Your dog’s environmental impacts are “far greater, more insidious, and more concerning than is generally recognized,” according to a report this month in The Guardian that you wouldn’t even use to scoop poop.
The British paper’s science writer, Donna Lu, warned of the “significant” canine carbon footprint, quoting a Pacific Conservation Biology report that also highlighted “the impacts of the world’s ‘commonest large carnivore’ in killing and disturbing native wildlife.”
“To a certain extent, we give a free pass to dogs because they are so important to us,” Prof Bill Bateman of Curtin University said. Another scientist suggested using “sustainable dog food as an option to reduce a pet’s environmental paw print,” despite the greater expense.
“While the environmental impact of cats is well known, the comparative effect of pet dogs has been poorly acknowledged,” until now The Guardian reported because coming after dogs wasn’t enough. They had to remind you that cats are awful, too.
Yeah, no. I have three dogs (including a Golden and two rescues) and when the inevitable happens and we lose one, do you know what my wife and I will do? Spend some quality grieving time and then get a new third dog.
The Guardian published this doggie doo-doo of an article in the UK last week but it was just republished in the US by Mother Jones because of course, they did.
Wu wrote that in this country, “studies have found that deer, foxes, and bobcats were less active in or avoid wilderness areas where dogs were allowed.”
Ms. Wu, that’s a feature, not a bug. A 50-pound Lab-mix once chased an aggressive 300-plus-pound black bear away from my best friends when they’d taken him hiking. Kimbro finally made his way back to their campfire more than an hour later, with his paws torn up from running on rough ground. So they bandaged him up and fed him one of their delicious strip steaks.
It seems that neither Matt nor Ali considered Kimbro’s carbon footprint when rewarding him for saving them from a possible bear mauling.
To be fair, Lu’s article gives a nod to the other side. Trauma therapist Angelika von Sanden said that for some of her clients, a dog is “literally the only reason to survive, to get up, to still keep going.”
“It gives them a reason to get up, a reason to get out, a reason to move around and be in contact a little bit with the world outside,” she said.
But who needs trauma? The photo above is my 14-year-old rescue girl, Remy, who has packed a lifetime of love into each one of those years. There’s nothing “insidious” about her.
So what’s the point of coming after dogs?
Maybe certain lefties believe only the traumatized should be allowed to own one of those wildlife-murdering, carbon-emitting beasts. Maybe people ought to feel guilty for owning a dog. Maybe lefties just can’t help but aggressively take the 20 side in any 80/20 issue.
I don’t know.
I do know that the human-canine relationship is the most practical, caring, and downright beautiful in all of nature. Whether through evolution or the divine, dogs are so perfectly attuned to their humans that they probably know us better than we know ourselves. And petting a dog is just as good for the petter as it is for the pet-ee. Every time I hear somebody say, “Go touch grass,” I think, “Go pet dogs.”
Dogs are good. Donna Lu and The Guardian? They need to chill out and rub a fuzzy belly.
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