Okay, that’s it.I just read a story in the Washington Post about a new CBS TV show, “Greatest American Dog.”
Look, to begin with, I don’t like “reality” TV. I don’t watch it. But I’m okay with it if a bunch of idiots want to go out on national TV and eat cow anuses or climb out on narrow beams above pits of broken glass, all for the remote chance of winning money. Not only do I think they’re more than welcome to do that, I know they don’t even have to care about my opinion. I’m fine with it, seriously. For all I care, as long as they’re adults, and they’re freely choosing to do those stupid things, they can all wind up in wheelchairs. Yeah, it would hurt me to see something like that happen to a fellow human being, but tragedies happen every day and I don’t think I have any right to interfere in other people’s private decisions. Heck, I’m the guy who thinks suicide should be legal. And at least they get a chance at the money, unlike all those people who have crippling injuries while skateboarding or riding motorcycles.
But this …
Imagine how I’d feel about a show like this, considering there’s stuff people do to dogs that nobody else I ever met thinks is bad, but that I think is bad.
Breeding a big healthy dog down into one of those tiny, crippled, defenseless breeds is, to me, a crime beyond genocide. I mean it. I consider it an obscenity off the scale of anything decent people should even think about doing, much less doing to a defenseless animal that the people SAY is a friend.
Dyeing them? Giving them elaborate haircuts? Dousing them in perfume? Cutting off their tails, or parts of their ears? Castrating and spaying?
All to animals who have real, actual feelings? And just for … fashion? Whim? To make them easier to live with? To make them more impressive to other people? To make them … cute?? Sheee-it.
When I got my first dog, Ranger the Valiant Warrior, I taught him a very small number of things that I thought we needed to have straight – heel, sit, down, come, leave it – simple stuff, just for communication, and emergencies. But then I just stopped.
“Does he do any tricks?” “No, he doesn’t do any tricks. He’s not a clown.”
Ranger never learned to balance a cookie on his nose, never learned to fetch a frisbee (we played with frisbees often enough, but he wasn’t under any obligation to bring it back when I threw it), never learned to roll over, none of that stuff.
Why? Because it’s wrong to use a living, feeling thing as a toy, or a tool to serve your own ego needs. But also because he was my FRIEND, and it’s even wronger to use a friend for those things.
Oh, he was a smart boy and he learned plenty of stuff. We had all sorts of toys we played with, tugging and throwing and chasing, but none of that was because I was training him to perform. He learned to swim like a champ and balance – badly – on log bridges, but not a bit of that was for anybody’s benefit but his own.
Later, when I got Tito the Mighty Hunter, something else came into it.
It was like … well, think of corn. The taste of it. Not with butter or anything, just the corn itself. It’s a pretty good taste, isn’t it? Nothing that would excite you, but likeable enough. It’s not one of those tastes that slaps you in the face – like peppermint or Kentucky Fried Chicken – but it’s still a pretty good one. Subtle but good.
And now imagine that the next bite of corn you take is one that comes out of a brightly colored box with, on the front of it, a clown riding a rainbow-colored zebra. It’s not just corn, it’s Super Maple Sugarbombs With Flav-R-Fruit Stripes.
Despite the fact that these little stripey confections are made from corn, do you think you’ll be able to detect any hint of corn-taste about them? No.
Tito was … different. He wasn’t the least bit demonstrative. He woofed only reluctantly, and rarely even wagged his tail. He wasn’t a slobbering, panting, tennis-ball-fetching dog. He almost never played with me. You could let him outside and it apparently never in his entire life occurred to him to scratch or whine at the door.
That’s all the stuff he wasn’t. But because I had other dogs when I got him, I had him for years before I started to notice what he WAS. It was only after the other dogs departed the picture (they died) that I started to really see all the subtle – and wonderful – traits he had.
But after I started to pay attention, I came to realize he was like no other dog I’d even met. He was gentle. Bright. Sensitive. Generous. Patient. Even thoughtful. And if you listened just right, he sometimes even talked.
It won’t get it across to you, but I’ll tell you one of the things he’d do: Being as likable as he was, he charmed a lot of people, two of them the owners of a local feed store. Tito was the only dog they allowed in the store off-leash. There was an entire aisle of dog treats in one part of the store, bins of twisted rawhide treats and pig ears, cow hoofs and bull pizzles, all sorts of weird animal parts to appeal to a carnivore. We could tell him “Go pick out what you want” and he’d stroll down the aisle, sticking his head into this bin and that, taking his time and carefully inspecting everything, and finally picking out one treat, which he would bring up to the front counter.
And he figured the whole thing out on his own. No training, no commands, no repetition. Just “Go pick out what you want,” and that was it. First time, every time.
He didn’t leap into the first bin he came to. He didn’t slobber over everything. He didn’t grab one thing and then another, or try to cram five into his mouth. He went down the aisle, considered all the different treats, and decided. On one.
Another thing: If we were out on a walk, and the trail forked, and we started down one, we’d sometimes notice he wasn’t with us and we’d look back and he’d be standing there at the fork, stock-still, watching. “Tito, come on.” Tito, watching. “You want to go that way?” Tito, happy. And we went that way. We trusted that he was deliberately saying something, and he understood that we could be made to listen. All of us knew that this was a DOG walk and not a human walk.
Okay, now imagine that bright, thoughtful dog in the midst of a pack of other dogs, on television, trained to his eyeballs with all sorts of commands and clickers and choke chains and little tasty rewards, and owned by a yahoo convinced that a dog should do everything it’s told – instantly – and nothing it isn’t.
Would that owner ever notice anything of the dog I came to know? No. Not a chance in hell. The subtle, bright, thoughtful Tito would never see the light of day in the custody of that trainer-moron.
He’d be just another puff of corn turned into Super Maple Sugarbombs With Flav-R-Fruit Stripes, tucked into a box splashed with the eye-searing rainbow image of a zebra-riding clown.
Okay, listen to this: “With weekly challenges and a three-judge panel, the program offers a grand prize of $250,000 for the winning dog-and-human team.”
Considering that there are people who will themselves eat cow anuses on national TV – people who can be seduced by money to dishonor and demean themselves in public (and if you don’t have any idea what I’m talking about, please don’t ask) – do you think there’s any limit to what they’d do to a DOG for a chance at a quarter mil? In the blowtorch of their frantic desire, could anything subtle or friendly survive in that particular dog-human bond? Even if you held a gun to their heads, could they even be forced to notice what they were doing to their dog?
“The weekly challenges go beyond high-flying tricks and standard obedience commands. Each episode tests a specific quality, such as loyalty, courage or intelligence.”
Oh, joy. It sounds just frickin’ peachy. I soooo need to see the tests for loyalty and courage. (“Come on, Peppy, run through the rotating blades for mommy! Come on! There’s a good boy!”)
The last thing I want to watch on TV is a bunch of owner-morons, trainer-morons and judge-morons, all instigated by reality-TV-morons who depend on advertiser-morons and, yes, viewer-morons for their jobs, forcing dogs to do something, on camera, “beyond high-flying tricks and standard obedience commands.”
You watch what you want, but I’d run ten miles through lightning to avoid this show, or anybody connected with it.