If you can’t travel with a dog appropriately, they can be boarded; a housesitter can be hired, or someone can come to your house twice a day and let the dog out and play with it. None of these options are unreasonably expensive, especially if there are baby-sitting age teenagers around.

But those options are what you do if you love your dog but don’t want it riding in the car with you.

One of my dogs always throws up when I have to drive him anywhere. Always.  So he rarely travels with me…but when he must go with me, her certainly does not ride on the roof! Good grief, what kind of a person would even CONSIDER that, much less actually do it? Makes me wonder if he is a sociopath.

I could never, ever vote for a man who’d treat a dog that way. If he’d put one of his kids up there, he’d have been in jail for child abuse.

Lack of money is never a reason why the Romney family did anything.

I think this is a good analysis.

Mom always said the best measure of a person was how they treated children and animals that didn’t belong to them.  It says maybe even more when they are yours.

It’s always tough to know how to take these stories. On one hand, they feed the cult of personality built up around politics that has become rather toxic in the past few decades

This.

Please don’t go down the Gail Collins road, the lazy pundit route. She has put this in her column some 40 times and it speaks to exactly what your quote implies. I have no regard for Romney but I have less for the whole line of reasoning that attempts to extract some value to a story like this because it invites the same analysis to be made of every other candidate.
The voters are dumb enough as it is. Please don’t help make us dumber.

That’s probably one of the most horrifying stories I’ve heard about him. I don’t know how I missed it. I think the analysis is right on the money.

Conservative philosophy for the 1%:  Welcome to America, land of opportunity, where you’re the only people who count, and where we are all dedicated to making sure you can give full vent to your need to creatively exploit and pillage and ravage, both people and the environment, and damn the consequences.  The other 99%, burdens though they are, are merely here to serve you and fulfill your every need (and get sheared like the sheep they are, and then get fed into the merciless Capitalist machine).  They are the blank canvas upon which you paint your magnificent Capitalist art, praise god and let’s cut your taxes a little more…

Conservative philosophy for the 99%:  This is America, where you’re on your own and nothing is free, so quit your bitching and get back to work, you lazy slobs — and pay your taxes, you deadbeats; you think you can get all this glorious freedom and liberty for nothing?  By the way, don’t forget to vote for more Conservatives in the next election…we’re your Best Friends Forever!...

I don’t think you can totally discount how much romneys religious beliefs lead to him acting like a sociopath, all male Mormons are thought to havea direct line to god, therefore it was probabliy gods idea to put the dog on the roof of the car.  In other words you get th patriarchy on steroids when you add Mormonism to it.

While the story is indeed trivial, it becomes important for the insight it gives into Romney’s judgment, values, and priorities.  His reaction to questions about the incident are especially telling, as they reveal that he is completely taken off guard by the idea that anyone might think his behavior was out of the usual in the least.

I’m not trying to equate dogs and people here.

But you can…  The article also states:

Then Romney put his boys on notice: He would be making predetermined stops for gas, and that was it.

The implication being that his children’s need were less important than keeping to the schedule…

I sort of love that Gail Collins mentions poor Seamus the Roofdog in every column, even when she’s not writing about Romney per se. I actually read each column wondering how she will insert it, like Hirschfeld’s Nina.  I view it as a snarky poke-with-a-stick that is totally well-deserved. It also serves to keep it front and center in the Romney discussion, rather than going down the memory hole.

“Startlepoo” is, I believe, the coinage you need here for your scaredy-cats.

I actually find people need to be more considerate of animals.  You can’t explain to the dog or cat “this sucks, but at the end of it, you’ll have a new home,” or “this will hurt, but afterward you’ll be healthier.”  All they know is “shit, shit, this is BAD make it stop PLEASE.”

This story made me sick.  If you’re like me and don’t want the responsibility of a pet, don’t get one.  The worst part for me was hosing down the dog for shitting on the car- punishing the dog for doing exactly what you should expect it to.  What a creep Romney is.

Then Romney put his boys on notice: He would be making predetermined stops for gas, and that was it.

“The implication being that his children’s need were less important than keeping to the schedule…”

Like any proper American Capitalist, Romney knows the one, true, path to success in any project:  If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. 

And you can’t let anyone, even your own flesh ‘n blood, interfere with your plan.  Just because your sons (or your dog) might need to pee, or crap, while on the way to your vacation spot, that doesn’t give them the right to ruin your plan by throwing you off schedule.

Giving in to their physical desires (needs? hah!) is a sign of weakness and unworthiness.  It’s an indicator that you are not fit to attain paradise.  A true family patriarch will be unmoved by the whining of his family.  And besides, it’s what God wants, and that’s all that matters…

I actually find people need to be more considerate of animals.  You can’t explain to the dog or cat “this sucks, but at the end of it, you’ll have a new home,” or “this will hurt, but afterward you’ll be healthier.”  All they know is “shit, shit, this is BAD make it stop PLEASE.”

Agreed.  If anything, this makes it worse as animals don’t usually have the same capacity to articulate and negotiate for their own needs. 

It was a tiny preview of a trait he would grow famous for in business: emotion-free crisis management.

In the workplace, I prefer dealing with managers and colleagues who in a crisis, are calmly trying to do whatever they can to help solve the issues/fulfill assigned objectives as possible.  While that’s not practical in the real world….that’s my personal preference after having to deal with high strung authority figures in my life from my father, high school teachers, and a couple of the worst supervisors I’ve had years earlier who spent more time sitting around yelling and kvetching which IME is counterproductive if one’s goals are to actually solve issues/getting their objectives accomplished.  Fortunately, with the last…the circumstances were such that I was able to quit so I didn’t have to deal with their BS. 

However, I think Romney’s behavior here goes well beyond that…...it shows a gross lack of consideration for a family member.  IMO….it is just another variant of those authority figures I’ve dealt with…..except they manifest their negative traits differently and in Romney’s case….a truly heinous.  While I may have never owned a pet in my life…..even I know better than to treat him/her in such a cruel manner.

The thing of it is, it’s horrifying to us but to a portion of dog owners, this was actually a pragmatic solution and humane treatment of a dog with nervous issues.  And you’re not going to convince them otherwise.  Unless you put them in a roof carrier on a car for 12 hours.

I have 85 year-old grandmothers who can’t believe we have housecats.  Cats are icky but necessary creatures that keep the vermin under control, but they don’t belong inside.  Even in the dead of winter.  And they certainly don’t let you pet them.

