As my colleague Hamilton Nolan has astutely noted, the public dog is the greatest dog. It is a dog that you do not have to take to the vet or bathe or feed, but nonetheless a dog whose cuteness you can enjoy.
Unfortunately, not everybody shares this appreciation for a dog livin’ his best life in the world. The New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority, known to locals as the MTA, is anti-dog. Here was its response to a dog tweet from Gothamist’s Jen Chung:
As she pointed out in a later tweet, Chung wasn’t actually trying to narc on the dog, merely noting the dog’s existence. Yet the MTA interpreted this as a complaint, and advised her to CALL THE FUCKING COPS if she sees another dog in future. Imagine being that person. “Hello, 911, there is a dog on the train. No, it’s not hurting anyone; it hasn’t taken the train hostage; it isn’t driving the train. It is simply being dog and I am livid.”
Imagine, too, being the person who answers that 911 call and has to begrudgingly dispatch a police officer to deal with the dog—because, as the MTA pointed out in a subsequent tweet, it is in fact illegal to have a heckin’ lorge doggo on the train:
The New York subway actually bans dogs that cannot fit in a bag, which has led to many extremely good pictures of dogs that are too big to be in a bag!! But they’re in a bag anyway!! Ahh!!!
Look, Mr. or Ms. NYCT Subway, you may be technically right that it’s illegal to let dog on train. But you undoubtedly have many thousands of Twitter mentions to respond to, and yet you chose this. Why? Why. Why own yourself in this manner? Why choose to endorse the extension of the fascist police state to dog policing? Why do you hate dogs? Why do you hate fun?
It should also be noted that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo controls the MTA. That’s right: Andrew Cuomo has not only let the MTA fall into disrepair and chaos, he also has let it become a totalitarian anti-dog state. For shame, governor.
The MTA can surely reach past its prejudice and agree with dogs on at least one thing: If you see something, bark bark.
Update, 1:03 p.m.: Looks like whoever was running the NYCT Subway Twitter account made a heckin’ big mistake:
Issuing a correction on our previous post. You do not, under any circumstances, gotta call the cops on a dog.