Who let the dogs out?

Every so often I see some poor pedestrian reduced to using rocks or sticks to fend off ill-tempered boonie dogs. I even know of a few cases where the hounds have sunk their chops into hapless victims.

I don’t know if there’s any public policy regarding boonie dogs, and it’s sure not the biggest problem the island faces, but there must be a better way to deal with these critters. Problem is, it’s hard to figure out just what that way would be.

At one extreme, American style, the critters could be rounded up and taken out of circulation. Maybe we could give each departing tourist a genuine boonie dog as a free souvenir.

Barring that, however, I suspect the captured hounds would not exactly be in high demand, and they’d wind up suffering canine capital punishment. A wholesale slaughter of boonie dogs is a pretty depressing thought, since most of the critters seem to be of benign temperament.

Dovetailed with this would be the onus of licensing, American style. It always struck me as weird that in a lot of places, you need a license for a dog. But not for a kid. Somebody explain the logic of this to me, please. Dogs don’t go on welfare (yet). They don’t break into homes and shoot people. They don’t play rap music. Seems to me that dogs ought to license people, instead of the other way around.

Which is all moot here because I don’t think the concept of dog licensing would sit well with most of the community. We’re not as rule crazy as the folks are over there in the Prozac Nation. We don’t have that neurotic craving for order at every turn.

Hence, I think the boonie dog situation is with us for good.

And this offers scant relief to the pedestrians, who are the ones facing the risks from these critters. A .45 sidearm would be a handy way to keep a boonie dog at bay. Load the sucker with snake shot (small pellets that turn the pistol into a miniature shotgun.) This would be my personal preference for dealing with a boonie dog menace, but somehow I don’t think it would pass legal muster here in the Commonwealth. Furthermore, we haven’t yet mastered the concept of merely driving on wet roads, which puts the issue of sidearms completely out of the question. Steering wheels are lethal enough force.

The only other option would be a healthy dose of pepper spray, though I’ve never hosed down a four legged critter with it and don’t know what the results would be. You try it first. Lemme know how it all works out.

Overall, though, it’s the sticks and stones routine, for pedestrians, joggers, and anyone else who may stumble into the path of these creatures. Until we find some economic use for boonie dogs, the supply of them is going to exceed the demand. I think we’re just plain stuck with that fact.

Ed Stephens, Jr. is an economist and columnist for the Saipan Tribune. “Ed4Saipan@yahoo.com”