I told my 13 year-old son about the dog in a roof carrier story, and he’s being raised in the sticks as a large dog owner and country boy, and he even said, “That just sounds like a cruel and really bad idea.”  Score one for the next generation.

I don’t understand why the roof is more or less inhumane for a summer trek than the hatch.  Obviously, the dog didn’t like it, but the dog could’ve just as easily gotten motion-sick in the back where there wasn’t any fresh air.

Why does this story make you sick?  Does seeing a dog in a carrier in the back of a truck make you sick?  Do convertibles make you sick?  What?

The proper, safe place for an animal is in a proper restraint system, which is usually a carrier.  There’s only so much you can do without costing a fortune and making the animal hugely uncomfortable.

To make my point clear:  It is unsafe to put a loose dog in a car.  They will move and shift and be a hazard and in danger from the least little incident.  They should be in a carrier.

The Dog on the roof is bad.

But the kid in the back of the station wagon without a seatbelt on is worse.

I’m not trying to equate dogs and people here.

I get that you aren’t, but lots of people do and are absolutely horrified by this story, perhaps seeing it as a sign that Romney views pets as accessory objects for the purpose of constructing his artificial image. I personally view this story as something along the lines of “stupid error in judgment,” but I think that mainstream America considers something like this more akin to whipping your children.

I can’t regard any of this as something that makes me personally disgusted in Romney—so many aspects of the story are typical of your average clueless and thoughtless family patriarch. But I think most normal people would have treated it like “that thing that happened when I was a young parent who had no idea what the heck I was doing when planning a family vacation” rather than talking about it in public.

Crissa,  is it worse than putting the shivering dog on the roof?

Especially after he was hosed off and thus had to endure being utterly frozen.

Romney is a typical high-performing sociopathic “capitalist”, and there is plenty of incontrovertible evidence of that fact leaving no room open for interpretation. Smart business owners quickly recognize and home in on people like that, because their ruthlessness and complete lack of empathy are extremely valuable.

This is exactly why Romney shot to the top very quickly at Bain and why he is the presidential candidate of choice of the owners of America. He will do what he is told, without any concern for the consequences to anyone other than himself, and he has learned that when he does the bidding of the owners, he himself gets personally enriched very nicely.

This is the narrative that needs to be told, not that Romney was arguably cruel to his dog.

exholt, won’t you at least grant that “emotion-free crisis management” isn’t appropriate in a family setting?

@22,

Oh, but PhysioProf, Mitt is very sympathetic when it comes to “babies” (ie. embryos and fetuses), even if he has no time to waste when it comes to those children who have been actually born.

In fact, when a woman in his congregation needed to abort her pregnancy so she wouldn’t die of blood clots, the church elders granted her permission.  But not Mitt. In fact, Mitt met her and her husband on the steps of the hospital and demanded “Where do you get off?”

Yeah, you selfish, selfish woman—where do get off trying to save your own life like you’re important or something?  Don’t you see it’s far, far better to leave your husband a widower, your four children motherless, and your friends and family grief stricken rather than remove a developing ball of cells from your body?  That way, Mitt can feel better about himself! ;->

“Libertarian”‘s comments in the last three threads in a row indicate to me that he is beginning to lose it.

I don’t think this story is trivial at all.  Our society needs to take animal cruelty seriously, not just for the good of the animals, but because people who are cruel to animals will usually cause other problems.  I can’t even imagine a person existing who could abuse an animal but would never consider hurting a child.

I don’t think every animal abuser is also an abuser of their children or spouse, but they’ve got a much higher chance of it.  There is something seriously wrong with a person who can look at a suffering animal and remain completely unphased by it.  It’s worse than just a deficiency of empathy.  I never want to be alone in the same room as a person who could be completely uncaring about an animal.

“Libertarian”‘s comments in the last three threads in a row indicate to me that he is beginning to lose it.

The fact that he calls himself “Libertarian” indicates he lost it long ago.  That is an entirely delusional ideology with no empirical basis, whose policy prescriptions have failed every single empirical test (look at the current conditions in Europe for the most recent example).

Tyro:

Lose what? He’s only ever talked in talking points to begin with. It’s not clear he ever had anything to lose.

I’d ask what the hell Libertarian means by hir comment, but I think I prefer not to know.

Crissa,

Why are the only two options a carrier on the roof or loose in the car?  Why can’t a dog be in a carrier in the car?  My sense is that when you value your luggage over your dog, there is something wrong with you.  The only potential mitigating factor I can see is that in the 1970s/1980s many people had a slightly different idea of what constituted cruelty to animals than we do now.  But even then, I think a carrier on the roof and a wet dog is beyond the pale.

Comment #30: history_mom:  “My sense is that when you value your luggage over your dog, there is something wrong with you.”

Romney also valued keeping to his schedule more than the comfort of his children.  By telling the kids that he only planned to make scheduled stops he was letting them know that no matter how badly they hurt from holding back having to pee that there were going to be no stops that the old man hadn’t preplanned.  Thirsty or hungry?  Tough.  It was already obvious to me that he is a cold blooded sociopath from the campaigns that he has run and the indifferent way he views other people’s misery. 
The fact that he has no real feelings for dogs and children should come as no surprise to anyone who has followed his political career. 

Anything he might do to demonstrate his concern for animals or people would be purely for political gain.  He has no real sense of decency, just an ability to mimic human emotions when it is to his benefit to do so.  Most members of his party are people exactly like him.  The important thing to them is themselves, their convenience, their ambition, their accumulation of wealth.  Other people, and animals as well, are just things to them.  Objects to be used when needed and discarded when no longer necessary. 

The implication being that his children’s need were less important than keeping to the schedule…

My parents were the same way on road trips. But then, my parents were also authoritarian conservatives, so… Few things ruin a nice road trip like having to desperately hold your piss for two straight hours.

Yea, it matters, its completely cruel, the best way one could look at it would be that he realized it was a mistake and showed some awareness of that but we all have to know at this point that even if he wanted to say something like that he knows he could not even if it flashed for a moment in his mind he would push that down and stay “strong”.

The dog could have been in the car but he was afraid it would make a poo there because he’s got his timeline thats not going to bend for anybody, again this is strong.

I want to strap and hose him down and then drive like a maniac but thats just crazy.

Don’t know if anyone posted this, but Gail Collins mentions it in EVERY column she does on Romney.  Earlier this year, she said in a column that she was going to do that, and she has.  I chuckle at it every time I see it.  But then, I like Gail Collins.

It doesn’t matter to me.  What matters to me is that a) he is a Republican and would never get my vote anyway, and b) he is completely untrustworthy, and since he’s a Republican, than can only mean bad things.

