My dog Whitty

Whitty was named after the biomedical engineering building at Washington University in St. Louis, Whitaker Hall. Whitaker sounded like a cute name, and the biomedical engineering major was a cute major. It was intense but it was, for the most part, not particularly difficult. If you worked hard, and you gave it a serious shot, you tended to do pretty well. It required a lot of teamwork to get many of the problems finished, which I honestly was not great at.  

But never mind the major. I purchased my dog from a breeder. In retrospect, I don’t think I would ever do that again unless I become wealthy. If I were to get another dog in the future, I’d probably go to the pound or foster canines. There’s a fascinating phenomenon about dogs. Dogs are generally cute. That’s sort of their primary purpose. However, every now and then, you run into some ugly dogs. These dogs, though still sentient beings, are often rejected by the average human merely for the fact that they are not as good looking as the rest. That’s not really a fair thing for the dog is it?

Human beings operate on a similar level, I suppose. I learned in a psychology class in college that we do tend to pick companions based on attractiveness and that individuals with similar attractiveness tend to pair up into romantic, and I suppose platonic relationships. Attractiveness is a sign of health and virility. That’s a biological fact. For instance, a symmetrical face is a sign that you have relatively healthy genes. Children and youthfulness are deemed more attractive by the average person than, older men and women. It’s just the way it is. 

Whitty is a beautiful dog, but not well trained. This got me thinking about the importance of other attributes besides just looks. Whitty tends to want to bite strangers and is very stubborn in his ways. At the end of the day, I don’t think Whitty is the best fit dog for me, and I’ve had to learn that lesson the hard way. Thus, when it comes to the temptation of choosing people based on looks, how much weight are you willing to place on that attribute?