Who put Dr. Seuss in charge of the kennel?

I miss seeing dogs.

I don’t mean all those odd jumbles of animal parts that people generously call “dogs” these days—those canine collisions with cute labels like poopadoops or shitzadumps, animals that would never have been bred if the mash-up of their parents’ names didn’t sound so doggone cute.

They’re always tiny things, meant for a lady to take walking. And their conjoined names do sound cute when you hear a lady say them—cute and just a little bit naughty.

They never breed big new manly breeds, though, do they? Probably because a guy would be arrested if he told you what he called his cocker-mastiff mix.

Anyway, that’s all you see these days, isn’t it? Nervous, neurotic, human-engineered fur balls that their owners call “dogs.”

But who has a collie these days?

Or a German shepherd?

Or a beagle?

Or better yet, where are all those wonderful dogs that could only be labeled as a “dog” when you saw one? You know the kind I’m talking about—they stood as tall as your knee, had short tan hair, perky ears, and a gently curved tail. Mutts, we called them. Or if we wanted to be cute, we called them a Heinz, because it took 57 varieties to make one.

Whatever happened to them?

They say that all breeds of dogs, if left to breed indiscriminately, will revert to that generic dog shape within three generations. It doesn’t matter if you start with poodles or spaniels or great Danes. Within three generations, they will toss off every ridiculous costume that man has bred them to wear, and they will all stand knee-tall with short tan hair, perky ears, and a gently curved tail.

Because that is the doggy-default if left unmanaged by human decisions when it comes to their breeding.

And for the most part those generic dogs will all have a pleasant disposition. They will chase whatever you throw for them in the yard. They will bark with unrestrained glee whenever humans gather for some grand project that requires many hands and feet to accomplish: Touch-football games. Thanksgiving dinners. Barn raisings.

Because they’re dogs. Real dogs. Not Dr. Seuss-on-an-acid-trip dogs.

What other species of animal in the natural world has as much wacky variety as those things we call dogs today? Go ahead, watch the animal channel on TV and tell me what you see.

There’s a pack of jackals trying to steal some lion’s kill, and each jackal looks pretty much like every other jackal, right? Or those identical lions, chasing the jackals away from their dead zebra that looked just like all the other zebras in the herd before they dragged it down. Watching from a distance is a group of giraffes that might have been stamped from the same mold.

But nowhere on that nature channel will you see some crazy critter mash-up like one of today’s “dogs.” You won’t see any croco-hippo-phants. No leopa-rhino-beests. Not even a boa-cons-tortoise.

But take a walk through any suburb in America and have a look at what’s tugging at the end of the leash:

– Little brown wheezing pom-poms the size of softballs.

– Waddling white sausages with pigeon-toed corn-fritter feet and Slinky-coiled tails.

– Sleek black torpedoes with trembling pipe-cleaner legs and mismatched jaws.

And we have the chutzpah to call all of them “dogs.”

Any kid from the 1950s whose Schwinn fell into a time warp and came skidding into the present would pull up short if he met you walking one of those beasts on the sidewalk. “What in the world is that thing?” he would ask. “And what, for heaven’s sake, are you carrying in that plastic bag?”

Meanwhile, your bug-eyed crapsadookie would be gnawing neurotically at the kid’s balloon tires. A trail of doggie-spittle would lead the kid all the way back to your house, if he chose to follow it.

You would try to answer his questions—but not before scolding the young lad for not wearing a helmet and full body armor while riding his Schwinn.

And then you would both go your own way, shaking your head in wonder, muttering, “What’s wrong with people these days?” And one of you would be right.

Anyway, like that kid on that time-traveling Schwinn, I’m a bit baffled by what passes for a dog these days.

I miss seeing real dogs.

I guess we should thank our lucky stars that humans haven’t done the same thing with cats. Oh, there are plenty of feline breeds out there, but other than color or length of hair, they all still look pretty much the same. It’s probably been tried, but so far a cat is still a cat.

That’s probably because cats aren’t as agreeable as dogs are. You can talk a dog into pretty much anything—including breeding with another dog that doesn’t look anything at all like what he sees in the mirror, and giving birth to babies that don’t look like anything, period.

Meanwhile, cats spend most of their day ignoring us, napping, and dreaming of ways to kill us in our sleep.

We used to have real dogs to protect us from them, to drive them howling up a tree when they gave us the evil-eye, but not anymore.

Because what self-respecting cat would run from your yapping peke-tinkle?

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