The article seemed to indicate that this incident happened pre-gazillions, but it’s not like Mitt was a pauper with no options. He was wealthy enough to provide proper care for the dog. And if the dog hated traveling that much that ruining the car was a concern, he should have boarded the dog or arranged for a pet sitter. But instead he took the animal on vacation with his family for no vital reason, subjected him to a terrified perch on the roof (some dogs really hate the open air, not all of them want to stick their heads out the window of the car) and then refused to provide adequate stops for the dog to do his business. Sounds pretty cruel to me.

I don’t think this incident really indicates anything about Mitt Romney’s character, but it sure doesn’t make me like the guy. I wonder that his family was so tone-deaf as to even tell the reporter about it. And that’s one problem I see a lot of in Mitt—he comes across as tone-deaf to the concerns of actual people. I think this is why people don’t warm up to him, even Republicans.

Has Gail Collins ever said what her point is?  I get the Nina notion up there at @10 but I’m not sure Collins has anything so understandable in mind as playing a repetitive visual game with her readers.  I think she thinks the story is a mildly amusing sick joke.  Doubt she would have done the same thing with, say, Chappaquiddick for Ted Kennedy, or the poor guy Laura Bush killed while driving if Laura Bush were running for office.  When she has 900 words to fill, animal suffering is just funny enough.

In case I need to say it:  Despicable, tyrannical behavior by Mittens; sign of bad character.  Worst thing ever done evah by a contemporary American politician? worth harping on forever?  Maybe.  Collins should tell us why, or move on.

If absolutely nothing else (and I say this entirely for the sake of argument because IMHO there’s a whole lot wrong with everything he did in that situation, from kids to dog to hose to schedule)—-if absolutely nothing else, his demonstrated tendency to dismiss, misdirect, and otherwise refuse to address people’s concerns about his behavior is the exact opposite of what I want in an elected official.

If someone brings up a concern about a candidate’s behavior, I want that candidate to acknowledge the concern, accept accountability as applicable, apologize as called for including for accidental consequences, explain hir own motivations at the time and indicate any evolution of hir views since then, and possibly make (and live up to) a pledge to make the welfare of the group concerned by that behavior a greater priority.

A candidate will get much further with me, at least, with an “I was a thoughtless little shit X many years ago and caused harm/distress to (entity/ies) which I would not find it acceptable to do today; I apologize to all those harmed/distressed by either my original actions or the culture of acceptance of them which I helped to perpetuate; I invite (entity-type rights/welfare groups to make their further concerns known to me and to suggest to me courses of action they would like to see me take on their issue once elected, which I promise to do on par with the issues I’ve most strongly campaigned on” than they will with a red herring and an indication that it’s a non-issue.

The dog incident of Romney is about as useful and illustrative as the incidents about Al Gore as slumlord, Gingrich’s adultery,  and Clinton’s sexual harassment. 

It is something for people who differ from Romney’s ideology to use against him and demonize him.

His comment means he doesn’t have an argument, and is merely trying to deflect.

Re:  Comment #30: history_mom on 12/26 at 03:55 PM

Because that’s what it’s often framed as.  The dog could’ve puked in a carrier in the car - my mom’s dog does in any trip longer than ten minutes anyhow.  My cat has done the same thing in a carrier strapped in a seat next to me.

I don’t think the dog part of the story is educational at all.  Animals have nervous reactions to changing their environment, and while nominally the carrier was less safe on the roof the dog may or may not have been better kept inside the car.  If the dog was prone to bowel release, outside may actually be normally better - more fresh air.

I don’t know his car and I don’t know his dog.  It’s not like the dog was up there without a carrier.

If you got in a wreck, that dog would be just as dead as if he were loose in the car. Barring putting the dog in a carrier inside the car, there’s not much you can do, safety-wise.

Of course, Romney is worth over a quarter billion dollars. He could afford to fly his dog and his family instead of going through some stupid ritual of driving to prove his American patriarch bona fides.

Also, no evidence the dog was freezing, either.  The trip was in the summer, according to the story.  The dog was a type known for diving into icy water, too.

Child not strapped in… Are you saying that you spent your childhood presaged to seatbelt laws?  I know much of my childhood seatbelts were these things which never fit, yet I used them as much as possible.  But I spent at least one long trip in a hatchback without a seatbelt - then again, I was in no danger of leaving the hatch unless the car did some serious gymnastics.

His new million-dollar job vs a 12-hour no-stops road trip certainly is a better point.

But it would’ve still ended up with someone hosing down an unpressurized cargo hold, apparently.

  Yeah,  being soaking wet and subjected to wind is SO pleasant. Velocity increases the sensation of cold and the dog was wet and terrified. Quite trying to justify it, it’s kind of disturbing.  The poor thing was scared literally shitless.

The dog incident of Romney is about as useful and illustrative as the incidents about Al Gore as slumlord, Gingrich’s adultery,  and Clinton’s sexual harassment.

All of these things are relevant.  This feminist is pissed about any sexual harassment, even if it’s coming from a Democrat.  Unfortunately many liberals do look the other way when Democrats do bad things, but they shouldn’t.  I’m mad about Clinton abusing his power because it was wrong, not because I want to use it against him politically.  I’m sick of the attitude that issues like these are just meaningless fringe things that can easily be thrown under the bus for the “more important” political issues that the politician represents.

It’s always tough to know how to take these stories. On one hand, they feed the cult of personality built up around politics that has become rather toxic in the past few decades

You’re right, but we go into elections with the country we have, not the country we wish we had. If elections are going to be about who we’d rather have a beer with, then I’m perfectly happy to pit a friendly, charismatic father of two against an animatronic pseudo-human money-making robot who straps the family pet to the roof rack. To act otherwise is to make the same mistake that Barack Obama did—believe that people can fundamentally change who they are on the basis of an election outcome or by seeing a high minded campaign and being inspired to become different people.

Look, plenty of libertarians might rail against the evils of fiat currency, but I still see them buying, selling, and investing with US dollars.

There’s also something fundamentally insensitive regarding his cheapness about Romney in this story. He could easily spare his children from having to be thrown in the trunk of the station wagon during such a long trip simply by buying or renting an 8 seat minivan or SUV. He could have gotten a kennel or a dogsitter. But he didn’t, not because he didn’t have the resources, but because he was indifferent to everyone’s discomfort. Look, I am both well paid and very thrifty. When I drive into NYC, I circle the blocks around lower manhattan until I find free street parking. But if I’m driving with my girlfriend into the city for dinner, I get garage parking so we don’t waste time merely on account of my own thrifty nature.

