The American Spectator : Canine Compassion

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Canine Compassion

By Marilia Duffles on 4.27.09 @ 6:07AM

Now the First Dog can help man's best friend.

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Sadly, Help in Suffering has only enough resources to look after the animals in Jaipur and in limited ways given the world's street dogs are an orphaned cause that suffers from a paucity of funding, particularly now with the global financial crisis. Notwithstanding, the dog population has declined by about 50% in the Pink City, based upon Reece's surveys. "Visitors tell us that our street dogs look better than those in other north Indian cities, and we attribute this to our efforts to stabilize the population at lower levels, reduce the stress of reproduction and the numbers of puppies which are born, suffer and die on the streets," he says.

But for every street dog in Jaipur there are thousands more. Dogs who are not bouncing around the White House lawn being offered furry microphones by obsequiously adulating reporters. Not being carried in $1,000 luxury pouches from Saks Fifth Avenue to save their paws from pounding the privileged pavement of Park Avenue. And they're certainly not perfumed, pawdicured, and physically pampered like the genetically tampered dogs of the Westminster Kennel Show. No, they're dogs who would treat the Prozac pills their first-world canine counterparts take to cure "depression," as food.

So here's my modest proposal to turn the tide of public opinion for the Portuguese waterdog. Just as POTUS aims to fight for the underprivileged, so too should DOTUS. Instead of parading his activities before the doting media, or penning mindless books as previous White House occupants have done, Bo could start with a website: www.dotus.com would make dog-doting humans aware of the dire needs of developing world dogs. Bo's television and photo-ops could be used to remind viewers, especially if he were to don a symbolic collar or jumper with, perhaps, a request for donations to HIS-Vets that would also help them to create more of these animal treatment centers in the many other parts of the world where none exist. And to throw him a bone, they could even be named after Bo.

Imagine how DOTUS may have enlightened Leona Helmsley to divert even a fraction of the millions she left behind for her lapdog of luxury. And how he could have pulled the Brazilian heart-strings of Gisele Bundchen into wrapping a simple ribbon around her dogs and sending the untold sum she paid for their Dolce and Gabbana lace collars directly to Jack Reece instead. And just think of what could be done with the $5 million that Gerrit Dou's dog painting fetched at auction in 2006.

The mind boggles.

In these countries, a little goes a long way: Eight dollars would spay and vaccinate a dog, or employ an animal care technician for three days, or treat 2.5 camels at Pushkar.

President Obama and his best friend would be in good spiritual company. As President Woodrow Wilson said, "If a dog will not come to you after having looked you in the face, you should go home and examine your conscience."

The burden must now rest on this adorable beast named Bo. Dogs know nothing of noblesse oblige, but given their dogged caring for their canine brethren, I know Bo would bark two woofs in agreement with Will Rogers who always said that "a dog does nothing for political reasons."

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topics:
Dogs

About the Author

Marilia Duffles is a contributor to the Financial Times and the Economist. She has also written for the Globo, Brazil's leading newspaper.

Letter to the Editor View all comments (7) | Leave a comment

Michael Tomlinson| 4.27.09 @ 12:04PM

As the human companion of 2 non-specific breed dogs I hope BO (the pseudo-male occupying the Oval Office) will work to tear down the walls specieism that pervade our country and keep my well behaved and intelligent quadrupeds from enjoying the full benefits of living in an enlightened country.

When will they be able to marry other species, drink freely from toilets no longer chemically treated with blue water and lick their genitals in public without scorn? For that matter when will they like the dead be used by ACORN to steal elections for Democrats?

One can only hope that BO's Muslim heritage with its hatred of dogs hasn't so tainted him that he fails to change our antiquated laws and mores to insure Zulu and Peanut share fully in the benefits of the Obamanation.

L. Ross| 4.27.09 @ 1:53PM

Marilia,

You have a big heart, but you're an idiot. On a list of things that need fixing in the world, dog suffering is way, way down at the bottom. Next time you see a suffering dog, I suggest you just shoot it, and get on with your life. Don't worry, we're not going to run out of dogs.

MeowMix| 4.27.09 @ 2:00PM

Michael Tomlinson| 4.27.09 @ 12:04PM

Further evidence of the complete decline of the GOP and it's RANK and file. When you've got absolutely nothing in your own party of substance, by all means go after the dog.

