Looking at the World with Dog-Colored Glasses
Last night I realized something about myself. I was watching the movie, SALT, starring Angelina Jolie as a CIA/Russian double agent. It was a fun movie, full of action and suspense…but while Salt was on the run from the CIA and on an apparent assassination mission, I found myself wondering over and over again whether she was going to go back for her dog. 
Crazy, right? What kind of a cuckoo worries about something like that in the plot of a movie?
That's when I realized: I'm a person who views the world with dog-colored glasses.
I am always honing in on a dog.
When I heard about a family member having a rough time with anger recently, I asked if the dog was OK. I was answered in a tone that people use to talk to senile old people. Like I was the most ridiculous person on the planet. But it's a fact: pets are often the first to suffer in violent domestic situations. And when humans are busy creating fear and drama, who is looking out for the family dog?
When I saw the horrible footage of Hurricane Katrina, and all the people who died trapped in their homes, all the people who lost everything they had; I felt compassion – I cursed the slow rescue effort, and I cursed the shelters that wouldn't let people bring their pets, because I was worried about the dogs that had been left behind when people fled. I agonized over the dogs left chained in their yards with no means of escape. I worried that the pets that were rescued would not be reunited with their owners.
When I recently heard a story on the news about a house fire where the people and dog were rescued by firefighters, I was frustrated when the reporter didn't report on how the dog was doing.
Maybe it's silly. I'm sure other people see it as a character flaw. But I won't apologize for it. I see the dogs, and I see them everywhere.
I'm not really sure when these goggles got glued to my face, but Ken Foster wrote about it in The Dogs Who Found Me…how some people see dogs where others do not. A dog can be right in plain view and be unnoticed by a dozen people…but then there are the people like Ken and like me. The ones with the Doggles.
