such uber-PC thinking does almost nothing to change or improve the behavior of the thousands of animal abusers in this country.

And I tend to agree with fabulous dog writer Jon Katz that such semantic sidestepping does more harm to the animals than good, and leads to naive treatment, lack of decent training and an outright ignorance of the creature's very cool dogness.

What about all those new ultra-posh pet boutiques and the concomitant trend toward the wild overpampering of our "companion" animals? Silly if not outright depressing, really, given how we appear to be projecting ourselves, our desires and habits and need for intimate TLC, onto an animal that really couldn't care less.

Further, I think the shift toward treating dogs and cats as full-blown family members, as surrogate kids or surrogate mates or surrogate babies, is even worse, as we are loading up our animals with far too much emotional liability and psychological complexity, granting a completely unique species an impossible array of human traits and emotional responses they don't have or need or understand, which then only causes stress and resentment and chewed shoes and deeper personal depression as you, the "guardian," slowly realize the dog can't have meaningful sex with you or take you to dinner or help decorate the Christmas tree or talk to you calmly about just what the hell is going on with your hair.

[Libloather]

What about all those new ultra-posh pet boutiques and the concomitant trend toward the wild overpampering of our "companion" animals?

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