Laughing and Cringing at "the Fancy"

Stories about the lunatic fringe in the world of dogs are carefully cut. They leave out the vast majority of average people who have one or two reasonably well-behaved and well-loved dogs that are fed bagged kibble from a bowl, and who sleep at the foot of the bed.

They leave out the working gun dogs, the working police dogs, the guide dogs for the blind, the side-kick dogs owned by lonely long-distance truckers, and the therapy dogs at nursing homes.

Boring!

Television shows these days are rarely about presenting news; they're about presenting entertainment.

We want freaks and lunatics and odd people, and we want blood and horror and fast cars.

We want explosions, mafia bosses, naked girls, and detectives who solve who-dunnits.

We want canned laughter and stupidity on parade.

Stupidity on parade is not too hard to find with dogs.

Let's face it, there's no shortage of nut jobs who dress up their dogs, who consult dog psychics, and who even plan weddings and birthday parties for their "fur babies."

It's to laugh, and that's exactly what they do in a "A Different Breed," as you can tell from the Sky1 trailer shown in the U.K. back in March.

Here in America, HBO is taking a different turn. HBO aims to shock and outrage us with dog "stores of fear, loss and betrayal?"

In the first part of "One Nation Under Dog," to be shown tomorrow night, we will be presented with a man who has a massive sense of canine entitlement, and never mind if his large Rhodesian Ridgebacks are, quite literally, ripping the ears of the neighbor's kids.

For this fellow, his dogs are all about his personal property rights, and canine and community responsibility never much enter the picture.

The second segment is about puppy mills and kill shelters. The producers have decided to film several dogs being killed on camera -- adult dogs and puppies alike. Will they mention that killing these dogs was a choice and not a requirement? Will they give a nod to the No Kill movement? Will the producers talk about how the American Kennel Club depends on puppy mill registrations to keep dog shows going? We shall see.

Color me skeptical already.  You see, the canine kill numbers given in the trailer (see below) are simply wrong, and have been for years. Does this documentary film-maker not know that shelter killings have fallen like a rock? Will that fact even be mentioned, or does that bit of good news get in the way of the shock story they want to tell? We shall see.

The third and final segment in the HBO show is about conspicuous canine consumers -- the folks who shell out big bucks for doggie funeral plots, and who will spend jaw-dropping amounts of money to get their dead pets cloned, even as other dogs are being shoveled into the ovens down at the local shelter. These people will look like complete fools after the first two segments, and no doubt that is the idea. An easy hit.

I am told this HBO documentary closes with two feel-good stories about canine adoption. Nice, but will the documentary point out that more than half of the dogs being killed in U.S. shelters today are Pit Bulls, and that most people looking for a dog do not want this breed, and cannot (apparently) handle this breed when they do get it? Will there be talk about the breed-blind pit bull pushers who sabotage every effort to step in and stop the killing even as they ignore the fact that a million Pit Bull deaths a year is very much a breed specific problem? We shall see.