I was perusing the Mail Online this evening, as I often do, and clicked, as is my wont, on all the animal-related stories. Here's a doozy: they ran a feature on a Tumblr blog devoted to 'dogshaming', where people post photos of their dogs along with signs written in the first person describing (or 'confessing to') whatever 'crime' the dog in question has committed.
I'm not saying I didn't find any of them funny - the dog who pukes under the bed looks like a lad, and I like the one about humping the cat - but scrolling down a page of these images began to feel more and more unpleasant. The problem was that the signs were not always celebrations of the fundamental wack-ness of dogs. They were accusations written in character but expressing the frustration of owners who seem to see behaviour that is either natural (eating everything they can get hold of) or the result of poor training as genuinely shameful. But dogs have no shame, only submissive responses to disapproval.
Look at the site if you think I'm exaggerating: there is one dog that is shamed for destroying carpets when left alone - this is a well known symptom of anxiety and boredom. There is a dog that is obviously unhappy whose sign reads 'I like peeing on everything'. That is another classic symptom of anxiety and fear.
These pictures are posted as jokes but many of them depict attitudes to animals that are potentially if not actually abusive. I like animal pictures, I like dogs, I like the Daily Mail (yeah, shoot me) but seeing this just made me think more than ever that there should be legal processes in place to make pet ownership less easy to walk into. A dog is a dog and it cannot be publicly humiliated by having its picture online. The desire of some owners to revenge themselves in this way on dependent animals is the real exhibit in the dogshaming gallery. And it's not funny.
Addendum: the twat who runs this blog has put up a message encouraging viewers not to 'waste [their] breath' on criticising the premise of the site. 'Shaming people for shaming dogs is a tad ironic, no?' sayeth the twat. I don't think he/she has a very strong grasp on the location of the irony in this case.
