Warning! Strange Dog

I thought about leaning over the fence to catch sight of this “strange” dog, but I thought better of it.  He is strange, you know!  And the sign clearly says: “Warning”.  Still, I would like to know how and why he is strange.  Does he walk on his front legs, or does he have four ears, or maybe he knows how to tap dance?

It does occur to me that the poor thing is labeled for life.  “There goes old Charlie’s dog…he’s strange.  That dog is mighty strange, too.”  I wonder what people in the neighborhood would think of Charlie’s dog if the word was changed to “unique” or “one-of-a-kind”, or even “special”?  What if strange, in this case, meant “exceptional”?  Old Charlie’s dog can recite the alphabet!

Well, I’ll never know because I took the “warning” part seriously and I didn’t have the backbone to discover the dog’s “strangeness.”  As I walked away from the sign on the wire fence, I thought to myself “Isn’t it a shame the way we label people these days.  WARNING! she’s strange because she speaks a funny language, or she doesn’t believe in my religion.  Her skin is so dark.”  I guess the next thing we’ll do is hang a warning sign about her neck so everyone can be suspicious.  Come to think of it, we did that once with a Star of David less than a century ago.

I’m going to believe that the dog behind the wire fence, the one I’m warned about because he strange, is, in fact, exceptional…of value and merits the same respect and care given to little “FooFoo”, the pampered Pekinese who lives next door.  Now, there’s a strange dog!

But, I suppose, in some ways, we’re all a little strange, aren’t we?