Dog attacks, hamsters and peacocks

I’m not sure how to respond to this, published in the Washington Post last week. It’s a horrible story about an “emotional support” pit bull that attacked a 5-year-old girl in an airport.

And then it gets weird in a way I did not see coming at the beginning of the story. I’m not sure what to say about it, so I’m just going to leave this here. From the Post story …

The support-animal shenanigans — and tragedies — have not been limited to dog bites. One service dog, a golden retriever named Eleanor Rigby, gave birth to puppies at a terminal in Tampa in June, though people didn’t complain very much about that. In sad news, an emotional-support hamster named Pebbles was flushed down the toilet by its owner in February 2018 after Spirit Airlines informed the student she could not take the pet with her on the flight from Baltimore. Another man got angry at United Airlines for denying Dexter, his Instagram-famous emotional-support peacock, a seat on the plane from Newark, even though he had purchased a ticket for the bird.

2 thoughts on “Dog attacks, hamsters and peacocks”

Pat_H says:

March 9, 2019 at 9:23 am

Have you seen the Beaverton (Canadian Onion) article on aircraft and emotional support whales? Worth looking up, if you’ve missed it.

It’s difficult to believe that a species as numerous as our own, and which in earlier eras lived in a state on the constant edge of violence, is really so fragile as to require all these emotional support critters.

On the other hand, if we really do, it says something about the tragedy of removing ourselves from a world in which animals were so common in every day life.

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Al R says:

March 9, 2019 at 7:01 pm

I could use some “emotional support” reading about this BS, just to keep from saying what’s really on my mind…

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