Stray Dogs and the Meaning of Freedom and Life

One of the neighborhood characteristics peculiar to Watts is the large amount of stray dogs, and in this particular case, the large amount of dead stray dogs. One day I happened to observe several dead dogs discarded along the side of the road. It’s kind of sad, but then I also have this weird theory, so maybe it’s not so sad. The mornings are the best time to see my theory in action.

As you’re driving down the streets of Watts, you’ll probably be stopped at a light and you’ll glance over and see a stray dog making its way down the street. That dog is trotting along, frenetically smelling trees and bits and pieces of refuse scattered here and there across its path. It has a look of sheer joy; the whole world is open before him. It might be limping and dirty but that dog knows it can go anywhere it wants to, at anytime, and it’s absolutely loving that freedom. So what is the prognosis for such a dog? The answer is not good. It’s probably going to become malnourished, maybe pick up some worms and/or mange, and then die an early and violent death crushed under the wheels of some anonymous speeding car. Common sense would dictate to us that this is no life to live. A more humane scenario would be for that dog to be kept safely behind a fence in some resident’s yard, where it can receive regular meals of nutrition-packed Alpo. But is this really true? I propose a radical, alternate take on this.

What is life anyway? Is life measured by length alone? What kind of life can it really be to remain imprisoned within a caged yard too small to suit your evolutionary, roaming, wild genes, tethered by a rope or chain, left to hunger until by the whims of one’s master it is determined that the time has come to be fed? Or does the essence of life lie in freedom, the freedom to be the master of your own destiny, to roam to your heart’s content, to fend for your own, to live a life more approximate to that afforded to you by nature? If the other slice of life is so much better, why then does a fence need to be put up, why then does a rope need to be noosed around the neck? Sometimes I even see stray dogs happily trotting down the street trailed by the ragged end of a rope chewed or snapped from its anchoring base. Yes, the prognosis for a stray dog includes greater risks and a shortened life span (or dare I say a more natural life span?). Isn’t that, however, what would be expected in the wild? We don’t feel it is inhumane when a wolf suffers through a subfreezing night or when a deer meets an “untimely” death at the mouth of a wolf. That is just the natural course of events. Why then do we feel differently about a stray dog? Maybe the short time of freedom it enjoys as a “stray” is really the time of its life. Just something to consider.