By Jim Hagarty
2007
Dogs are front and centre in the news this week and so they should be. Man’s best friend too often gets buried (like a bone) somewhere in the back pages. (Brings to mind the old joke: My dog loves your newspaper; I saw him pouring over it last night.)
However, the poor critters featured in this week’s headlines are in desperate need of some public relations management. These stories do anything but show them putting their best paws forward.
First off is the media coverage of the scrawny little mutt called Elwood who has won the title of World’s Ugliest Dog. Pictures of him on TV and in newspapers confirm that the judges probably did not make a mistake when they voted. He is to canine pulchritude what the horsefly is to the majesty of winged creatures such as the eagle. The two-year-old Chinese Crested and Chihuahua mix from New Jersey is dark coloured and hairless except for a mohawk-like puff of white fur on his head. He has bug eyes and a long, wagging tongue which, as shown on TV, seems incapable of staying in his mouth.
Now, to be ugly is one thing, but to be entered in a World’s Ugliest contest is quite another. It is a question whether or not Elwood had any say in the entry plans. My guess is he wasn’t consulted at all which raises the issue of animal abuse. Is this recognition injurious to poor Elwood’s self-esteem? To make things worse, Elwood’s title comes with $1,000 reward for his owner. Shouldn’t that money be Elwood’s to spend as he sees fit on bones, chewtoys, a supreme makeover, etc.?
Last week’s second story is about poor Duncan M. MacDonald who is registered to vote in Washington State but who will now not be allowed to do so, thanks to a narrow-minded judge. The unfortunate Australian shepherd-terrier had voted in three elections, but alas, his experiment with democracy has come to a halt. He might have gotten away with this illegal venture, too, except that he signed one of the mail-in ballot envelopes with his pawprint.
His owner is trying to claim some high ground, arguing she signed up her pooch for voting privileges to protest a system which she says makes it too easy for non-citizens to vote. She put her phone bill in Duncan’s name, then used the bill as identification to register him as a voter. This landed her in court and the clever quip from prosecutor Dan Satterberg was that his office simply couldn’t look the other way: “They say you should let sleeping dogs lie, but you can’t let voting dogs vote.” No word on whether or not Duncan plans a run for city council.
And finally, a dog in Minnesota is an accessory after the crap, so to speak, now that his owner has been found guilty of putting his pet’s feces in a parking ticket envelope and sending it to city hall. The dog’s master has been ordered to pay nearly $3,000 to a woman who became seriously ill in April after opening the envelope. He also must write an apology letter to the victim and pay a $300 fine.
When the office employee opened envelopes from the drop box, she noticed a brown fluid leaking from one envelope. The fluid got onto her hands and she awoke the next day with a headache and vomited repeatedly and was hospitalized for about two days with an undetermined illness.
This is the sort of thing that destroys trust between dog and owner and that is a crime in itself. When can this poor doggie ever again believe what his master plans to do with his doo doo?
