The After-School Special

Bruno's black tongue leads to racial profiling. Photo by Julie Garisto

People who say they hate humans but love animals make as much sense to me as people who hate breathing but love oxygen.
Can you not be a people person and a dog person and a cat person … and a reptile person, plant lover, protozoa enthusiast?
Isn’t it okay just to be into living things?
Life, the miracle: I’m a fan.
I frequently get in a certain argument with a friend who says dogs are intrinsically kinder than humans and cats.
I’m going to get a lot of flak for this, but I think that’s a load of doo.
Dogs and cats have different adaptive abilities, as do humans, whose mental networks of right and wrong and all of their permutations is much more vast and snarled.
Despite all the confusion and trauma, people have a crazy capacity for love and determination of spirit.
Yet, somehow, Lucky the lab is way cooler?
I’d venture to say if Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad were cuddled, encouraged, softly touched, given special toys and brought to the park daily by doting parents he might not be such a gay/Jew hater.
To me, there’s no reason to say that a tediously ignorant despot was born a bigger a-hole than a pit bull who maims a child. Circumstances, conditioning led to both going awry.
Of course, this boils down to that whole nature vs. nurture argument, but however you scientificify, I think there is an automatic acceptance of animals that people are never given.
I own a dog I love very much, but he annoys me sometimes too. He can be a defiant little turd, to be honest.
Lord forbid, I complain.
I just don’t buy into this wholesale worship of dogs. It feels cult-like. I go to the dog park and I see how people obsess. They huddle and compare notes and breeds. It’s like going to some Montessori playground with bored housewives and Mr. Moms.
There’s some serious sublimation going on and I don’t want to know its origins.
Seriously, people get nutty about what type of dog to own, acccessories, training, nurturing and protecting their precious furry fluffy ribbon-wearing shi-tzu-blah blah blah that they forget all reason.
And I hate what I hear about cats from these people. How they’re uncaring and selfish. Me, I own a cat. I love her sense of independence, her sensual savoir faire, but cats’ low maintenance and lack of trophy-trotting portability make them less desirable on the status food chain.
Plus a cat will never validate or reinforce an insecure human’s sense of power and confidence.
Back to dogs, I have a Chow mix and because of the breed’s awful reputation, I sometimes I feel like the mom of a hood rat with a crack pipe hanging out of his pocket at the aforementioned playground.
Seriously, my Bruno, is racially profiled. His black tongue gets him shunned time to time.
Some people think Chows are mean and aggressive.
I have no experience myself with a hatin’ Chow, but supposedly Chows/Chow mixes are a huge scourge to owners of civilized canines.
But Bruno doesn’t deserve to be stereotyped in such a horrible manner. When people do let their dogs play with him or pet him, they are utterly charmed. They see he’s a genial, sweet and playful teen pup who is completely loveable. I’ve seen him play with Great Danes and chihuahuas with equal pleasure and adaptibility.
Just the same, you can’t stop people from judging, and Bruno will always have that black tongue. What I can’t figure out is if that makes him better or worse than humans to the doggie gestapo.
In view of such nonsense, I’m trying really hard not to let people with any selective, obsessive and incoherent loyalties of any kind dog my respect for my fellow men and women beings.