The View from a Drawbridge

Okay, I’m disgusted. Paris Hilton just spent $13,000.00 on what is supposedly the world’s smallest Pomeranian. This is wrong on so many levels.

First of all, do you have any idea how many dogs could be rescued with that amount of money? (Neither do I. But I guarantee you it’s a crap-load.) At a time when city budgets are being squeezed and therefore cause massive monetary cutbacks in shelters everywhere, this money would have made a huge difference. A lot of dogs could be spayed or neutered for that kind of money, thus reducing the amount of suffering strays.

Another thing is that now a lot of people are going to want micro-Pomeranians. Granted, the dog is cute. But breeding freaks of nature needs to be discouraged, not encouraged, because when you start overbreeding these dogs, health issues creep in and it’s the animal that ultimately suffers for its cuteness.

I also can’t help but think that she could have made 520 microloans on kiva.org with that money. That’s 520 lives that could have been changed, 520 families throughout the world who would have been given the ability to work their way out of crippling poverty and malnutrition. But Ms. Hilton found it more important to have a cute little dog.

I know $13,000.00 would change my life. Even less than half that would. I’ve been trying to raise 5,000.00 through my indiegogo campaign to get myself out of a financial nightmare due to a series of life setbacks, and I have only reached 39 percent of my goal. And yet here is Paris Hilton, who will never have a financial worry as long as she lives, through no effort of her own, and she pisses 13k away as if it were nothing.

Apparently she didn’t learn a single thing from her jail time. She must not have talked to her cellmates or even cared about learning the way that most people are forced to live their lives. Here’s a woman who could make a huge difference in the world, who could be a philanthropic hero, and instead she buys a Pomeranian. Sad, really.