This is a transgressive piece, which has several influences. The first are from two rather odd Internet memes. The first is an animated .gif that was going around a while back, which would appear in discussion threads, whenever someone felt the need to clearly state that ‘no one cares’ about a point that a previous poster had made. The .gif in question shows a black dog (likely a Labrador Retriever, judging by the head-shape), who is wearing a Santa hat, has tinsel around his/her neck, and is holding drumsticks in his/her paws, and waving them from side to side. The caption on this .gif is ‘no1curr’.

The second is another .gif that shows a much older, and grey-muzzled black dog with wide eyes, and its muzzle partially open, and a human next to it is holding a telephone receiver in front of its mouth. The caption on this particular .gif is ‘Hello! Yes, this is dog.’

Since I, too, am the owner of a black dog (Labrador x Border Collie mix), and since he has now become greymuzzled enough to resemble that particular .gif, well…
For those, who might be interested in trivia, according to several online sources, the origin of that particular image is a 1984 Serbian film Pejzaži u magli (“Landscape in the Mist”), by Serbian director Rade Šerbedžija.

The third inspiration comes from a particular busybody, who has become notorious in my neighbourhood.* For the short and dirty, she is an aged-out hippie somewhere in her early sixties, and apparently a retired humanities professor at the local university. She is also a hard-core animal rights activist, who has made it her mission in life to get the breeding of dogs and cats banned, starting with this city and moving outwards from there (various slogans about ‘a bred dog is a dead dog’, or ‘there is no such thing as a "responsible" breeder’). I don’t need to belabour the point, as I’m certain that most people already get it, and can already picture this person in their minds, because I think there is at least one version of her in every city, and haunting every dog park with her ever-present digital camera and cellphone.

She, and a number of her fellow travellers have been behind three failed attempts, thus far, to push mandatory spay-neuter in this city, and one successful attempt to push through legislation that more than doubles the cost of a license for an intact dog as opposed to a neutered one. Now, before anyone thinks that I am anti-neuter, I would like to state, for the record, that my personal position on the matter is a great deal more nuanced than a stark, black/white, yes/no binary. My own male dog just so happens to have all his original parts, but that was the way he already was, when he was given to me at the age of 2 ½.

Since I hold a master’s degree in Mammalian Reproductive Physiology, I am well aware that once a male dog gets past a certain age, neutering is both unnecessary, and in some cases can do more harm than good (and there is a growing amount of data, easily available, which proves this). And yes, I’m already expecting the outraged howls that I would dare question such accepted orthodoxy that the owner of an intact pet, is, by definition, an irresponsible pet owner, but here we are...

However, back to the busybody in question: one of her hobbies is to patrol the local dog parks with both a digital camera and a cell phone, and she functions as a self-appointed poop patrol, and testicle patrol. If she sees an intact male dog, she will launch into a session of loud sloganeering about how ‘cruel’ and ‘irresponsible’ the owner is, and how they are personally responsible for every puppy mill. You get the picture.

If she sees a dog squat to do their thing, she will loudly proclaim: ‘I hope you’re gonna clean up after your dog!’ This, even when she sees dog owners, such as myself, already engaged in the small but necessary embarrassment of turning the little poop bag inside out, and putting it over your hand and wrist, in preparation to secure the payload.
To answer the inevitable, final question: Yes, a few folks have reported her for harassment, and apparently the local cops just roll their eyes and laugh at her when she calls them...

Finally, there is also a small reference to Sam The Sham & The Pharaoh’s 1966 song: ‘Li’l Red Riding Hood.’








*Names have been omitted to protect the guilty. :P