You guys? I am feeling peevish. It’s the usual stuff. Work hassles, other hassles, seeing pictures of the new Rose Garden, reading the Kennedy Center list of honorees, and then this:
In the World as Ruled by Nance, there would be no “K-9 officers,” which is copaganda so prevalent most people don’t even notice it anymore. A “K-9 officer” is a police dog, and that’s what they’d be called in my world. I don’t know what bugs me more: canine rendered as K-9, or a dog being called an officer. They’re not officers; I don’t care if they wear a little outfit and a badge. They’re tools used by human officers in the course of their duties, but calling them officers themselves is as dumb as declaring a police car to be an automotive officer.
What irritates me as much as anything is having to pause at this point and declare my love for dogs. Of course I love dogs. Most dogs are better than many humans, and disliking dogs is a red flag so glaring I think it should be disqualifying for holding high office in this stupid country, and yeah, you know who I’m talking about.
For a while now, I’ve tried to stop anthropomorphizing the animals in my life. I may talk to them like they’re human, but I know they’re not, and that’s what’s great about them. Truly appreciating animals is striving to understand them at their level, in their true nature, not the one we’ve imposed upon them.
Some years ago, a stupid superintendent in the local schools allowed the local police to do an unannounced contraband sweep of both high schools, using cops from their own and other departments and, of course, their dogs. It served as a training exercise for the police, and a terrorizing event for the students. A lawyer later told me it also yielded a case for him, when one of the dogs “alerted,” as they say, on a car in the parking lot driven by a girl whose father became his client. The father was an FBI agent, and his daughter was a multi-sport athlete, a straight-A student, and otherwise a shining example of teenage humanity, not likely to be even a casual drug user. Her car was thoroughly searched, and nothing was found, but the girl was isolated and aggressively questioned by the police, which left her in tears. They only reluctantly let her return to her class and drive her own car home after school. No apology. After all, the K-9 officer alerted! And dogs don’t lie!
They don’t lie, but being dogs, and being German shepherds in particular, they are bred and trained to please their handlers. The lawyer directed me to copious research on this subject, and how often these alerts turn up nothing, because the dog isn’t “looking for drugs,” which it can’t understand, it’s looking for a scent that will make the cop say “good boy, Rex.” Sometimes it’s contraband, but sometimes they just want the good boy.
That is today’s rant. There are a lot in the pipeline, which is the long way around to announcing I’ll be taking a few days of R&R, and while I’ll have wifi and my laptop in the cooler climes we’re headed to, I may or may not use them. More likely, I’ll just post a lot of pictures with brief commentary along the lines of wish-you-were-here. I want to let the world carry on without me, just for a few days. Please feel free to keep the conversation going, and thank every last one of you for reading.
Jason T. said on August 14, 2025 at 11:51 am
In our area, K-9 officers occasionally get funerals with full dress honors, at a veteran’s monument.
https://www.wtae.com/article/funeral-for-pittsburgh-police-k-9-officer-rocco-held-at-soldiers-sailors-memorial-hall/7464901
9/11 broke the U.S. in a lot of ways, but the conflation of civilian first-responders with members of the military deployed to combat zones was a significant one, and one that has caused real damage to American society.
“I guess you hate our troops” has been replaced with “I guess you hate our police” as a retort when you’re losing a political argument, and it’s just as effective.
Combine the post-9/11 “All First Responders are Heroes” mindset with our tendency to treat dogs as “four-legged people” and it was obvious what was going to happen next.
Ask any Canadian constable or U.K. bobby; they are generally not put on the same pedestals on which Americans place police and firefighters, and elected officials and the media in those countries are free to criticize their performance, when appropriate.
I don’t hate first responders. Some of my closest friends, etc. But they’re doing a job, and like every other profession, some of them are really good at it, most are good enough at it, and there are a few crumbs.
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Suzanne said on August 14, 2025 at 12:28 pm
Speaking of drug sniffing dogs…
My late mother-in-law once flew from Dallas to Indiana with a foil wrapped ham bone in her checked luggage. Why, you might ask? Because it was a good hambone and the daughter she had been visiting was just going to throw it out! When she retrieved her luggage, the contents were a jumbled mess, clearly having been opened and searched through. She was incensed! So, we had to gently explain that airports often employ canines to sniff luggage for drugs and they no doubt went nuts when they smelled a good, juicy hambone which would be an unusual scent for them in the luggage hold of an airport.
We still laugh about it.
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ROGirl said on August 14, 2025 at 12:57 pm
For some reason this came to mind
https://youtu.be/6ASeKnczX0c?si=ZgkDuZed8Rm64GyL
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Brandon said on August 14, 2025 at 1:51 pm
The term goes back to World War II.
https://www.asomf.org/the-history-of-k9-corps-in-the-u-s-army/
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Suzanne said on August 14, 2025 at 1:56 pm
This is a bit long but well worth reading:
https://jaredyatessexton.substack.com/p/a-crisis-of-meaning-and-purpose-theres
“…the death of those mythologies – American exceptionalism, our supposedly everlasting empire, the promise that all the work and self-dealing would pay off – left a massive, sucking vacuum. For some, the feeling was a cold, stark realization of the loneliness we had always felt and always covered up with all the prescribed methods and addictions. Suddenly, the drugs didn’t work anymore. And that left us with the distinct awareness that something needed to change. We needed to change. The world needed to change. Everything needed to change. And that need for change presented something familiar and filling: a burgeoning sense of purpose in finding ourselves and in finding a better way.
For some, that realization was much too painful. They had invested their entire lives and all their energy and all their time and money and effort into creating that fictional self that could stave off the profound loneliness and lack of self-worth. The vacuum wasn’t just frightening, it was apocalyptic.
For those people, a new breed of shameless grifters and opportunists and fascists were ready to sell them even more odious and absurd products and alternate realities and, unfortunately, the timing was right to manufacture a political movement predicated on continuing the capitalist project at any cost, including dismantling liberal democracy and destroying anyone who got in their way.“
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Brandon said on August 14, 2025 at 2:01 pm
And K-9 was not just one movie but a series of four, including a TV pilot called K-9000.
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Icarus said on August 14, 2025 at 2:09 pm
@RoGirl, that was apt pro pro. If the stories are correct, my maternal grandfather had to change his name from the contemporary common Adolf to something else.
I wonder if K9s look down on their cadaver sniffing counterparts?
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Deborah said on August 14, 2025 at 2:41 pm
I may have mentioned this before, the woman who officiated our wedding on our land in Abiquiu 25 years ago was named Kay Nine Coyote.
We met her through some architect friends we have in Taos (I don’t know if she’s still alive, she had cancer the last I heard a few years ago). She lived in one of those earthships you may have heard about, there are lots of them in Taos and our architect friends worked for the guy who started that company that designs and builds biotechture earthships https://earthship.com/. Our friends have their own firm now, they design self sufficient buildings that exist off the grid with solar power and rainwater collecting etc but they’re not as eccentric looking as the earthships. Taos is a fairly counter culture place, thus interesting people like Kay Nine are attracted to it.
We didn’t want a religious event and she turned out to be just great. She gave a little homily and it was perfect, it was a very windy evening but when the ceremony started the wind stopped and it was beautifully calm, she talked about the power of the wind and the wonder of nature, I think it was off the cuff, and very fitting. She had five children and then came out and started dating other grandmothers, also she looked just like Robert Duval.
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