First, I want to say from the outset that I like dogs. I like them quite a bit. Other than the fact that I’ve been bitten three times, I believe dogs hold the key to a higher calling and help us get to some kind of transcendent existence. Not too long ago, for instance, when all the Tesla’s in the United States were grounded because of a national recall on their batteries, dogs were still out there on the road, making their way from one fire hydrant to the next. Dogs are resilient and dependable that way, and perhaps hold the key to the future of all Tesla’s who long for a companion when they are stranded. I know this because I had an Irish Setter through most of my teens and twenties, and I was closer to that dog than I was to most of the humans I knew at the time, including my parents, who I now believe thought of me more like another pet than a working member of our family.
However, when I think about our changing dog-filled world, I can’t ever remember plopping my dog down next to someone I didn’t know while they ate dinner or bringing them with me to church. We accepted dogs then like we would an uncle or an aunt we had to feed now and then when they came over, or perhaps a neighbor who came over to borrow a shovel. We didn’t count on them to get us through a room that had too many people in it or jet that was passing over us at thirty thousand feet. When I had my tonsils out for example, there was no dog present to help me. I had ice cream for that, and a dog would have not been of service during that time. For the next several weeks while my throat healed, ice cream did the trick and I never expected any pet to come in and rub my back or hand me more baby aspirin.
Still, and this is where things get serious, I am hard pressed to go anywhere lately where I don’t bump into a person who doesn’t have a dog tucked in their tote bag, sometimes masquerading it as a service dog. I understand that many of these dogs are providing a legitimate need, such as relief from PTSD or diabetes, for which their service is invaluable, but many are not providing any service at all except to provide the owner with an accessory that seems to elevate their social status. Unfortunately, with these animals being attached to the hip of their owner for long periods of time, the owner’s appearance has slowly changed to take on the look and expressions of their pet. We have seen this ourselves, haven’t we? Perhaps this quality of mimicking the look of your dog might be of some value or service later in providing a measure of comfort to the owner, like it does for identical twins who always know when the other twin is nearby. Myself, I would love to have a look-alike, even if it was my pet, to send out in the world now and then when my hair didn’t look quite right or I hadn’t shaved. My twin dog could do go out for me..
Nonetheless, when a dog jumped up next to me the other day as I did my business (financial, not the other) at a teller window, I wondered where the service in “service dog” was, and where, in the name of all things canine, was the owner? Suddenly, making a transaction at the teller window, I had a flashback of a time when I witnessed circus dogs who could count, even multiply and divide and do simple quadratic equations. Was this service-teller-dog a math genius and secretly trained to read my routing number? Was it going to use it to buy a new heated pet-bed, or a lifetime subscription to Dogue magazine? Furthermore, where was the credit union’s Paw Patrol when you needed it?
Shortly thereafter, my dog acumen peaked again when a “service” dog boldly sniffed my 2% cottage cheese at the grocery store. My goodness, I’m all about lending a helping hand, but a helping nose? Uh, not so much. Usually, when I need someone to sniff my cottage cheese, I ask an older lady that has been around the aisles a few times. They can smell bad cheese a mile away. I was additionally concerned when the pooch spent a lot of time sniffing the tiny, printed area where the fat content was listed. I know these dogs are very intuitive, so I thought maybe the pooch was warning me that my cholesterol was too high or hinting that I should lose a little around the beltline.
“Is this bad for me?” I asked the service dog, “What is that? It is? Should I put it back on the shelf? Come on boy, you can tell me, do you know of a better, healthier brand of cottage cheese, huh buddy, do you?”
Momentarily, I listened for the dog’s response and reconsidered my purchase. The owner was nowhere within earshot. I desperately wanted to continue my discussion, vet the dog along more serious subjects than just cheese, and ask him a few questions about my anxiety on planes or my fears of my neighbor who has a strange resemblance to Lurch on the Addams Family, but suddenly the service dog scampered off as dogs are want to do, to a lady giving out free samples of Vienna sausages in aisle number four.
I took a breath. With this upsurge in public dogism, I began to get concerned about dogs being man’s best friend. In less than twenty-four hours, I had had two encounters with “service dogs,” whose owners were nowhere within calling distance should they suddenly feel hungry, angry, lonely, or tired, like the rest of us. service. That’s when I decided to call a friend of mine at the zoo, an animal expert to check on how they handle service dog attendance and behavior.
“Well,” the young lady representative answered, “By law, service dogs are allowed, but we don’t recommend owners walk their dogs past the Big Cat or Gorilla House.
“Why is that?” I asked.
“It seems to stir those animals up – a lot. Animals in zoos are used to a routine, and the presence of a dog can be upsetting. They see the dog as a threat to their regular daily habits.”
“Do the zoo animals pace or growl more when they see a service dog?” I asked.
“Yes, they do. And they sometimes they…well…”
I could tell she was hesitating, that there might be a delicate nature to this discussion…
“…urinate directly on the service dog or owner,” she finally said.
