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A quote: “Be thou comforted, little dog, Thou too in Resurrection shall have a little golden tail.” ~~ Martin Luther
I’ll start with a story …
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People look at history thinking it’s the big events that signal the downfall of empires or the takeover of nations by totalitarian rule.
And they smugly believe they’ll recognize it.
Hannah knew better. She was ancient to the young bucks in town, but they all came to her for the best-bred dogs in 5 counties.
It was in that community, the stuff of working dog circuits and breeders that they learned. Service breeds were to be nationalized. Private breeders shut down.
Can’t be too careful about dogs that can be trained as spy or weapon. Cash, guns, now dogs.
Boom.
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Now, it’s your turn.
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. featured image, cropped Adobe Stock standard license
Cameron says: I knew he would be a challenge on the day we met. I barely touched him and he tensed up like he was about to lash out. I looked in his eyes and saw pain but also a need for love.
Sometimes, he wouldn’t leave the house so I was just kept him company. When we went out, well-meaning people would race over only to have me gently intercede and advise them to be gentle.
It took a year before I saw him smile. Rehabilitating humans is no easy job but I am grateful that I could help this one.
Darleen Click says: Bravo. I love this one.
Cameron says: There was a mistake in a sentence that I missed but thank you. -:-)
Looking back, the Cold War genetic experiments on dogs shouldn’t have come as a surprise, once the news came out about the human ones. If our scientists were using cat DNA to give humans telepathy, why should it be so astonishing that they’d also seek to make working breeds smarter, with stronger pack-bonds to their human handlers? It’s not like the idea hadn’t been all over science fiction for the previous several decades.
In fact, the biggest difference was the fact that, even with 27 cat genes, the human subjects were still legally and morally humans. You could stigmatize them, you could marginalize them, but they still have that inalienable right to their lives.
In the eyes of the law, dogs are property, no matter how beloved. So when the news came out about the super-dog program, there was a huge push to have the lot of them put down — even the retired ones whose handlers had taken them home. And there were a lot of them, not so much the military ones as the ones that went into police K9 training. You don’t know how sentimental a cop can get, or how ferocious he can be in protecting those he loves, until you show up on his doorstep and tell him you’re taking the retired K9 who patrolled at his side for the past eight years.
After a couple of incidents, the government saw sense and backed off. It helped that most working dogs in those fields are fixed — helps them concentrate on duty when they don’t have reproductive hormones any more — so it wasn’t like those super-dog genes were going to be getting into the general canine population in any great numbers. But there were still people who didn’t like it.
I say screw ’em. I’ve loved Toby ever since my dad brought him home from the lab to test in a family environment, and he’s been with me through thick and thin ever since. At least he doesn’t know that, barring an accident, he’ll probably pre-decease me, and I’ll have to go through the rest of my life without the buddy who made the life of a nerdy kid livable.
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