What’s worth more, a dog or a child?
“A child is not more important than a dog” a dog owner was recalled as having asserted in a newspaper story on the Brewster dog ban controversy.
OK, I’m going to come right out and say it: a child is more important than a dog.
Do we really need a national referendum on this question?
When I say a child is worth more than a dog, I don’t intend an objective judgment on relative merits. Hey, everybody knows dogs are much more devoted, loyal, and generally loveable than people, lacking many of the more vicious habits and inclinations of humans and considerable inconveniences of children.
Indeed, from a godlike perspective all creatures are equally legitimate and valuable parts of the big picture, including not only humans and dogs, but rats, EEE-infected mosquitoes and Lyme disease ticks.
But a godlike perspective is not available to us (some would say doesn’t exist) and so what I mean is that to us humans a child is worth more. Or ought to be. And , if we really have to think twice about it we’re in trouble as a species. There would be something wrong with feeling as bad about 20 dogs getting mowed down by a lunatic as about the child victims of the Newtown massacre.
The dog ban controversy makes clear that we could use some ground rules, some values clarification, as background for frequent dog/human problems in this and other towns. But those rules would have to start with agreement that for human beings human beings come first. The least prepossessing child, even a grownup human being, is more important than the cutest dog.
Even if we could agree on that, it wouldn’t eliminate the dog issue. The judge’s decision that to be legal the ban would have to apply equally to all public parks doesn’t help a whole lot. A significant portion of the humans in town own dogs so they have to be accommodated.
“Keeping dogs leashed at the beach is like taking children to the playground and telling them they can’t play on the swings and slides. … Dogs that are confined and unsocialized develop serious behavior problems,” wrote a dogowner to the paper some time back. Even non -owners recognize that dogs are happiest and probably healthiest when running free. But it’s also true that when they run free dogs will hassle people, if only by being overly friendly.
What’s best for dogs (and their owners if they are completely identified with their dogs) is often in conflict with what’s best for humans (at least of the non-dogowning sort).
“The dogs had their day in court, and they won.” So starts the Time’s story on the courtroom overturn of the ban on dogs in Brewster’s Drummer Boy park. In this case it would certainly seem that dogs are more important than humans, children or adults. Despite 22 dog/human incidents reported, bites, feces not retrieved, admissions that the leash law is often flouted, dogs and people are back to sharing territory in that park. Dog owners rejoice, seeing only justice done. Back to hassles, bites, feces, off-leash dogs.
The idea of a shared territory such as Drummer Boy Park clearly doesn’t work. What would work starts with the hard admission that dogs (and their owners) and non-dog owning people don’t mix well.
Given the reality of dogs and people, what works is segregation. What Brewster needs is a dedicated dog park. Let the dogs run free, let that park have the best fertilized grass in town. Let non- dog owners be free from dogs.
Given the nature of this issue, whatever board ends up deciding Brewster’s dog/human future, might have a problem since all members would have to recuse themselves because of bias, both those who own dogs and those who don’t.
Everyone has a dog in this fight, including those who don’t have a dog.
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