I think his reaction to this is as important as the fact that it happened. He seems completely indifferent to how he looks to outsiders, and baffled that others might think it’s not cool to mistreat a dog.

In the workplace, I prefer dealing with managers and colleagues who in a crisis, are calmly trying to do whatever they can to help solve the issues/fulfill assigned objectives as possible.

I would argue that what your describing isn’t necessarily the same as “emotion-free.” Really good managers are very empathic and they use that to actively diffuse drama, resolve tensions, and direct strong emotions into useful pursuits. I interpreted that “emotion-free” phrase as referring to the “act like a leader, be a leader” school of management which stressed self confidence and absolute certainty over actual social skills, resulting in a lot do petty sociopaths with little understanding, much less regard, for what humans need and how they function getting pushed up the ladder.

  Luckily for my brothers and I, my parents had to pee frequently to.

I’m going to also put in my two cents against Crissa’s opinion.  The roof is not the same as the boot with more fresh air.  Now, if you had an extended-cab pickup (which I don’t think was a thing then) and you put the carrier, properly secured, in the back, that would be OK.  But luggage rack?  With a home-made windshield?  We are well, well beyond ‘fresh air’ at that point.  Have you ever seen what happens to things that fall off of luggage racks, which, by the way, is a thing that happens?  Hell, it happens with nice, insentient luggage.  Now you’re sticking a living thing of some size and weight onto a system that is absolutely not designed for that and this is supposed to be the responsible thing to do?  If you don’t care about the dog think about the other cars on the road - sure, Romney was able to strap the thing down so that whatever panicked spazzing it did on the freeway didn’t shake the whole carrier loose from its moorings, but what if he hadn’t?  To my thinking there is no amount of inconvenience a puking, shitting dog could do to the interior of my car that is even remotely comparable to the problems I would have if my Irish setter and his windshield went through someone else’s windshield.

True story:  I grew up in Halifax, NS in a family with six children with maternal relatives in Ontario. We used to visit them on a regular basis, mostly in the summer, in one vehicle, sometimes with a dog. For years, I did’t really understand why my parents preferred to do it in one go, taking turns at the wheel and driving through the night. They made beds for us smaller kids in the back of the station wagon. In hindsight, that was really unsafe, but people didn’t think about that much in those days. It was cozy. We had a rotary engine Mazda wagon and the engine sound used to knock me right out.

As an adult/parent, who likes to travel, I completely understand. They didn’t have a lot of money, so couldn’t afford a motel stay and the six/seven restaurant/diner meals that would have been required if we stopped overnight en route.  Sleeping children don’t need to eat or pee and won’t demand ice cream because they can’t see all those soft-serve cone signs along the road. Also, they wanted to have a break from the hell that is navigating busy highways while your children squabble in the backseat of your OVERHEATED CAR.

Because most places in New England, and southern Canada are STINKING hot and humid in the summer. So your dog? Totally could die if you leave it on the top of your car for hours without drinking, especially if it is stressed, panting and shitting itself.

So, I call bullshit on anyone who thinks this isn’t a pretty gross way to deal with your kids/pet. My parents were not rocket scientists, but if they could drive three times the distance from Boston to Toronto without abusing a dog and making us feel like shits for having, you know, actual human needs, then it isn’t really that difficult anyone to figure this kind of stuff out.

He knows his audience. 

The kind of person who lacks empathy, the kind of person who wants to condemn actual human children to poverty disease and death because of the “mistakes” of their parents or governments, is likely to say, “it’s just a dog” and to believe that animals don’t feel pain the way people do anyway.

And this is the kind of person who refuses to acknowledge the difference between being put in a windy crate on top of a car away from your people and being put in a not-windy crate inside a car where you can smell and hear and maybe even see your people.  The dog is wagging its tail when you pull it out of the crate so everything is all right!  Right?

I think his reaction to this is as important as the fact that it happened. He seems completely indifferent to how he looks to outsiders, and baffled that others might think it’s not cool to mistreat a dog.

Yes—what bugs me is that this story was trotted out as a positive for Romney all these years later.  I’m assuming this was back in the seventies, early eighties, and as I recall the standards for pet ownership (or parenting, for that matter) were very different.  Granted, I was from the sticks, but back then it was considered a big thing to spay or neuter pets—in fact, my parents forked out several hundred bucks in 1976 to treat hip dysplasia in our female St. Bernard & were criticized roundly, but the really amazing thing was that the vet didn’t even mention spaying her at that time.  Dogs & cats routinely roamed the area, although I’m sure that wasn’t allowed in the Romneys’ upscale neighborhoods, so almost everyone I knew had a pet killed by a car at some point.  Hell, a HS classmate did just a few months ago; my guess is they still live in the semi-boonies where no one fences their acre-plus property unless they have a pool. 

In any case, I do think that to a certain extent this story was a product of the time and general ignorance/lack of interest regarding proper treatment of dogs.  But that it was related without a disclaimer (‘of course now no one would transport their pets that way, but thirty years ago…’) makes me squeamish at best.  I’d give Romney more of a pass if he’d just said he didn’t know any better back then, which is probably more or less true.

And, yes, I have dealt with sick animals and animals who are shitting, vomiting and pissing on things I liked, sometimes destroying them, and I would NEVER consider that that animal should be punished or exterminated for that “fault.”  You find a way to keep the animal separate from the valued item or troubling situation if at all possible and do not punish it if it cannot be avoided.  YOU ARE THE SMART ONE ACT LIKE IT.

oldfeminist: right? My son’s cat (we don’t obtain animals specifically for children, but we adopted her and she cottoned to him especially) had a bladder infection and pee’d on a plastic bag in the living room and my father in law said in front of my son that we should get rid of her. What the fuck, he’s never made a mess when he was sick? And unless he was a small infant he had more awareness that making a mess was “wrong” than an animal ever does.

Re:  Comment #50: Kyso K on 12/26 at 10:29 PM

I have a luggage rack.  Have you ever seen what happens to something that falls out of a truck bed?  Your argument is just as poor.  Some racks are rated at hundreds of pounds.  Mine’s only rated for 70.  Still more than enough for a crate and a medium-sized dog.

I’d never do it, but your argument is out of emotion and thirty years of hindsight.  The dog didn’t die, there’s no evidence the dog would be any better off in the hatch or not.

Now there’s someone saying the dog in the crate could die from heat exhaustion while another says he’s going to die of exposure.  The imaginations here are flying wild.  It’s ridiculous.

