A Comparison of Consequences: Injuries from Dogs vs. Injuries from Literally Anything Else

Another guest blog by LuLu the Alaskan Husky

Dog friends, I come to you in peace. Unless, of course, you want my black spiky chew toy. In that case, peace you will not get, but a piece of me you almost certainly will.

Ahem. I digress.

Dog friends, we need to talk about something dreadfully serious. Our humans, bless their wonderful hearts and bless their hands full of delicious salmon snacks, have a huge failing that might affect me, or you, or any of our four-legged brethren. This failing is one of judgement and bias. Now, now, now, friends, don’t get me wrong: dogs also have failings of judgement and bias. A friend of mine used to find sticks that resembled snakes to be terrifying! Obviously sticks should be ignored, as they are not actually scary, so this was erroneous in the extreme. (As an aside, I do see the Spaniel Thing chasing sticks and bringing them to the human. Being a husky I turn my nose up at this behaviour, but then again, I spend an inordinate amount of time chewing on a black spiky rubber ball, so perhaps let’s just say “we all have our foibles” and leave it at that.)

Back to humans.

Humans, like all living things, get injured. Like all the time. Like, all the time. They stub their toes, they scratch themselves on various sharp objects, they cut their fingers as they are chopping carrots (which are delicious and don’t let anyone tell you different, BooBoo). Sometimes humans even break their limbs doing things like skiing or hiking. They burn themselves on hot stoves, they burn off their eyebrows with Bunsen burners whilst learning science, and…I mean, the list goes on, my friends. The list goes on. Humans aren’t inured to injury, of course. But they typically take injury in stride. A band-aid, a cast, a complaint, a few Tylenol, and they’re off to the races. Well, they take it in stride if they caused the injury themselves, by walking or playing hockey or existing or whatnot. This is not so when a dog causes even a very minor injury, my canine compatriots. Not even close.

Let’s compare, shall we?

Injury one: A scratch to the face.

Condition A: Caused by a branch whilst walking through a wooded glen.

Consequence A: A mournful selfie, a bit of polysporin.

Condition B: Caused by a joyful doggo’s paw during play.

Consequence B: Physical punishment, vet trip, calling in an uncredentialled dog trainer who guarantees results. Several terrifying-sounding diagnoses, including “over-arousal”, and a trip back to the breeder.

Injury two: A large bruise on the back of the leg.

Condition A: Caused by a tumble, a trip, a tumultuous travel down a short flight of stairs, perhaps after a tipple (or two).

Consequence A: A selfie (how do they manage to get their legs and faces in the same photo, one wonders? It amazes), some unproven plant-based salve, a good story for the supper table.

Condition B: Caused by a joyful dog pulling hard on leash if another dog walks by.

Consequence B: Physical punishment, sudden and sour refusal to provide the only exercise some of our canine compatriots ever get, and the human spending quality time on the internet finding ever-more horrifying “training collars”.

Injury three: A small bleeding wound.

Condition A: Caused by a slip o’ the knife whilst chopping carrots for a lovely stew.

Consequence A: A selfie, a band-aid, a bit of polysporin.

Condition B: Caused by a dog who is clearly terrified of strangers but whom a stranger, nonetheless, approaches and pats.

Consequence B: Death. We dogs literally die for this.

My furry friendlies, I tell you this in hopes that you’ll leave this article open on your human’s device (in the bathroom works, I’ve found, they’re a bit of a captive audience there). Humans judge injury-by-dog using such a fantastically unreal metric that some good self-examination on their parts is well past due. Obviously, when real harm is being done, we canines stand beside our humans in making hard decisions: cellphones shouldn’t explode, insulation shouldn’t cause cancer, and the rare dog who is—by a sad quirk of circumstance or through sad decisions made by breeders—terrified of and aggressive towards people and who also bites with maiming force must not be given any opportunity to do this. And obviously, we enjoy training (oooooh, the delicious noms! And the human, gazing upon us with joy! Such delirious fun) to help the human’s behaviour and our behaviour fit more smoothly, like a comfortable jigsaw puzzle; to replace the pulling and pawing with companionable promenading and companionable play.

But small injuries are small injuries, no matter how they are caused. We dogs should be given the same shrug of the shoulders that is directed towards playground equipment, kitchen knives, hammers, door frames, team-mates, porch stairs, cats, soccer balls, shrubbery, and hell, paper.

Shouldn’t we?