Your Dog Is Not Your Child

Shannon and I were watching "Bang For Your Buck" on HGTV.  For those of you unfamiliar, Bang For Your Buck brings two people into recently renovated houses to figuratively trash the design choices (and in my imagination at least, to literally trash the toilet). We were playing the usual married couple HGTV viewing games, specifically "Gripe About That Awful Choice Of Tile" and "How Gay Is The Host?" Today's episode featured a gay couple, who when chided about not having a kid-friendly "Outdoor Room" (btw, anyone who calls their yard an "outdoor room" can kindly insert their favorite body part into a blender and set it to Frappe), said "our kids have four legs." This was followed by the camera cutting to 3 Pomeranians sitting on a couch.

My response to this is "Screw you." I have lived with dogs all my life, and as much as I have bought into the ridiculous American notion of "they're part of the family," I have absolutely had it with anyone calling their dogs their children. Here's a helpful strategy for identifying members of the family. In a zombie apocalypse, would you eat them to survive? If the answer is "yes" (AND IT IS FOR YOUR DOGS, PERIOD.) then they are not members of the family. I love my beagle. She's great. But if the fit hits the shan and we live in a world ruled by the undead hordes, you best believe I'm having me some rack of Beebs. And a Pabst. Isaac on the other hand, I would starve myself to ensure his eating. That's a big ass difference from the dog. And that is also the only correct viewpoint to have. If you find yourself feeling any differently about this fundamental difference between your real kids and your FREAKING PETS, you are simply wrong. 

Also, my very real fear of the zombie apocalypse is why I really want out of NYC. No joke.