Living High Off the Hog

My background is as a Nova Scotia farm boy who lived on a subsistence farm where the vet was called for farm animals.  Pets like cats and dogs served the purpose of keeping the rat and mouse population in check and either lived or died, their survival being of indifferent concern as there would always be more.  Considering this background the care lavished by often childless or empty-nest couples on their pets is a revelation.  This is Oakville after all where pets live better than at least 90% of the world’s population.  To a farmer who never earned enough in one year in his life to have considered filing income tax such as my father the idea of spending $1000s of dollars on an operation for a pet would have been inconceivable.  Even I find it hard to believe that people actually get a cat to eat an insulin tablet twice daily. The cat I have in mind was so stupid it climbed a tree and stayed there for three days until I heard it one day, recognized it, and carried it home. 

 

Anyone adopting into their family a puppy that has the potential of acquiring the kind of weight and size we associate with a Great Dane or a St. Bernard should discipline themselves to restrain their tender affection for that puppy and never teach it that it can expect to sit in their laps.  Once learned such habits are nigh impossible to break.  Why anyone would keep two such dogs is one question but to approach the home of that couple and find them seated in their living room each acting as pillow for one of those dogs is a sight hard to forget. 

 

One woman kept a Malamute named Yammer whose chain was attached to the bumper of an old Ford Pinto Stationwagon parked in the open garage with one of its rear doors open to allow Yammer to use the extended, blanket-covered flat bed as her kennel.  Can you imagine what that car looked and smelled like?  When the vehicle was traded, it was actually taken shopping with Yammer ensconced, I was moved to comment, “I see you’ve gotten Yammer a new doghouse.”

 

Spoiled pets are one thing but no matter how pampered they get it’s hard to remove a canine’s genetic memory.  On the day after a major blizzard when the temperature had dropped below zero Fahrenheit I can remember approaching a back door milk box serving as mailbox and discovering a Malamute had dug her way into a massive snow bank and was curled up there with a look of absolute bliss on her face.