by Richard A. Hall

Created on: November 12, 2008

Let's get one thing straight at the outset: life ain't like the movies.

In the movies nobody ever uses the bathroom, unless they have hilarious bowel problems. Nobody ever hiccups, except under the influence of a magic spell or to set up a shock later on that cures them. Nobody forgets what they were going to say, unless they're so consumed by love or lust that there are no words.

And cute dogs are just that - cute. Even if their foibles are put on display front and center - Beethoven, I'm looking at you - they're shown as light-hearted comic things. And at the end of the movie, maybe a couple of hours later, everything's worked out fine, everybody loves the dog, and the audience goes home happy...

... Until Junior pipes up, "Mommy, I want one!"

Here's the problem. Real dogs are not as predictable as movie dogs. They are, well, real. They're messy. They're self-willed. They get sick, and yes, they die. On the way maybe they soil your carpet, or destroy your heirlooms, or bite your neighbor. And you find out all sorts of things that real dogs need when you have them in your real life that the movies somehow skipped over.

This would be dismaying, if dogs were just rather haphazardly designed toys, and you could take them back to the shop the day after Christmas and exchange them for a nice restful jigsaw puzzle instead. We'd learn a lesson, hopefully, about the difference between real and make-believe. We'd think a little more about our future purchases, maybe. But we'd not have any real consequences to deal with - and we wouldn't visit any on the dog.

Unfortunately, a dog is a living breathing creature. People will tell you that dogs are just dumb animals, and when they tell you this you will know they do not own a dog, or if they do that they do not care for it as they should. Dogs do have emotional as well as physical needs, they do have personalities, they do demand adjustments from you and they do not lend themselves to being thrown away. The emotional attachment your little boy forms immediately to the puppy that looks just like that one in the movie is not just a displaced appreciation of the movie-dog; it's also an actual appreciation of the real-dog. This means that when you bring a dog home you're not just messing with its heart, but those of your family.

In an ideal world, everybody would think of the consequences before they commited to bringing a dog home. In an ideal world, they'd think carefully about everything they brought home. They'd consider ongoing

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