People love talking about the tragic fates from which their rescue dogs were spared. Kill shelters, international conflicts, New Jersey—pups are rescued from all kinds of precarious situations.
Yet a brief look back through dog history shows that most canines weren’t rescued. Far from it. Instead, they hurtled through life just like the rest of us—working, succumbing to temptation, and then dying atrocious deaths.
For example, Lassie was beloved, but her owners were poor, so they sold her to a finance bro. Famously, Lassie escaped and crossed hill, dale, and stream to return to poverty and the family she adored. Unfortunately, one of the waterways she forded was full of vibrio vulnificus, colloquially known as flesh-eating bacteria. Lassie died.
People make a big deal about the hundred and one Dalmatians, and how they were saved from Cruella de Vil, but rarely do you hear about the hundred-and-second Dalmatian, a bitch named Rita, who died. No one knows how, but rest assured, it was disgusting and violent. Terrible, really, because Rita was so cute, so there was this, like, disconnect, you know?
Toto. Tornado. Not the first tornado that killed the Wicked Witch of the East. The second tornado. No weather apps back then.
Who else wasn’t rescued? Old Yeller. He was shot by a ten-year-old with a muzzle-loading black-powder rifle. In 2026, it’s culturally appropriate, at least in a “blue state,” to say that you’re still bothered by this particular mutt murder. But, remember, Old Yeller had contracted rabies and was a frothing, malevolent killing machine. People forget that. It’s good that Old Yeller is dead. If he wasn’t, you might be.
“To Kill a Mockingbird”? More like another rabid cur eats shit. Here, Atticus Finch offs a “mad dog” with a single clean shot. Tim Johnson, the pooch, had no backstory. We don’t know if he had to be on a special diet because of gluten intolerance, or if he was getting the proper morning exercise—chasing toddlers and old people on the beach. No one cared back then.
Laika was a mongrel that was launched into space by the Russians during the “Let’s get to the moon first—rah!” era. Long before there were signs that cautioned, “Heat Kills Pets,” the Russians blasted that poor thing toward the sun. Well, Laika died. For decades, Moscow successfully covered it up and led people to believe that Laika had lived a long, happy life on the sun. “Still alive on the sun!” the Russian Gazette reported, sixty-two years later, in 2019, with a picture of Laika wearing sunglasses. But, in reality, according to American intelligence, Laika’s lifeless dog body orbited the Earth more than twenty-five hundred times before reëntry. Look it up.
In the nineteen-seventies, Benji became a star after appearing in such films as “Benji,” “Hawmps!,” and “The Double McGuffin,” before succumbing to drinking, barbiturates, rapid weight gain, and, eventually, a Las Vegas death.
Addiction, of the sexual kind, also came for Rowlf the Dog. He was a piano-playing Muppet struggling to ease the pressure of competing with the more established Muppet band Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem. Rowlf would be banging poodles alongside Animal, and sometimes even Dr. Teeth and Janice would join in, but it all just got to be too much. Poodle after poodle—bang, bang, bang. Big poodles, small poodles, it didn’t matter. Rowlf banged them all. Then one day his heart stopped.
During the eighties, countless weepy-eyed cocker spaniels died. Everyone had a cocker spaniel back then and now they’re all dead.
Kristi Noem’s wirehaired pointer Cricket wasn’t rescued. Not even close.
One dog that shouldn’t have been rescued? Commander, Joe Biden’s German shepherd. But God forbid you ever said, “Joe, what the—? Your blasted dog just bit me!” and shot it with a muzzle-loading black-powder rifle. No. You couldn’t do that, because Joe Biden was the President. Remember? ♦