Let’s remember, this is the same guy who structured LBO deals so that he and his fellow investors would make a substantial profit even if the underlying company went under (much less “merely” shed thousands of jobs). Indeed, even if paying off Mitt and associates caused the underlying company to go under.

So it’s all of a piece. “Emotion-free crisis management” really means “I’m going to win however this comes out, so the rest of you better be feeling lucky.”

exholt, won’t you at least grant that “emotion-free crisis management” isn’t appropriate in a family setting?

In vast majority of cases, no.  In cases when family members are yelling their heads off and the yellers aren’t willing to back down…..sometimes speaking in a non-emotional tone, walking away, and refusing to engage them until they’ve calmed down and are willing to be civil again is more effective. 

However, my main point was that what Romney did with his dog and the way he’s been going about explaining his actions are worse IMO than “emotion-free crisis management”.  It’s not too different than strapping a child or any other relative exposed on a roof rack carrier in my book. 

I interpreted that “emotion-free” phrase as referring to the “act like a leader, be a leader” school of management which stressed self confidence and absolute certainty over actual social skills, resulting in a lot do petty sociopaths with little understanding, much less regard, for what humans need and how they function getting pushed up the ladder.

In other words….the George W. Bush or the stereotypical dumb jock/social butterfly school of management…...

@exholt: or just the stone-cold sociopaths. How many times have you come across the would-be stoic patriarch espousing self-control and reservation as a cover for authoritarianism and complete emotional atrophy?

I don’t think my argument is that poor.  I think Romney got lucky.  The bed of a truck is a safer place than the top of a car.  Something dog-carrier sized would have a lot harder time flying out of the truck bed than it would flying off of a luggage rack with similar restraints.  I really don’t think the strength of the luggage rack is main problem here, although I would suggest that 50 pounds of just sittin’ is different from 50 pounds of flailing doggy panic.  I guess after the first few minutes the dog would just cower as close to the ground as it could get and focus all of its energy on shitting itself in fear - that is a natural response to its predicament.  But there is no way that Romney could have known in advance the dog wouldn’t pitch a fit equal to the strength of its restraints, and once it did that, physics would not be on its side the same way it would be tucked away in a truck bed or (even bester!) station wagon trunk.  That is a serious fuzzy spot in his plan.** 

At any rate, if time has proven that Romney merely found an efficient solution to an obvious problem, why can’t I buy luggage-rack attachable doggy carriers today?  With fancy windshields!  And a complimentary box of doggie diapers!  I think anyone can answer that themselves if they just take the time to travel a mile at say 20mph, once clutching the top of a station wagon’s luggage rack and once sitting in it’s trunk.*  Let us know if you feel there are any significant differences between the two experiences?

*Do not actually do this.  Instead, enjoy the first nearly-appropriate images I could find of airflow around moving vehicles:

Trucks: http://www.symscape.com/blog/tailgate-up-or-down
Cars: http://www.oneshift.com/articles/article.php?artid=34

**Aside from the fact that it was an asshole move.  I just happen to feel the other commenters have adequately covered that angle.

Of course a bed of a truck is safer than atop a car.  A hatch is safer than the back of a truck.  A flatbed is more dangerous than a walled bed, and a trailer more dangerous still.  And a seat is safer than in the hatch, and the back passenger seat is safer than the front.  It’s all relative.  But are you going to argue that you shan’t ship animals in carriers on flatbeds or trailers? At or above eye level?  It’s a stupid argument to get into.

Letting people focus on the dog lets you fall into their trap of the over controlling, over emotional liberal.  What about the abuse of the children, not the hindsight of relative safety of vehicle seats.  His actions were neither more unusual nor more unsafe of the contemporary time.

At no point was the dog ‘strapped’ to the roof rack, the dog was in a carrier.  The carrier was strapped to the car.  No child was in a trunk, not exposed to elements or exhaust than any other passenger.  The carrier didn’t fall apart or sway or dislodge - the story isn’t about how the dog died.  The story is about how he cared none for the comfort of neither child nor beloved pet, despite the million-dollar job he’d just taken.

*The example of your wing is wrong.  The air above accelerates as it follows the curved top and then swirls downward as the surface dictates.  Put a glass under a faucet and see how the stream bends.  Air does the same.  (I recently learned this explanation, which I knew but could not say so clearly, intro aeronautics for engineers wasn’t so clear as this description.)

In vast majority of cases, no.  In cases when family members are yelling their heads off and the yellers aren’t willing to back down…..sometimes speaking in a non-emotional tone, walking away, and refusing to engage them until they’ve calmed down and are willing to be civil again is more effective.

One may dodge the folly of excessive emotionalism without backing into the stupidity of trying to be Mr. Spock when it comes to handling family matters.

Letting people focus on the dog lets you fall into their trap of the over controlling, over emotional liberal.

You don’t have any sympathy for Romney’s dog, crissa, that’s the trap you’ve fallen into yourself.

Letting people focus on the dog lets you fall into their trap of the over controlling, over emotional liberal. 

You’re being too clever by half, here. “Middle America” might mock the unemployed, think people are poor because they are lazy, and think that the disabled somehow deserved they fate. But mistreating the family dog is basically the one big sin that you do not, do not commit. Caring for the family dog is how even the most insensitive person justifies his status as a caring person and good citizen. In this way, it’s almost out of character for Romney—I’d have expected him to defend himself against charges of being a robotic, empty personality by saying, “I love and care about my dog.” But he can’t even pull that off.

I think everybody realizes that the dog by itself was not strapped but was in a carrier, this just doesn’t matter to the dog, in fact it may be worse because the dog is sliding around inside the carrier with no idea of how to brace himself or the concept of G-forces.  If you can imagine yourself as a human enduring this for a few miles then imagine hundreds of miles past the point where it where it started feeling like torture to you and the dog has no idea how long it would go on, its much easier to endure when you have some idea how long you have to maintain.

Also consider, this is just bad management, keeping a “cool head” or whatever doesn’t mean much when it was your bad decisions that caused the problem you now have to manage.

I didn’t look at the example of the wing.  I just googled around to find the airflow over the cars, those examples did well enough to show the obvious difference between being on the roof of a car and being in the back.  And I think that strapping a living thing to the top of a car is a) needlessly cruel and b) needlessly stupid.  And yes, it is still cruel if that thing is placed in a plastic box and the box strapped to the car. 

