Your dog doesn't love you
" It’s not about stigmatizing or legislating dog owners. It’s about our awareness of what we are choosing to do. " As I drove along a busy, four-lane street in Boulder, Colorado, one summer afternoon over a decade ago, I saw a young man and his dog standing on the median at a traffic light. By the man’s age and appearance, I guessed him to be one of the countless people who camp on the National Forest land around Boulder, especially during the summer. They come into the city to panhandle for enough money to buy what supplies they need. They often have dogs with them. This particular man stood facing traffic, and he held a piece of corrugated cardboard with the words “Homeless, Hungry, Anything helps” scrawled on it in crude, black letters written with magic marker. He had two well-worn and overstuffed packs with him. Lying against them was a medium-sized, mixed-breed dog. Each time the stoplight turned red, another round of drivers reached out their windows to hand him money.