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There are times in your life when you’ll realize that you’ve become inseparable with your pet. If you’re a dog person, that can cause complications because that means that you need to bring your dog with you everywhere you go. Cats aren’t that complicated since they’re wholly independent and even if you’re inseparable, you can live together in harmony without being all up in each other’s space.
Dogs are different. Dogs need love, reaffirmation, and close continuous contact. So what happens when you need to travel a little bit but your dog won’t leave you alone? And it’s not like you can take your car, because the traffic is too much or you just don’t have a car. That’s where NYC’s rule of trains comes in. They ask that if you’re going to bring your pet with you, they must come with you in a bag. This results in the cutest pictures you’ll ever see.
Source: IMGUR
New York Times did a fun little piece on dog contact.
It was only by the tiniest bit of genetic chance that our cross-species union was forged at all. Dogs and wolves share 99.9% of their mitochondrial DNA—the DNA that’s passed down by the mother alone—which makes the two species nearly indistinguishable. But elsewhere in the genome, there are a few genetic scraps that make a powerful difference. On chromosome six in particular, investigators have found three genes that code for hyper-sociability—and they are in the same spot as similar genes linked to similar sweetness in humans.
Today, at least in areas populated by humans, dogs are the planet’s most abundant terrestrial carnivore. There are about 900 million of them worldwide, just shy of 80 million of whom live in the U.S. alone. The single species that is the domestic dog—Canis lupus familiaris—has been subdivided into hundreds of breeds, selected for size or temperament or color or cuteness.
The average American dog owner spends more than $2,000 a year on food, toys, medical care and more, and some people would be prepared to pay a much higher, much dearer price. When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in 2005, so many people refused to evacuate without their dogs that Congress passed a law requiring disaster preparedness plans to make accommodations for pets.
What began as a mutual-services contract between two very different species became something much more like love. None of that makes a lick of sense, but it doesn’t have to. Love rarely touches the reasoning parts of the brain. It touches the dreamy parts, the devoted parts—it touches the parts we sometimes call the heart. For many thousands of years, it’s there that our dogs have lived.
What about you? Would you ever bring your dog to the train? Have you already? Tell us down in the comments!