What a bunch of FN losers.

JL / HCN| 4.27.09 @ 2:21PM

The rescue-only crowd insists that every dog purchased from a breeder is a death sentence for a stray. They make no distinction between responsible breeders who nurture sound-tempered dogs and puppy-mill operators who crowd breeding bitches so tightly into cages that they chew off each other's legs.

Rescuing a dog is indeed a noble gesture, even if there will never be enough humans to save every abandoned dog. But for the health of their daughter, the Obamas wanted a purebred dog. And last time I checked, Portuguese water dogs weren't turning up at the pound with any regularity.

Most of the purebred dogs that end up in shelters come by way of reckless backyard breeders or puppy mills, where dogs are routinely inbred, bred so narrowly for looks that they can't breathe properly, or bred with no thought for their health at all. Responsible breeders track their puppies assiduously and take them back if they don't work out. They don't put their dogs up for rescue, they "re-home" them.

For the record, I rescue dogs. I rescue, in fact, the kinds of dogs that end up in shelters in droves: Yippie, wild-eyed terriers and the much-maligned American Staffordshire (pit) bull terriers. I take them in, train them and keep them with me for longer than a decade; I work through their tendencies to bolt or their fears of men in baseball caps until they accept the compromises of life with humans. I am well set up for the task: My tolerant, dog-loving husband and I have no children; I love dogs that would drive sane women mad; and I have the tenacity to work with them.

But I also love purebred dogs and the whole notion that we humans have bred dogs for certain tasks. I love Newfoundlands that save drowning children, border collies that live to herd, brave terriers driven to hunt rats. And I despair that we may be heading into a world in which breeding dogs to do what dogs do -- work with, and beside, and indeed even for, human beings -- is considered, by some crooked measure, cruelty to animals.

There is something far worse than a family acquiring a dog from a conscientious breeder, and that's a family rescuing a dog that turns out to be fundamentally unstable or just plain unsuited to life with a family.

Childhood dogs shape attitudes toward animals for life; they can make kids lifelong advocates for animal welfare or create in them an ineluctable fear. A family that adopts a dog that incorrigibly nips children's hands, eats expensive furniture or lunges at other animals might at best end up investing in an expensive trainer. At worst, the dog ends up back in the shelter or on the street, leaving a family forever wary of canines.

In January, one month after the death of a beloved pit bull I rescued from the pound 13 years ago, I took in a 5-month old American Staffordshire named Tabitha. She is, from what we can tell, sane and hearty, a natural retriever, psychologically stable enough that neither ear-pulling nor toe-fondling nor the taunts of her Cairn terrier housemate, Thomas, faze her.

But Tabitha is still a puppy, and having lived with dogs -- seven in total -- nearly all my life, I know that puppies harbor secrets in their DNA. What we know about Tabitha is all good, but we could scribble it on a sheet of notebook paper. What we don't know could fill volumes.

We don't, for instance, know what her parents were like. We don't know if she harbors the gene for a debilitating neurological condition called ataxia that is common in her breed. Will she continue to put up with our ambushing cats? With the squeals of our friends' children? We think so, and we will work with her no matter what. If we had children to worry about, however, it might be different.

Symbolically, it would have been nice if the Obamas rescued a dog. But to insist that the only good dog is a rescued dog is to relegate our future with the canine species to random relationships in which humans are forced to settle for whatever renegade breeders produce and fail to care for.

And let it be said that the reason there exists such a thing as a Portuguese water dog at all, or any dog with a hypoallergenic coat and a game temperament, is not a happy accident but a triumph of the selective breeding humans have been practicing with canines for millenniums -- the very practice so many people who claim to care about dogs would prefer to see turned into a crime.

Judith Lewis

Tom Paine| 4.27.09 @ 2:52PM

Michael --

You're a jackass, aren't you?

MAS1916| 4.27.09 @ 4:42PM

At least Obama remembered to include Bo in his Apology tours.

http://firstconservative.com/blog/uncategorized/obamas-next-task-apologize-to-the-dog

glenda bayless| 4.28.09 @ 1:09PM

thankyou for publishing this marvellously enlightening and gut wrenchingly compassionate piece. it shows that you ain't been neutered. let's hope, that we as a dog worshipping nation, will run with it!