For They Know Not What We’ve Done

A GSD walks on water with reflection.

You can't walk on water if you can barely walk.

Dogs forgive us for they know not what we’ve done.

It is a blessing that our dogs don’t know how sick they have become at our hands and thus don’t blame us for mess we’ve made of their genetics.  Right now there’s probably a blind double merle puppy licking the hand of the callous breeder who brought it about and a French Mastiff who is taking its last breath at only 5 years old totally unaware that a community who knew better cared more about type and ribbons and breed purity than about robbing this dog of two thirds of its potential life.

Our dogs don’t ask us where their vision and hearing went; or who robbed them of their tails, their ear tips, their gonads, their hair or their coloration; they don’t lecture us like human teenagers do about ruining their lives when we make decisions for them; and after we strip them of their natural gifts we so rarely ask them to go and get a job even though they are ever more eager to do so than the children we raise.

And it is because our dogs are so blissfully unaware of their own mortality and the blows to its quality and quantity that we have inflicted due to our own vanity that we must now also act on their behalf to rectify the wrongs we have done to them and begin atoning for our sins.

Dogs are certainly Man’s best friend, but what sort of friend have we been to dogs?

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About Christopher

Christopher Landauer is a fifth generation Colorado native and second generation Border Collie enthusiast. Border Collies have been the Landauer family dogs since the 1960s and Christopher got his first one as a toddler. He began his own modest breeding program with the purchase of Dublin and Celeste in 2006 and currently shares his home with their children Mercury and Gemma as well. His interest in genetics began in AP Chemistry and AP Biology and was honed at Stanford University.