doggies on my mind

i just wrote a story about people who travel with their pets on business trips. i can't really opine on it because it just seems wrong (oh the ethics of pet travel reporting!) but it does relate directly to this slate article about the evolutionary reason people love dogs.

this part spoke to me the most, and maybe you can figure out my stance on dogs in general.

"Archer suggests, "consider the possibility that pets are, in evolutionary terms, manipulating human responses, that they are the equivalent of social parasites." Social parasites inject themselves into the social systems of other species and thrive there. Dogs are masters at that. They show a range of emotions—love, anxiety, curiosity—and thus trick us into thinking they possess the full range of human feelings."