#516 Ratdogs

Last night I had dinner with my son. It was a great opportunity to engage in some heady discussions about our country, politics, and some of the social aberrations we’ve seen come and go in the last few years. It’s always heartening when you see the kid you played Legos with grown up and talking about world events.
But he had one observation that I thought was particularly keen. We had talked earlier about where all the bees were. And he pointed out a similar mysterious disappearance.
Namely, where have all the stewing dogs gone?
He was right. A year or so ago there didn’t seem to be a fashionista on the planet that didn’t have a pint-size Pomeranian peeking from her purse.
You’d go to restaurants and public events and be minding your own business, and suddenly some little ratdog would poke out his head from a lady’s elbow crotch and scare the holy bejesus out of you.
I’m not sure what a bejesus is, but it’s ruined more than one pair of underwear.
So where have they all gone?
As any leg warmer from the eighties or nano-pet from the nineties will tell you, being a high fashion accouterment gives you an effective shelf life of 3 months with the very rich and another 6 months of remainders with the hoi polloi.
I almost never find an excuse to wear my eight-ball-on-the-back, three-colored leather jacket any more.
So if you’re a live Papillon that’s pooped one too many times in your mistress’ Louis Vuitton handbag where does that leave you?
The worry is, they’ve gone the way of alligators and bulimic buffets.
Yep. Down the toilet.
Most ratdogs are the perfect size for flushing. Are there somewhere packs of feral shih-tzus, roaming the sewers, snarling and biting, going canine to canine with real rats? Perhaps having awful fights.
Or is that fights over offal?
Or worse, are they even now on distant deluxe country estates, condemned by their former mistress’ stupidity, desperately trying to claw their way out of the septic drain field?
America, ya gotta love it