San Franciscans happily house Oregonian searching for his lost dog 'Yippy'

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/09/30/san-franciscans-happily-house.html

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Or this is a brilliant homeless tactic!

Im not loitering, Im looking for my lost Yippy!

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Dogs don’t have an agenda, they are exactly what they present themselves to be. A human traveling in the company of one, is assumed (by other dog lovers) to share that non-agenda. I miss the way I was treated with my my dog, almost as much as I miss the animal himself.

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People are less compelled to help random homeless folks. Dogs make people nicer.

I’m sure if his hosts were asked about the discrepancy, they would say something along the lines of “He’s not homeless, he just needs a place to stay for a while.” or “Technically he’s homeless, but he’s actually just a really decent, regular guy”

Statements like that are trying to express that he’s not part of the “homeless class”, but since in America we don’t believe in class, we have weird ways of explaining it.

Basically, if you’re part of another class (due to upbringing, social connections, physical characteristics, etc) and you find yourself without shelter, people will tend to see that as a dreadful mistake and go to a lot of trouble to correct it. If they see someone from the homeless class without shelter, they’ll see it as an expected (perhaps abstractly unfortunate) situation and move on.

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