I got no problems with putting animals in the backs of trucks or on flatbeds as long as you know what you’re doing.  But moving in vehicles is stressful for animals; it can’t be avoided but anyone doing it should have their best interests at heart, and accomodate them as much as the situation will allow.  I also have no problem with putting people in the backs of trucks, well, maybe not a flatbed on a freeway, but you know, common sense rules.  Technically, people aren’t supposed to be in the bed of a truck on the freeway but we’ve all known people to do it in a pinch and it can be done safely.  12 hours strapped to the top of a station wagon at ‘gotta a schedule to keep’ pacing on the freeway is too much for a living creature.  Sure it survived, but just because it is physically possible to survive unnecessary trauma doesn’t give someone the right to inflict it upon you.  No one was going to die if Romney got home a couple hours later or Mrs Romney had to clean out the back of the wagon. 

Anyway, I thought conservatives were supposed to love their family time.  I can’t seem to dig up the story, and my Reader’s Digest collection is long since disposed of, but I once read a heartwarming story about a woman with a similar travel philosophy as Romney’s, who one year had her precious schedule all messed up when her husband was unavailable to help with the yearly drive to grandma’s AND they had to take care of a motherless lamb.  Forced to take the backroads with frequent stops to attend to the lamb’s needs, she discovered the blah blah family blah blah tranquility blah blah what’s really important.  I think it was this lady http://www.nancyblakey.com/articles.html .  Romney could have had a warm fuzzy story about his family and life lessons learned and awww, instead he has an awkward moment with a reporter that begs to be condensed as ‘Romney strapped his dog to the roof of his car and took it through the carwash.’  Not entirely accurate, I know, but I think you forfeit the right to a nuanced recitation of your sins when your sins are ‘Strapped the carrying case the dog was in to the roof of the car, hosed it out and got right back on the freeway.’

@Tyro: This meme has been embedded in the national consciousness for at least a century. There’s and O Henry story, iirc, where a detective exposes a spouse abuser by watching his actions with respect to his dog…

There is a certain needless cruelty to this entire story, it was supposed to be a family vacation and mitt sort of turned it into a chance to be an A-hole. Back then his family and the family dog were the only ones that had to put up with him, my guess is that he dreams of making the entire country if not have to put up with his antics

I heard second-hand that the dog died after one of the family’s employees stopped working there, because she was the only one who took care of the dog.

One may dodge the folly of excessive emotionalism without backing into the stupidity of trying to be Mr. Spock when it comes to handling family matters
Comment #62: Dark Avenger Guardian Chow Mein on 12/27 at 09:35 AM

THANK YOU Dark Avenger.  One can be empathetic about the dog without going into a crying fest or sounding maudlin.  Sticking to a description of what it would be like to be that dog and how Romney still doesn’t get it is enough.

This is vastly different from getting overheated yourself, and exholt, if what you mean by not being emotional is not engaging in escalation, I agree that that’s a sound move.  But just because you do not share or understand the emotion or its intensity, it still must be acknowledged in some way.

And I don’t think this particular discussion has devolved into “OOOH WOOOH POOOR WIDDLE PUPPYKINS!” anyway.

Leaving emotion totally out of your decision-making would leave you in the position of, oh, claiming that being in a crate on top of a car “shouldn’t” upset a dog. and getting hosed down like a dirty tire is not upsetting at all because there was a reason for it don’t you see?  And besides children were in the car without seatbelts!  Even though kids bouncing around in station wagons without seatbelts was still pretty common in 1983, yet car-top dog carriers for highway use have never been the norm.

The people here minimizing animal cruelty, particularly Crissa, make my skin crawl. For the very reasons enumerated by Bananacat.

Yes, it matters. No, you don’t have to be an animal-rights proponent to believe in animal welfare. And — as Oldfeminist implies — cruel, authoritarian treatment of animals is highly correlated to cruel, authoritarian treatment of children, women, people of color, and anybody else considered “lesser than” straight cis white Christian men.

The whole incident shows poor planning on his part. If he can’t even plan for the basic needs of a dog, why ever would anyone think he could plan for the best interests of an entire country?

Best case scenario is that he doesn’t think things through and isn’t good at problem solving. Worst case scenario is that he just doesn’t care about those who are powerless to complain.

There were far better solutions available. I’m older than he is, and even back then, people really did know better than to put a loose dog (or child, for that matter) in the back of a pickup truck; they just did it anyway. And I never saw ANYONE put a dog on top of a car.

No, you don’t have to be an animal-rights proponent to believe in animal welfare.

Even if your goal is as modest as “minimize unnecessary suffering for animals most people consider cute.” Even the most defiant burger-guzzling hippie-puncher usually doesn’t want to see a dog treated badly.

@#48 and #58: people in this school of management believe that self-confidence and absolute certainty ARE the most important social skills to have. If anything, they have twisted empathy into something about certainty about how other people are feeling. They had held up the ability to say, with complete confidence, that you know how other people feel and what they want, as a yardstick for how “successful” you are at empathy.

Romney-type people see relationships and love as just another commodity to monetize and accumulate. Yes, Kyso @65, they love their family time. Because their families are badges of proof that they are normal people, that other people like them, that they can “relate” to voters and constituents. All the literature says that like attracts like, you know; and voters couldn’t possibly connect with a representative who doesn’t actually share their lifestyle.

Please don’t go down the Gail Collins road, the lazy pundit route. She has put this in her column some 40 times and it speaks to exactly what your quote implies. I have no regard for Romney but I have less for the whole line of reasoning that attempts to extract some value to a story like this because it invites the same analysis to be made of every other candidate.
The voters are dumb enough as it is. Please don’t help make us dumber.

Disagree.  I’m glad Collins mentions it in every column.  It should be associated firmly with Mitt because, as Amanda and others have pointed out, it really demonstrates what a monster he is.  And voters have always been dumb, if by dumb you mean not particularly attentive to politics or policy positions of candidates.  A political consultant told me recently that the average American spends 7 minutes a week following politics.  So if all a lot of them know about Mitt is that he’s the kind of guy who straps a dog to the roof of the car and ignores the dog’s suffering so as not to inconvenience himself or interrupt his vacation that’s actually a better barometer of his character than they get about most candidates.

In reading through this thread I can’t believe people are concern trolling Gail Collins about the dog story.

No wonder we lose so much.

Between the “white Chevy station wagon with the wood paneling” and the dog/roof combo, did anybody else think this was going to go the way of National Lampoon’s Vacation?

The people here minimizing animal cruelty, particularly Crissa, make my skin crawl. For the very reasons enumerated by Bananacat.

