Black dogs face pattern of discrimination

Doggedly struggling for equal rights.

Black dogs need an affirmative action program, says a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. Christie Keith writes:

Black may be beautiful, but when it comes to dogs of a darker hue, potential adopters often overlook them -- especially if they're big. … When Petfinder.com, an online database of more than 300,000 adoptable pets, declared August 12 national "Adopt-A-Less-Adoptable-Pet Day," they discovered that finding homes for black dogs, particularly larger ones, was a real problem for their 12,681 member shelters and rescue groups.

Not only color discrimination, but breedism and sizeism!

I have nothing against dogs of any color or size, so long as they have a good disposition. Of course it isn't "fair" to black dogs if adopters prefer blondes. But hang on. The pool of adopters is pretty much fixed in size. For every dog that is taken in petship, another is rejected. So this campaign probably won't issue in more dogs finding homes, which would be worth supporting; it will (if successful) just mean more black dogs being taken in, and more dogs of other colors being left in the shelter.

Dogs don't believe in group rights. They don't understand quotas. They care only about their own situation, and this is a zero-sum game. There is no net benefit to the total corps of dogs awaiting adoption.

So what we have here is social engineering applied to the pet owning population. Score another point for the soft totalitarian state. People can live where they choose (and can afford), but the government can forcibly settle 25 families from Baluchistan, or thousands of "victim" group members, in their midst. If they want or need to rent out part of their house, they cannot choose who they rent to on the basis of … well, anything, really, except maybe the applicant's credit rating, but if the ones with poor credit rating are part of some "protected" group, that may not be a good enough reason.

As of now, there aren't any laws about what color of dog you select for an animal companion, but when there are, California will lead the way. Not because it's good for dogs in general, but because it's good for the power of the government. You need reminding constantly that in statist America, your life choices are not yours to make.

Hendrickson, who had adopted two black dogs before learning about "black dog syndrome," decided to add Cobie to her "black pack."

"They say in your life you will have one dog who is 'the one,'" she told me. "Cobie is my 'one.' He's four years old and a certified therapy dog, and we spend our days helping disadvantaged children learn to read at schools, shelters, youth detention centers. Goes to show what a great dog you can be missing out on by passing up a black dog."

A certified therapy dog?

I never knew there was such a thing. But if some dogs can teach children how to read, they have earned a professional certification. Perhaps we need more dogs and fewer humans leading classes in our public schools.