The bombing of the Boston Marathon has made me want to get a Lab. I love Labrador Retrievers. I raised them as boy on our farm. Excellent noses. We mostly hunted the wily ring-necked pheasant with them. Labradors are beautiful, majestic-looking animals. We had black ones, yellow ones and chocolate-colored ones. They got along great. No racism among dogs.
I miss having a Lab. My family and I live in a typical American sub-division. My house is about eighteen feet from my neighbors and my back yard is pretty filled up with a kid’s play set and a trampoline. Not really enough room to be fair to a 90 pound Lab, unless I were to get up and walk the thing every day. I firmly refuse to do that. I watch many of my neighbors do it. They walk around carrying little baggies of dog do-doo. No thanks.
Since I believe it’s good for kids to be around dogs, we have two dogs in our home. These dogs virtually never leave it. They crap in a certain area on disposable sanitary pads. They don’t need to be walked. They don’t shed. They have no reason to go outside. They really never leave the house. The two of them combined weigh about 18 lbs. They are Havanese. They are as cute as any little fuzzies can be. They sit on your lap and mostly just lay around. My daughter puts them in her doll stroller and they comply without complaint.
Havanese are descendents of Cuban immigrants, so I enjoy calling them our little Commie dogs. They are true socialists, weakened to the point that most any cat with its front claws intact, could probably take them. However, they are still canines and thus have their pride over cats.
The recent bombing has not startled me the way that 9-11 did, but it has given me a sinking feeling. The sinking feeling that there is almost nothing we can do to stop this kind of terrorist attack. America is chock full of what they call a
“soft target“. Those soft targets, like the Boston Marathon, are what make America awesome!
How would we ever really combat these kinds of hits? It will be tough. Israel has done it, but with nowhere near 100% success. So I feel a deep sense of sadness as the terrorists take a little more of the America that I grew up with. I’m filled with a hopeless anger and have nowhere to focus it. What do we do?
Thankfully, we can still carry guns and protect ourselves, but that won’t stop a bomb in a backpack. I wondered what I could do to protect my family. Then I realized it might be time to move to the country and get myself a Labrador Retriever. I could get my new Lab trained to be a bomb sniffer and then take him everywhere we go. He would always be watching for any terrorists up to no good. If he sniffs out some dude with his hat on backwards and a backpack with a pressure cooker in it, then my pup and I could snap to action, game on terrorist!
Immediately after having this brilliant idea, I realized that my beloved government would probably try to outlaw the private ownership of my new bomb sniffer. Or at the very least force me to license my new dog in some kind of registry. Of course, just for the sake of keeping track of him. They wouldn’t need a registry to confiscate my dog if they deemed it necessary, would they? They’re from the government and they are here to help, right? My dog’s special skills might even cause the FBI to classify him as an assault dog and charge me much higher registration fees. Maybe even decide if I’m allowed to own him at all.