Yes, it matters. No, you don’t have to be an animal-rights proponent to believe in animal welfare. And — as Oldfeminist implies — cruel, authoritarian treatment of animals is highly correlated to cruel, authoritarian treatment of children, women, people of color, and anybody else considered “lesser than” straight cis white Christian men.

This.

Even if it was summer, it’s cruel to strap a living thing to the top of a vehicle (even if it’s in a crate) and drive 70 mph down the highway. In some climates, the fact that it’s summer makes it even worse, as dogs can and do die from heat exhaustion. That Romney refused to stop for bathroom breaks, even for his children, is even more horrifying.

Our dogs, including the large ones, always traveled in the vehicle with us. Even if they got sick. People get car sick. Pets get sick. It happens. You clean up the mess and get on with the trip. If the animal doesn’t travel well, it should be left home with a pet sitter or in a kennel. And when traveling with a horse trailer in tow, we always made regular stops to let the horses out to stretch their legs. (And in cold weather, the horses got blankets.)

Yes. The dog story matters. It matter a lot.

Between the “white Chevy station wagon with the wood paneling” and the dog/roof combo, did anybody else think this was going to go the way of National Lampoon’s Vacation?
Comment #76: Cris (without an H)  on 12/27 at 01:23 PM

It’s a combo of the dog tied to the bumper and Grandma tied to the roof, both parts of that movie.  And the movie itself came out in 1983 (though the story it was based on was written in 1979).

I could almost believe that they conflated these stories to make a “funny” vacation story without realizing how horrific it was.  If Dad says it enough times maybe it’s true.

This would be almost as great as Herman Cain’s appropriation of the Pokemon song.

I’m not minimizing animal cruelty.  Posters imagining crap like freezing or burning or falling that didn’t fucking happen.

These sorts of arguments could be applied to a trip no matter his wealth, no matter what effort he made toward animal and child comfort.  They’re specious arguments.

Especially since in the story he did stop when the dog was in distress and dealt with it.  Which is the opposite of what is being suggested!

At least make your arguments based upon facts in evidence, not conjecture.  This is no difference than winger projection on Obama, saying because he said X he meant it in this exaggerated inhuman way.

Especially since in the story he did stop when the dog was in distress and dealt with it.  Which is the opposite of what is being suggested.
Comment #79: Crissa on 12/27 at 02:34 PM

Everyone here knows he “dealt with it.”

The problem is how he dealt with it—inhumanely.

Do you really not get this?

Re:  Comment #69: oldfeminist on 12/27 at 11:55 AM

Letsee… 1, 3, 5, 12, 16, 20, 21, 26, 30…etc Yeah, not dominating this conversation, but the common denominator is the same: aiming at the base desire.

Yet no one here has explained why this solution was worse than any other without imagining ‘heat stroke’ - you’d be just as bad off in the back of the wagon - ‘freezing’ - I guess taking the dog duck hunting in the winter would be cruel, too, or on an depressurized airplane hold - ‘falling’ - same could be said for a crate on a trailer - but none of these things did happen.  Even the ‘no stops’ threat didn’t happen!  The story is all about how he did stop when the animal was in distress.

But instead of pointing out he’d just gotten a million-dollar job and could’ve put the family on a chartered airplane, instead of the cheapest option of a $20 stuff-into-car trip.  I’m glad some of you have always been able to put your dogs inside the car.  I guess you’ve never had to put them on a crate on a trailer - you know, like those horses? - or truck bed or ship them on an airplane or whatever.  But those things are considered normal, and pretending that they aren’t isn’t helping the argument.

We’ve all experienced or know the parent who disregarded the safety or comfort of their wards, and we’re projecting the worst possible feelings to someone on the other side of the aisle.  It’s that simple.  We’re seeing what we want to see, without examining whether what we want to see is what is really there.

Crissa, people have done what you demand repeatedly. YOu’ve just utterly ignored every last attempt.

Shorter Crissa: if nobody dies everything is okay, shut up.

Note to self: never entrust pets or children to Crissa.

Crissa:  “Yet no one here has explained why this solution was worse than any other without imagining ‘heat stroke’”

Bullshit.  I did.

And this is the kind of person who refuses to acknowledge the difference between being put in a windy crate on top of a car away from your people and being put in a not-windy crate inside a car where you can smell and hear and maybe even see your people.

So did these others:

I think a carrier on the roof and a wet dog is beyond the pale.
Comment #30: history_mom on 12/26 at 03:55 PM

I think everybody realizes that the dog by itself was not strapped but was in a carrier, this just doesn’t matter to the dog, in fact it may be worse because the dog is sliding around inside the carrier with no idea of how to brace himself or the concept of G-forces.  If you can imagine yourself as a human enduring this for a few miles then imagine hundreds of miles past the point where it where it started feeling like torture to you and the dog has no idea how long it would go on, its much easier to endure when you have some idea how long you have to maintain.
Comment #64: ewellone on 12/27 at 10:19 AM

I think that strapping a living thing to the top of a car is a) needlessly cruel and b) needlessly stupid.  And yes, it is still cruel if that thing is placed in a plastic box and the box strapped to the car….moving in vehicles is stressful for animals; it can’t be avoided but anyone doing it should have their best interests at heart, and accomodate them as much as the situation will allow.  ....12 hours strapped to the top of a station wagon at ‘gotta a schedule to keep’ pacing on the freeway is too much for a living creature.  Sure it survived, but just because it is physically possible to survive unnecessary trauma doesn’t give someone the right to inflict it upon you. 
Comment #65: Kyso K on 12/27 at 10:29 AM

DonnaDiva, that wasn’t concern trolling from me.  I was disagreeing with a choice—and also saying I’m open to changing my mind, if Collins gave us an explanation for her repetition and repetition and repetition in scarce space.

“Compassionate conservatism?”  More like “dumbassionate conservatism.”

To whomever thinks this clear instance of animal abuse is no big deal:

How about we hose you down and tie you to roof as we drive 70+MPH down the highway.  Since it’s totally no big deal, totally not abusive and the dog didn’t immediately die, it’s perfectly safe for you too.

I’ll go get the hose.  And stay the fuck away from my dogs while I’m gone.

Crissa: Your arguments about the relative safety of various parts of a vehicle miss a key point, as does your insistence that people are relying only on conjecture about all the bad things that could have happened but apparently didn’t.  Something bad did happen: the dog was terrified being on the roof of the car for many hours.

Now, I can’t say with 100% certainty that the dog was terrified.  That dog can never confirm what it was feeling on that trip.  But diarrhea dripping down the back window of the car is as good an indication as we’re likely to get that the dog was terrified.

