Don't Adopt A Greyhound! There, I said it! Or, Clean Up On Aisle Seven

Seems to me that there are two kinds of people in this world: The ones that make messes,  and the ones that clean them up.

Not so very long ago an entire building simply collapsed under its own weight.  Four hundred dead and they’re still pulling poor souls out of the debris,  alive and dead. 

Why?  Because you and me want to save a nickel on our socks and tightie whities at Sam’s Club.  Who’s cleaning that mess up?  The unscrupulous landlord who knew there were cracks in the walls but still let the people work in the sweat shops inside?  Wal-Mart?  The fashion designers who looked the other way at the production meeting when the resident troll from Finance said they can make another penny on every pretty printed rag by moving operations from Squalorstan to Abjectsqualorstan where they’d only have to pay the locals a dollar a year?  And if they grease the right toad’s oily palm there,  even that’s negotiable.  My guess?  The first responders and the people of the neighborhood who had friends and family in that hell hole busting their humps for that yearly dollar. 

Why do greyhounds have such a strong P.R. campaign?  Why don’t you see vans on the streets shrink wrapped with  ‘ADOPT A LHASA APSO!’  or  ‘GIVE A SHIH TZU … A GOOD HOME!’  It’s all back story.  Greyhounds are raised by their owners to race,  and race,  and race,  and race until they can’t race any longer,  and then dumped into the shelter market – hands washed.  I suppose it’s better than the alternative.  If these dog racers could,  they would simply take their worn out,  no longer lucrative canine athletes,  who have seven,  eight or maybe even ten more years of life ahead of them,  and toss them into their chipper truck out back.  Feed a dog that can’t race or breed for seven years?  Are you nuts?

How do they get away with it?  YOU.

Behind every unscrupulous capitalist is someone like you,  or me,  a decent human being.  And here’s the rub : Without us they couldn’t exist.  They know that no matter how much damage they cause,  no matter how many people – or animals – they poison or kill or maim – we’ll be there to clean up their mess.  They’re counting on our humanity,  and playing us like a homemade banjo.

When our kids were in kindergarten my wife and I used to tell them how important it was to play fair and share,  their toys and their candy,  even their humanity – as much as we could explain to them what that meant.  Save it to say : ‘Just look out for one another,  okay?’  But … Who knows when it happens?  Maybe it’s the first time they notice us walk by someone cold and hungry on the street and look the other way.  Maybe it’s when they see us screaming obscenities at the ump at their T-Ball game.  And maybe it’s just human nature.  We could never have cold cocked the Neanderthal by being … yuk! …nice. 

“Nature!  Mr.  Allnut,”  Katharine Hepburn decries from the deck of the  ‘The African Queen’  as the smokin’,  beat up old boat chugs along down river,  “is what we’re put here to rise above!” 

But,  can we?  They’re still giving out Nobel Prizes to people who merely turn the other cheek or try to feed and clothe and comfort their neighbor.  Doesn’t that make you want to just SCREAM?

They say  ‘charity begins at home’.  But does it?  We feel all warm and fuzzy walking the greyhound we just saved from the gas chamber,  grinning,  Priusly,  as we,  responsibly,  bend over with our pooper scooper,  but don’t think twice about driving ten miles out of our way to save that nickel on our unmentionables.    

We’re the reason dog racers treat their dogs like a disposable diapers.  We’re the reason landlords send desperate people into desperate buildings. 

“Hey,  where’d y’ get them cool jeans?”

“K-Mart.  Saved a dollar!”

Only cost about four hundred lives.