Friday, December 28, 2018
Who Has the Better Haircut: Me or My Dog?
Once
every five weeks I take our family dog Otis to the Mutt Hutt in Republic for
his grooming. Sarah, the owner, does a great job. Otis always comes back
looking great, smelling better, and in a good mood after playing with the other
dogs.
Dog
grooming can’t be rather expensive, but I’m told that the clients don’t always sit
still. And there is also barking involved, and
client snacks and an occasional potty clean
up when the clients get to playing too hard!
The
day after his grooming Sarah always puts pictures of her clients to Facebook. Otis always gets
several dozen likes and a few comments regarding his appearance. At home, the rest of the family members make a
fuss over him. They even tell him he looks great.
Now
contrast this to my own experience after
a visit to Angie at NeNe’s in Republic. Every five weeks, I sit patiently in
the chair, I never make a mess, and Angie never has to give me treats!.But, I do leave happy.
Ironically,
when I post pictures of myself with a new haircut,
I get no notice. No one comments about me being a doll, adorable, or even
clean! At home, my haircut normally goes
unnoticed.
I
don’t think this discrepancy has anything to do with the skill of the people
doing the work. Sarah at the Matt Hutt and
Angie at NeNe’s both provide excellent service at a great price.
I
could take it personally and say that
people love my dog more than they love me. But I know that is not true. It all
probably says a lot more about how we Americans now feel about our pets.
Since
the 1970s, Dennis Prager (a columnist, educator, and creator of PragerU) has been asking students if they would
first try to save their drowning dog or a drowning stranger. For 40 years, he
has received the same results: “one-third vote for their dog, one-third for the
stranger, and one-third don’t know what they would do.”
Prager
adds that recently the poll has begun to shift in favor of the dog and he finds
that alarming. What we have in this poll is the classic tension between
feelings and values.
All of us feel more for a being we love than for a being we do not
know, let alone love. Therefore something must supersede our feelings -- that
something must be values.
But these values must be perceived as emanating from something higher
than our opinions.
I
take a lot of teasing about how often I post on social media about my dog. I’m
not ashamed to admit that we do baby and pamper the little fellow.
But
at the end of the day, he is a dog. While
many of us can love our four-legged companion’s,
I do hope that as a society we remind ourselves that there are some supremely
important differences between a human and a dog. Those differences are much greater than simply the price of our
haircuts.