“Oh, that would definitely dampen the atmosphere on a zoo trip,” I said. “So, let me get this straight. The gorilla goes potty through its cage, clear across the safety zone and then onto a person and their service dog?”
“It happens more often than you might think. They urinate to mark their territory, and when they feel threatened.”
“So…,” I began again but being a public servant, she had more to tell me. Innocently, I had entered an infomercial on zoo ethics, animal behavior, and urology all rolled up into one.
“Then,” she continued, “the dog will often urinate back or start to bark and then the owner will get mad because his service dog’s being violated, which is, again, against state law. Now we’ve got a territorial battle going on, and a legal issue, with full on barking and beating of chests. The gorilla gets more fired up, maybe sends out a couple more squirts, maybe starts gesturing with some sign language it learned in captivity and runs around diving off the bars and ropes. The situation can escalate quite quickly. We can hear it all over the zoo – quite disruptive, I might add.
“Oh man,” I said. I had not exactly bargained for this conversation. I just wanted to know, with some assurance, that my future trips to the zoo would include more animals, and less service, more wildness, and less domestication. I mean, after all, I thought, I can see a dog anytime, anywhere. I don’t have to go to the zoo for that. If I want to see a dog, I’ll just look around for a stalled Tesla, and I’ll probably find one.
She continued, “It can be a problem, for sure. Obviously, we are all about our animals here, and of course we want to honor and respect diversity, but some of the service dogs don’t even look like dogs. I would put them closer to the reptile house, or even in with the marsupials, but we aren’t allowed to ask for their papers, or any certification.”
“Really? How do they look?” I asked. First impressions mean a lot.
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“Ok, so, we had a lady come in the other day with one of those small miniature Pug dog varieties, you know the ones with the faces that are kind of, well, squashed in where you can’t really tell which end is the front and which is the back. Actually, they resemble another rare animal, the Banderscoot from South America, but anyway, I asked the lady if her dog was a service dog, because to me it seemed too small to be of any service but turns out it was.
The owner had a disorder where she only acknowledges her left side, nothing on the right, so I knew how she was going to vote this fall, but anyway, the disorder permitted her to carry the dog around everywhere she went. Nicest lady you ever met, calm as a summer’s night. But her little service dog? Not so much. It was a nervous wreck, shaking like a leaf, like it had been through some kind of intense aroma therapy. Probably thought it was going to end up a meal here in the zoo, I don’t know. Maybe the lady felt better having the dog there, but the dog seemed like it was going through its own private hell, kind of like a mouse at a cat conference, you know?”
I silently pondered her words. My entire concept of a zoo was going out the window. Still, my curiosity was peaked.
“Yea, I can see that,” I said politely. “So, what did you do about that? Did you ask the lady to leave? Or mention how nervous the dog looks, or give the dog a valium or what?”
“No, I offered her the services of our pet day care center,” the curator said, rather nonchalantly, “where her dog could relax with other dogs in the care of a loving service person.
“A service person?” I asked again. “I didn’t know such a thing existed. Are there both kids and pets in this service dog service center?”
“Yes, there are. We do occasionally put kids and service dogs together, but normally we have a separate space for kids, right next to our petting zoo.
“So, let me get this straight. You have a petting zoo, a day care for kids and a day care for service animals.”
“That is correct, but it’s a thin line sometimes. Last week one of our employees wasn’t thinking straight and threw a bucket of veggies over the fence for the petting animals. The kids at the day care thought it was snack time and reached through the fence, thinking it was their snack time. The service animals, thinking the children were in some kind of harm, went military on them.”
What do you mean, like a feeding frenzy?” I asked, staring to put a stick of gum in my mouth, then thought better of it.
“Well, yea. The service dogs weren’t having it. They are there for service you know, the good of the cause, Semper Fi and all. They weren’t going to just sit by and watch the kids get their snacky-poos taken by a bunch of petting zoo animals, so a couple of them went on the attack, and pulled a couple of gerbils through the wire and ate them. Right on the spot.
“Yikes, I’m not a gerbil fan, but that seems a bit harsh.”
“Can you imagine the chaos? I think any number of state and federal regulations were broken too. One minute you’re just a little kid eating the carrot somebody threw to you, and the next minute you’re watching a harrowing episode of Wild Kingdom in living color right in front of you. No Marlin Perkins either. It was nightmare.”
“Were they all ok?” I asked, on the edge of my seat. I loved Wild Kingdom as a kid.
“Oh gosh, no. We had to bring in a pet psychologist. The Yoga goats weren’t right for a year. The gerbils that did survive also needed counseling for a while, and I believe finally underwent some kind of physical therapy in one of those little miniature Ferris wheels.”
“It’s a zoo out there,” I added.
“It is, and we all need to do our part,” she added rather quietly. I was nodding in agreement, and she was too – I could feel it – on the other end of the phone. Somewhere in the zoo, off in the distance, l could hear one of the big cats roaring for help, but my zoo friend and expert heard me open my cottage cheese container, the 2% kind, which was completely covered with small, pointy teeth marks.