Humans not the big dog when it comes to eliciting sympathy

We do stories every week about a few dozen innocent Iraqi men, women and children who are killed in some explosion or attack -- and about our military people who give their lives and limbs to our war efforts.

We also write about tragic murders, fatal accidents and sad cases of people who die too soon from heart attacks, cancer or childhood diseases.

Readers generally digest those stories (or maybe skip right over them) and move on with their busy lives. But when we write about a dead dog, it seems as if every reader must have his say.

A Wood Dale police dog named Uta ran into traffic this week and was killed. Reporter Kat Zeman's short, 344-word story about the 2-year-old German shepherd drew more reader comments that day than any other story on our Web site.

More Coverage Stories Bob Frisk's 1985 column about his dog

"So sad. My heart aches for all who cared for Uta," reads a typical post.

"What a tragic story," reads another. "This police dog, and every other, deserves the special spot they've claimed in our hearts. My deepest condolences. R.I.P. Uta. May doggy heaven be filled with bones and steaks."

We seem to shrug off the deaths of our fellow humans but pour out our hearts for a dog.

"Always," notes Kerry Vinkler, executive director of DuPage Animal Care Control. While admitting that people may be "desensitized to a degree" when it concerns stories of human tragedies, Vinkler suggests our soft spot for dogs is more complicated than that.

"I really think people think they are speaking for the animal," Vinkler says. "They want to give that animal a voice."

It's a sentiment repeated throughout the suburbs.

"I hear it all the time because I do all the calls for the shelter," says Dottie Phillips, one of the founders of The Buddy Foundation, an Arlington Heights-based charity dedicated to finding homes for abused and abandoned animals. "It's always the poor, helpless, little creature -- that's what I hear."

So it's not simply a matter of people liking dogs better than we do other people?

"I don't think that's it," says Phillips.

"I love animals. This is my job. This is my passion," notes Vinkler. But that doesn't mean she doesn't love and value human life even more.

It's taken for granted that we all mourn the loss of human life. But acknowledging the sorrow and loss of an animal is "a form of validation," Vinkler says.

No one knows that better than our own Bob Frisk, the Daily Herald's assistant managing editor/sports. He wrote a wonderful column in 1985 about having to put down Friskie, his 11-year-old miniature schnauzer.

Readers responded by sending him a couple hundred handwritten notes, letters and cards -- and this was in the age before the ease of e-mail. I couldn't get 200 letters if I advocated that "Abortion: 101" replace the moment of silence in schools.

"It just shows how much people love dogs," Frisk says modestly. He still must keep copies of the column on hand because he gets a handful of requests for it every year -- 23 years after Friskie's death.

Expressing love for a dog doesn't mean that relationship is more important than any human relation in their lives, note Frisk, Kerry and Vinkler. The love of a pet is just a different kind of love.