I fell into a bit of a funk today and I was looking through the flower photos, and Maria said, “wow, they were just out there two weeks ago. Don’t forget the flowers.” It’s true, they were in the back yard just day ago, and now they are gone, and things are browning up. As a photographer, I’m looking for new stuff, new ways of catching color. I better get on it. November is not my favorite month.

Frieda

  
   The dog rescue movement didn’t really exist in American until roughly a generation ago. Like other sub-cultures in the human-animal sphere, it says much about our society. We used to adopt dogs, and noone paid all that much attention to how they were treated. What Michael Vick did wasn’t even illegal until recently.
  Dog food wasn’t even sold until the 1950’s – they ate garbage – and the idea people might spend thousands of dollars on canine medical care would have been unimaginable.
  Rescuing a dog is a wonderful thing to do. I have two such dogs, and have had others. In many segments of our society, people believe “rescuing” a dog is the only morally acceptable approach to getting one, as so many are in need. Many rescue groups travel all over the country – especially to the South – to search out and bring back dogs in need of rescue. Tens of thousands of people work in this movement, one of the most interesting sub-cultures in the animal-human sphere.
  I have given up using the term on my dogs, because in my case I believe I was using the idea to make myself look and feel good. Izzy doesn’t care what he is called, and I do not believe seeing dogs as piteous or abused does them any particular good, even though it makes us feel good about ourselves.
  The emotional atmosphere surrounding dogs and cats, especially when it involves “rescue,” a much more loaded term than the old-fashioned one, “adoption,” is intensified by the view of them as rescued creatures. It shades our lives with them, and the emotions surrounding companion animals are already so complex that psychologists and therapists are getting interested. Many thousands of dogs in America are on medication for depression and anxiety, and many people feel enormous anxiety about training them, leaving them at home, or recovering from their loss.
  And I get a little uncomfortable when I see all those “Dog Therapy” vests, scarves, bumper stickers, and accessories. Announcing it sometimes seems as important as doing it.
  The part of the explosive rescue phenomenon that interests me is what it says about our culture, our society. Many dogs are in need of rescue. But there is, of course, no people rescue movement, nobody to sweep in and re-home us when we lose our jobs, run out of money, are fending off banks and credit card companies, reclaiming our homes from floods and storms, or need money for expensive health care procedures. It is not a controversial notion that Americans spend billions of dollars on animal health care while nearly half of the children in the country don’t have any.
  The two things are connected, of course. We don’t do a very good job of connecting with each other, and we need unconditional love and the sense that we can step outside of ourselves and rescue something.
  Dogs are fortunate that the rescue movement exists.
  But it is always honest, I think, to remember that we do it for us as well, that we are rescuing something inside of us also.