Today is Christmas. 🎄 For many of us, it’s supposed to be one of the happiest days of the year, surrounded by our loved ones as we reflect with gratitude 🙏 on our lives.
As we begin to close out the year with the highest number of severe maulings and fatalities on record thus far, I wanted to ask you to do two small tasks for me.
First, hug your loved ones. Say all the things you need to tell them. Because one fact is clear after investigating attacks all year: life is precious and it can be snuffed out in a moment.
Second, please use your preferred browser, Google, search on Facebook or YouTube for Chevrolet’s recent Christmas commercial. Grab a Kleenex and watch it. It’s one of the most potent sociological videos of the year for our advocacy and would mean a lot to me if we all could draw from the same visual.
See, something nuanced I’ve noticed about this topic…
There are no do overs. You get one time to raise your family. One brief window. One life with your loved ones, and that’s if you’re lucky.
Pets are part of this entire life process in a way our society is not directly acknowledging.
The fleeting, rapid stages of childhood are a tender and vulnerable time where permanent life scripts are written into the hearts of children.
And for many, their lives are instead being filled with crate and rotate, imminent danger, dirty, damaged homes, isolation, restrictions on activities and travel, and often a drain to the budget which then impacts everything else finances cover.
Owning a pet, which should be one of the background threads woven through a permanent tapestry of a happy, joyous childhood is instead twisted into a gnarled, painful knot of scarcity and violence.
Life is tumultuous. We don’t get to pick and choose most of our suffering. Sudden death of loved ones. Job loss. A bad economy. War. Chronic illness. Poverty even when you work hard. These are handed to people as tragedies.
But choosing a dog? Selecting which dog will be with you on your brief parenting journey? That is fully within your control. You have the ability and the responsibility to enrich your children’s lives with a beloved pet.
May we all as parents choose well.
Merry Christmas,
-JL ©️ #dba
Parents for Dog Bite Awareness 
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