on pomeranians

In between conference sessions on Friday my sister and I drove out to the Oromocto SPCA to walk mutts. That SPCA looks like the dregs of a very desperate trailer park, and although it’s not so bad once you’re inside, I kindly beg you to go adopt some big beast if you’re at all interested. There was a little Pomeranian with a dopey expression, as big as my big hand. Poor fellow had been hammered by an asshole and left for brain dead, but he was walking and smiling, and adopted. Even though a feisty little pom pom bit my thumb near off at a dinner party in our town’s swanky waterside neighbourhood last week, I still would have taken this little vegetable home.

As a consequence of giving up all food and bringing it back at an uncharacteristically lethargic pace, I now do really appreciate the eating of meat, despite regrettable environmental consequences, slaughterhouse nastiness and all. Rare steak righteousness eventually overtook my bleeding heart. But dogs are another matter entirely. I am one of those freaky spinsters who relinquishes her best furnishings as dog beds and dresses her canines in secondary fur coats. Dogs do not get hit on the head with a hammer.

Yet I have a friend, name withheld, who is a brainiac and a few degrees ago (academic, not Celsius) ran cardiac tests on dogs. She was testing how their hearts stopped. Meaning, of course, she had to stop them.

The dogs were specially bred for research purposes. I imagine that means bred for boredom, captivity, homogeneity, quiet. I don’t really know and I don’t think I asked. Dogs died and she’s a cardiac brainiac now. She’ll keep you alive. And yes, you matter more than a dog.

Which brings me to PETA, and Pam Andersen, this week off to the White house to call of outdated animal testing. I don’t know the details, maybe the tests she’s twisted-knickered about are really unnecessary. Maybe they are old fangled. Point is Pam is just another of PETA’s innumerable bunnies-for-bunnies. But besides anoretic eating extremes, what do women’s bodies have to do with the treatment of animals? Must such a straight electric-fence link be made between chattel treatment of women and chattel treatment of, uh, chattel?