A Life Finally Fit for a Dog
08 February 2008, 18h35 EST (GMT-5)
https://www.maharaj.org/blog/2008_02_08.shtml
My Menagerie
Click thumbnails for their galleries
Many years ago, when I first returned to Toronto from university, I began contemplating fulfilling a life-long dream and finding myself a dog. On reflection, however, I thought better of it.
I live in a modest apartment in the middle of a city, I thought to myself. There are few parks at hand, I keep long hours at the office, and the opportunities for play and exercise are limited: it simply would not be fair to a dog. It was then that the full horror of my circumstances struck me: I was, quite literally, living a life to which I would not subject a dog.
The march of technology has since made it possible for me frequently to work from a farm in Uxbridge, and over the past ten years, my golden retriever Willow and I have been joined by Miaowser the cat, Chance the horse, to say nothing of miscellaneous humans.
Equally, however, technology has also strangely extended my menagerie's world. As a lark, I gave each of my animals a page at my Facebook site, and they have since been accumulating "friends" from around the planet at an extraordinary pace. It makes me wonder what they get up to when I am not around.
Willow's Dogbook
Miaowser's Catbook
Chance's Horsebook
Chance at MyHorse
The (inevitable) day when their virtual social lives eclipse my own will, I suspect, be the cue for me once again to re-evaluate the circumstances of my life.
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