When I see a dog loose in the back of a truck, or a dog sticking its head out the open window of a car, I might be concerned for the dog’s physical safety, but if the dog looks content, I’m not going to worry about its emotional wellbeing.  Different dogs like different things.  Hell, some dogs might be perfectly happy being in a carrier strapped to the top of a car, regardless of whether it’s a safe place.  The point is, THIS dog was scared, and Romney’s way of, as you put it, “dealing with it” was to hose the dog off and put it back in the same damn situation that had already caused it obvious distress.

I find the whole “emotion-free crisis management” trophy to be the most offensive part of the whole story, and not the “emotion-free” part, either, although that is creepy. 

What offends me is this notion that somehow he deserves a prize for “handling” the situation - isn’t the job of a parent - to handle the situations of family life as they arise?

I bet Mrs. Romney doesn’t get any prizes for “handling” however many dozen kids she’s pumped out.

Especially since in the story he did stop when the dog was in distress and dealt with it.  Which is the opposite of what is being suggested!

If I wasn’t headdesking too hard to laugh, I’d lose my entire ass with derision.

He did not deal with the dog’s distress. He cleaned up the poop. He did absolutely nothing for the dog’s distress unless you count adding being sopping wet in 50+ mph wind to all the previous conditions, which works if you consider increasing the dog’s distress to fall under the heading of “dealing with it,” but most of us would consider that to be rather the opposite of what you implied.

You’re well past wrong and into ridiculous now. I think it might be time to call it a day, or else announce your selection as Romney’s running mate.

re Clare #68

I heard second-hand that the dog died after one of the family’s employees stopped working there, because she was the only one who took care of the dog.

I heard second hand that Romney used to breed cats and grill up the kittens on special occasions while howling at the moon.

@#89:

What offends me is this notion that somehow he deserves a prize for “handling” the situation—isn’t the job of a parent—to handle the situations of family life as they arise?

Wow. Romney, then, sounds like the parenting equivalent of a Nice Guy™—someone who expects brownie points for basic decent behavior.

Lucy - what bugs me is that those who published this story initially and characterized his actions as somehow noble or beyond the call of duty seem to think they ARE noble and beyond the call of duty.  Why is that?  Because Romney’s a guy?  Bullshit.  SAHMs clean up animal poop all day and nobody praises their “emotion-free crisis management.”

Where is anyone but Crissa suggesting that trailers are inhumane?  I think the pictures I posted indicate why truck beds and trailers are an OK choice for transporting animals and why the roof of a car is unacceptable.  Most people already have an intuitive grasp on that one, which is why (as me and at least one other have pointed out) it is not a common thing to put dogs on the luggage rack, yet horse trailers have barely changed in 40 years.  Unless Crissa’s philosophy is ‘many animals do not like being transported at all, so since it’s already probably unhappy once it’s in the carrier, anything goes.’ 

Anecdatally, I used to have a dog that weighed in around 50 pounds.  Well below the limitations of most car-mounted luggage racks.  And oh, my god was that dog strong.  She was one of those breeds that make good sled dogs - she could pull your arms right out of their sockets and run forever.  She was also skittish as all get-out.  I can’t even imagine the damage she would have done to herself, the carrier, or the luggage rack to get out of a situation like the one Romney put his dog in.  And dogs remember stuff like that.  I wouldn’t be surprised to find that the Romneys had a hell of a time convincing that poor dog to ever get in that carrier again.  I’m sure Romney dealt with that situation appropriately as well.

If this debate happened maybe Cesar Milan would go after Romney about his craptastic treatment of his dog. http://bit.ly/uH314u

Amanda, I’m sure you’ve tried different things to help your poor kitty but my kitty used to do the same thing and I found a few things that helped. When he was a kitten I also had his brother before he went to his permanent home. If I put them in the carrier together he was calmer. I know you have two kitties and they sometimes cuddle. You might put them into a carrier together and try a dry run (hahaha) around the block to see if it helps.

Then after the other kitten left and my kitty shit all over his carrier three times in a row during all the trips to the vet for vaccinations, chipping and a little ear infection, I had to throw out the soft sided carrier. It was beyond salvageable. I bought a hard carrier with a top opening.  Getting him in through the top isn’t a struggle which helps keep him calm. I also left the carrier open in the living room where he would have to see it. Then I put a small bowl of wet food in it and later some of his treats. After a couple days he was not only scent marking it but getting in and out of it regularly. He’s no longer afraid of getting in the carrier and tolerates the trip to the vet with some crying but no horrible diarrhea.

Yes, saying the dog was terrified is conjecture.

Saying his roof-rack was less safe than a flat-bed trailer is conjecture.

Saying the dog was burning or freezing is conjecture.

That’s what conjecture is, after all.

Re: Comment #84: oldfeminist on 12/27 at 03:14 PM

Bullshit.  Those are exactly the sort of conjecture I was talking about.  Why are you a liar?

LOL.  Crissa has now entered “I know you are but what am I” territory.

Crissa, are you going to say that if the dog was neither freezing nor baking, but just subjected to 50 mph winds in its’ carrier, that it wasn’t suffering at all?

Or is that conjecture?

You have no sympathy or empathy for animals, Crissa, so just shut up before your lack of feeling becomes even more obvious.

Crissa @96: “Yes, saying the dog was terrified is conjecture.”

It’s a reasonable conjecture based on the limited available information - i.e., that the dog had diarrhea, which is a reaction that many dogs have when they’re terrified or otherwise under acute stress.  There’s also nothing inherently unreasonable about that interpretation of the evidence.  I’m sure my dog, and many other dogs, would be terrified in that situation.

The alternative conjecture, that the dog was not terrified, is not supported by any available information.

Whenever she goes into her (soft, comforting, towel-lined) cat carrier, there’s about a 50% chance that she’s going to shit herself in terror… I think it’s kind of funny from a distance, but when you’re actually in the thick of it, it’s actually not that funny

No shit. Exasperating, yes - absurd in a what-can-you-do-but-laugh sort of way, possibly - but far from funny. And this comes from someone who pretty much can’t stand cats.

I don’t waste time with anyone who finds it hilarious to witness another living being in torment, even if that other being is Newt Gingrich or an unreasoning animal. And pissing yourself in fear qualifies as being in torment. It isn’t the least bit funny.

I don’t think this story reveals all that much about Romney, sadly, since we already knew he’s a thoughtless prick who profited and continues to profit off of gutting companies and firing workers. Sort of like Clooney in that movie, but without the charm or a Vera Farmiga-esque better half to teach him a well-earned thing or two about being used.