Friday 7 June 2019

My Thoughts on Therapy Animals

Here's the thing....up until the late 1990s.....a couple of years after 'Desert Storm', some therapists came to this decision or idea, that therapy dogs/animals were the next best angle at getting to a person's 'problems'.  Scientifically proven?  No.....it's just that people react to this odd stimulus and it's a positive trend. 

After this trend started, I didn't think much about it until one day at the Pentagon....they had this incident occur where two therapy dogs meet up on the grounds, and got into some 'fight'.  After that, there was a review of this whole therapy dog regulation there, and people started to ask question about the science to this.  Other than doctors saying it had positive things.....there was no real science to it.

So my theory is this, and it leads to three central elements:

1.  Just in general, folks crave someone who cares.  Oddly enough, a dog fills that void in different ways.  The dog wants to be your 'buddy' or friend.  The dog wants you to be happy.  The dog wants you to walk them or brush them.  The dog wants 'happy-snacks'.  And the dog is pretty sure that you will house them in comfort (maybe give them the $29 dog-blanket, and allow them access to heated or cooled housing). 

2.  Lets just go ahead and admit this.....dogs are probably better companions than someone of the opposite sex.  Dogs never have a bad day.  Dogs don't whine about the boss.  Dogs don't get speeding tickets and pout about the $150 fine.  Dogs don't make scheduling demands about church-time, visits to their relatives, or suggest vacations to Aruba.

3.  Finally, dogs can perceive a bad day, and come up to you with a stick or ball, and you spend half-a-hour getting that frustration out/gone. 

I'm not going to say therapy dogs are the essential answer (you are simply swapping your lifestyle from one direction to another).  Certainly, the dog is better than having therapy burro, or therapy elephant.  But in the end, you might be better off with both a dog, and a spouse/GF/lady-friend. 

3. 

The Border Story

It's not a front-page story, and it'll be at least six to ten weeks before the networks start to really discuss this.  But over the two weeks.....a minimum of 500 African folks (we aren't talking US-blacks, but pure and absolute people from Africa) have been caught at the US border with Mexico.  If you do the general statistical game, you can figure at least 2,000 others made it safely through the border. 

How?  No one says much yet.  My guess is that someone in Africa (within the smuggling operations) found two or three older model freighters, and hatched up this dollars-for-a-seat idea (taking a guess of $2,000 a seat) for a two-week voyage across the Atlantic.  They probably have a deal to land in Belize or Guatemala....cash to the local port manager....dock for 24 hours and refuel....then release off 1,500 to 2,000 'tourists'.  The next day, they leave for Africa.  Within four weeks, they will be back with another load. 

All of this is dependent upon Mexico allowing non-Latin American folks to transit through and leave the country within X-number of days.  If these folks were stranded, it presents problems, and likely increases tensions among the neighbors. 

Making a big mess into a bigger mess?  Yes.  You could be talking about a dozen ships operating like this by the end of the year, and 10,000 Africans crossing the border weekly, on top of whatever number of Latinos were doing it before.

Where will they be heading once across the border?  Unknown.  I would take a guess that it'll be metropolitan type cities....like Atlanta, Chicago, Baltimore, LA, and Miami.  Homeless?  Probably so, but homeless in the US is better than staying in Africa.  But here it gets interesting.....if you already had several million undocumented Latinos on the black-market of jobs, and you separate this out so that there are several hundred-thousand undocumented Africans also on the black-market job.....won't this whole system end up in chaos and physical violence?  More than likely.