On the (service) doggie wars
A few days ago I was fooling around in Buzzfeed when something caught my eye. It was one of those silly 'can you make it through this post without spending $50.00' listicles that link to a bunch of pointless things that look cute on screen but only add to the clutter out in the real world. I usually don't even bother with those, but this time around the picture was that of a dog wearing a service dog vest, and yes, among the items they were promoting was a fake 'service dog' vest. That gave rise to a rather lively comments section that was far more interesting than the so-called article, and that comments section in turn got me thinking, especially because when I came across that debate I was already looking into the impact of the changes in the role animals play in people's lives over the...