The Dog Jones Industrial

I don’t know if it’s true for the rest of the country, but where I live the dog is an economic indicator. First, let us define the dog.

You have foo foo dogs. They’re the ones that are balls of fluff or small hot dogs with legs. They waddle along on their leashes, feet moving rapidly, almost cartoonishly, to keep up with their owners. I know, I made it up, don’t send the spelling police after me. They serve no purpose with the exception of being doted on by their owners and producing a byproduct that, so far, no one has been able to find a market for. On top of that, in some neighborhoods, you actually have to pick said byproduct up after they produce it.

Then you have the working dogs. Since there are no sheep and few goats in my area and the cows are in the union, which doesn’t allow them to work with dogs, they’ve never had jobs in the first place — talk about an economic crisis. I had two dogs that fit into this category and they have never seemed to mind not having a job. In fact, we never let them in on the fact they are dogs at all. I’m glad they’ll never read this; it would be a big shock. They are relegated to being large foo foo dogs and mostly lounge around in the air conditioning and bark at the occasional squirrel through the window. Being perpetually unemployed is tough.

Then you’ve got the guard dogs. They run around your yard and bark at anything that annoys them, basically annoying you and your neighbors in the process. Too many of them have jobs as lookouts and sentinels for drug dealers, a job which continues to prosper, no matter the state of the economy.

Then there are hunting dogs. They run through the woods, hot on the tail of some animal scared out of its mind while rednecks with guns are hot on theirs. Wait a minute, my cousin Clem and I do that.

Then you have the most rapidly expanding kind of dogs, the homeless ones. They roam the streets of your neighborhood and strow out your trash. I know, I know, but I swear that word is in the Georgia edition of the dictionary. They harass foo foo dogs while they attempt to produce the product all dogs produce, which has no discernible market. They bark, chase and even bite at you when you try to take out your trash and scare the mess out of you when you go outside in the dark. They are the first sign that the economy is bad because their numbers grow rapidly when it goes south.

Dogs have it bad when the economy slows down. Their treat selections are the first to suffer. Ours shrunk from a large cabinet in our kitchen to one shelf in that same cabinet. If the truth be known, they didn’t lose anything and their treats are fresher than before. They noticed a slight difference in the temperature of their environment because we’ve adjusted our thermostat to save on electricity. Looking at them on the couch, which they actually believe, in their hearts, they own, I’ve never noticed they’ve noticed at all. They still get to watch Wheel of Fortune every night.

They’ve did have to deal with a few extra fleas, since the flea meds get stretched a little further apart, but scratching fleas give them something to do as they are unemployed anyway.

Even the hunting dogs are getting a break. With the price of gas being more per gallon than beer, hunters don’t actually go hunting, but hang out at the watering hole nearest their homes and drink. The dogs lay around in the back of the truck and their main function is now to be an alibi for their owners. If you asked the wives, they would probably tell you they’re glad the husbands aren’t barking in the house as the dogs bark in the yard.

I guess dogs really aren’t economic indicators at all, just dogs. No matter how much I like mine, they all have only one thing in common — you put money in one end and, well, you know what comes out the other.