As usual, I thought about the
animals in those wildfires, and as usual – except for the occasional feature
about a miraculous rescue or a heroic animal -- they weren’t mentioned. We’ll
probably never know how many perished, terrified and suffering, in inescapable
flames.
That’s also true for pets, who
may have sensed great danger before their people did. I wondered, with fire
suddenly racing toward their homes, how many residents thought of their pets
and evacuated with them to safety.
“If your neighborhood was on
fire, what would you take with you?” Asked in a newspaper story at the height
of the burnings, that question drew a number of answers with glad tidings for
pets.
I quit reading while I was ahead, wondering how many of
us have a list of “must-saves” for whatever catastrophe comes our way. What
would we gather up and carry off with us?
Here’s one answer to love:
Saluting smart Lulu!
Remember the tale of the woman office
worker who didn’t want to become the default coffee maker, so she deliberately
made such horrible coffee she was never asked again? No dummy she.
That tactic may have caught on
among dogs, and good for them. Think
about it: which would you prefer:
bomb-sniffing in perilous places, or being a pampered pet here at home?
I thought so. And so did Lulu, a recently
publicized flunk-out at the CIA’s “puppy class” for “explosive detection” who just
wasn’t interested in detecting possible bombs.
 |
| Lulu, successful CIA "failure" |
You go, girl!
Lulu’s new life must be far better than what she would
have had: hazardous duty and possible death while doing the work people had chosen
for her. She would have been “a service
dog,” meaning she served human – not
canine -- needs.
. . . and mourning
the ‘dogs of war’
In a related vein, this columnist extols the “military
working dogs” he knew in Vietnam, who – he claims – “loved to work (‘protecting
our soldiers’) purely for the approval and praise of their handler and partner.”
( Hogwash!)
Of the “thousands” of these dogs, most inexplicably given
to the military by US families, about 350 were “killed in [involuntary] action,”
with many more wounded. Most of those
who survived were left behind.
Hey, everybody, it’s Dominionism all over again – the worldview or belief held by
one species that it has a divine right to use animals and everything else in
the living world for its own benefit.
It keeps happening, often to ill
effect, and too often, it goes unchecked.
But not with wily Lulu.
Brava!
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