David Sedaris on dogs and the people who obsess over them

I don't get dogs anymore, don't understand why they need to be in grocery stores and on airplanes. You never see them tied up outside shops or restaurants nowadays. They have to be inside , no different from people. I read a column in The New York Times about a woman who had taken her dog to a play area in a park. It was in heat, and upon their arrival it was mounted and impregnated by another dog. Now the woman was suing the owner of the male dog, insisting that he pay for half the pregnancy care, plus half the expenses for the puppies' first six weeks. The guy said no to the above, but offered to pay for the woman's dog to have an abortion. This, she turned down, saying it was against her religion. A dog abortion is against her religion? I thought when I read that. There were hundreds of comments accompanying the article: "What did you think would happen when you brought a female in heat to the park?" some people asked. Me, though, I was still stuck on the woman's conditions: Paying the pregnancy costs and for the first six weeks of puppy care? Little, Brown & Co. When I was a child, my family had collies, and when the female, Dutchess, had a litter of six in our garage, it cost us exactly zero dollars and zero cents. We didn't know she was pregnant until the first one came out of her, so there was no pre-natal care. When it looked like one of the newborns would die, my mother popped it into a warm oven for a while and it was fine after that. …