Just Like Cancer

In my life, the dogs I've owned include two Rough Collies, four Black Labrador Retriever mixes, two purebred Yellow Labrador Retrievers, and a miniature Poodle mix I inherited from my late father. The first of the two collies was the companion of my childhood along with an aging Shetland pony, both of whom were precious beyond words. 

The Labradors began to appear after I graduated from seminary and have been a regular fixture ever since. A neighbor's huge Yellow Lab became acquainted with my parents and adopted them while I was away at school. Coming home for the holidays, I was surprised to find him stretched out on their kitchen floor. Getting to know him, it became obvious he was the kind of dog I wanted: Big, affectionate, companionable, smart, and courageous. 

Some of my Labs have been smaller, others larger, either Black or Yellow. I have learned to avoid Lab-Golden Retriever mixes because of the inherited potential for cancer in some Golden breeding lines and with a mix where those factors are unknown, the potential for early heartbreak is too much for me. I’ve gone through that once and never again. I want my dogs to live long and prosper. 

All that being said, I’ve learned some important things from my dogs. To begin with, just as the Founders of our Republic asserted about women and men, dogs are created equal. Differences between them derive from evolution and genetics, not artificial distinctions invented by humans. Second, neither length nor color nor texture of fur have anything to do with temperament, intelligence, strength, endurance, capacity for loyalty and courage. Black Labs = Yellow Labs at all these points, and I take that to include Browns, Silvers, and Whites, purebreds and mixes when it comes to the dog beneath the fur. 

You can guess where I'm going with this personal history and it has nothing to do with the scientific development of canines as domestic co-inhabitants with humans of the earth.  It is applicable in a time where people are treated like dogs in a ASPCA commercial on television -- starving, mistreated, abandoned -- where it rings all too true. It rings even truer when persons at the top of the political food chain embrace skin color, economic status, religion, language, and national origin as valid reasons for arresting, imprisoning, and deporting pretty much anyone they like in the name of law and order. 

None of that is about law and order, just so you know. It's about national purity and in particular, one group’s idea of preserving national purity, and that spells oligarchy (rule by a few). And by definition, that’s inconsistent with anything we might describe with the adjective “American” appended to it. What’s worse, concerns about preserving national purity seem inevitably to morph into concerns about preserving racial purity. 

And just like cancer, I hate that.