What's the most pro-dog culture?
And, really, how different are Russians and Ukrainians?
This can't be true because it was Pacific Palisades that burned down, not Bel-Air. As everybody knows, Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs would never settle for Pacific Palisades. Only Bel-Air is good enough for rich Ukrainians, Russians, and Belarusians. (I, for one, welcome our new Eastern European overlords.)
It's common for ethnic arch-enemies back in the Old Country to settle in the same neighborhoods in America because they shop at the same grocery stories. E.g., when I lived in Chicago's Uptown, the identical Ethiopians and Eritreans got mad if you confused them for each other.
Consider Anglo-Irish rock stars like Morrissey, Elvis Costello, and Johnny Rotten. English or Irish?
I’m guessing that Morrissey would choose English and Costello and Lydon would choose the second. Not surprisingly, Lydon’s memoir is named Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs.
That raises the question: who is the most pro-dog culture ever? Probably northwestern Europe, where most of today’s breeds come from. I would have said England, but when I visited Belgium in 1994, restaurants would let customers bring their dogs to sit at the table.
According to the Romans, the Britons were renowned for their dog-breeding skills. Dogs - from huge mastiffs to little terriers - were one of the main British exports during the Roman empire. British dogs seem to have been a status symbol among Roman households.
However it is perhaps the ancient Persians who accorded the most respect and reverence to dogs. Dogs were considered the companions to departed souls and guardians of paradise, and there is a practice of having a dog watch over the newly deceased before a funeral. It may be that the Islamic dislike of dogs derives partly from antipathy toward the Persian Zoroastrianism it displaced.
Those little animals who sit in laps in French bistros and are fed nibbles by their owners are actually trained rodents.
Real dogs are found in country pubs in England.