Owning a rescue dog has its perks. One being that the dog finds a safe home with a loving owner. The other perk is the owner can brag to their friends about owning a rescue dog.
Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s amazing that people want to provide a neglected animal with a nice place to live. I even change the channel when one of those depressing ASPCA commercials with the somber music comes on, because I can’t stand looking at all those sad puppy dog faces. But when someone claims their dog is a rescue, there’s no way to know with any kind of certainty. The alleged rescue dog owner could easily be bluffing to tack on more points to their “I’m a good person” scoreboard and owning a rescue dog is basically the equivalent of a three-point shot.
It’s right up there with being a healthcare worker or Peace Corps volunteer, so there must be a system in place to sniff out any fraudulent claims.
Here are three possible solutions to this problem:
- Make the alleged rescue dog owner carry around a lie detector test.
We shouldn’t have to bear the burden of lugging around a heavy lie detector test all day, only in the event of a run-in with a friend from high school walking their beautifully lush golden retriever. Whoever announces their dog is a rescue must take it upon themselves to prove it by having a government issued, 25-pound lie detector with them at all times. If the owner fails the test and is discovered to be a fraud, there’s no need to terminate them like a Voight-Kampff test would mandate on an android. We’re not living in a Philip K. Dick novel. Instead, just give the deceitful owner a condescending “Really, man?” to guilt trip them after their deceit is uncovered.
2. Stamp barcodes on every rescue dog.
Again, not a Philip K. Dick novel, but barcodes on every rescue dog would surely weed out a lot of frauds. Each shelter would administer the painless barcodes underneath each dog’s ear. This method could raise eyebrows from animal rights groups like PETA, which is why I backed away from the idea of tattoos, and instead I’m going with permanent stamps. That way, if your uncle brings along his new Australian border collie to a family function, and the dog is sporting the lovely feature of a left blue eye and a right brown eye, then you can just lift up its ear to make sure your uncle isn’t peddling pooch propaganda.
3. Bang a couple of frying pans near the dog’s ears to trigger its PTSD.
This is a last resort option since its accuracy is still in dispute. I was under the assumption that the loud sound from the pans clanging might trigger a rescue dog’s PTSD from years of hard living. But I’ve tried this method on three openly professed rescue dogs with the following results: one dog kind of just buried his head, the other dog just stared at me with blank confusion, and the last one humped my leg until completion. Chances are there won’t be any frying pans around, so it helps to carry a backpack filled with pans whenever you’re in a park or on a hiking trail. You know, just on the off chance you have an interaction with an unimportant person in your life accompanied by their so-called “rescue dog.”