At the Dog's annual exam today, I asked the vet about taking him flying with us. He's been doing great and wears hearing protection, but I wanted to know if there was anything odd about dog physiology compared to people when it came to altitude or G-forces or anything. Let's preface this by saying that I really, really like and respect our vet; she's extremely good with our animals and I trust her.
She asked if we had a parachute for him.
I thought she was kidding.
She was serious. After a moment of stunned silence, I said, "No."
And so she said, "So if something goes wrong, do you just crash?"
Oookaaaayyy... After another moment of stunned silence during which I wrestled with what the right amount of information would be, I said something along the lines of "Things rarely go wrong, and when they do, they're usually landable. It's only the extreme cases that you hear about."
Not that I'm an expert or have any statistics or great arguments, but what do you briefly say to someone to allay their ignorance without getting on a soapbox and without leaving open avenues for further sensationalism?
Ha. Reminds me of when I was having chronic shoulder dislocations interfereing with my skydiving habit. The lesson learned is to never discuss unusual hobbies with medical professionals (or regular people, for that matter). They just don't understand. Their answer on how to fix the problem is usually to tell you never to do it again. Unacceptable.
ReplyDeleteNeed to order some mutt muffs for our dogs...though I am not sure they will be so keen to the idea of flying.
Ha. Reminds me of when I was having chronic shoulder dislocations interfereing with my skydiving habit. The lesson learned is to never discuss unusual hobbies with medical professionals (or regular people, for that matter). They just don't understand. Their answer on how to fix the problem is usually to tell you never to do it again. Unacceptable.
ReplyDeleteNeed to order some mutt muffs for our dogs...though I am not sure they will be so keen to the idea of flying.