I saw an advertisement yesterday for a DNA test for dogs and I thought about what a sad, gullible, easily-brainwashed and influenced society we live in. I also thought about Lassie and about how rough it must have been for her to hear the news, “We’re sorry girl, I know all these years and through all those TV episodes you believed you were a Collie, but we just got the DNA results and it turns out that you’re actually an Italian Greyhound mixed with Cocker Spaniel and a little bit of retriever … It looks like your mom was boning every other dog in the neighborhood … we’re so sorry girl.”

Truly, this is all-time dumb. Pay eighty-five dollars, swab the inside of Fido’s mouth and a few months later you’ll know all of the breeds that are in your dog. That’s what it says! It also says that once you know your dog’s breed ancestry that you’ll be able to make your dog happier and healthier. Really!

I wonder how that part happens – the healthier and happier part. I guess I understand the happier part, after all, most dogs are pacing the backyard worried about their heritage. They can’t eat or sniff dog ass or lift their leg to launch urine streams because they’re distraught about their breeding, absolutely manic about whether or not someone in their doggy past had sex with a terrier. So, yeah, happier I get, finally knowing has to be such a huge relief for the Schnauzer down the street.

But what about healthier? How does knowing, down to the last gene, every breed in your pup’s lineage give dogs an instant health boost? Oh, I know! Since I now know that Lassie is Italian I can be on the lookout for things that kill Italian dogs. Yeah, I can be especially vigilant now that I’m armed with DNA so I just study up on the health risks for Collies and Italian Greyhounds, and voila!, super-healthy canine. I know that one of the big things that kill Italians are mob hits, so I had to add extra security around the house, but that’s okay, shit at least now I know … No one wants to see their Collie strangled with piano wire.

I wonder what happens when your dog is part pit bull and part Pug and part Akita and Doberman and Dalmatian, Maltese, Bloodhound, and Lhasa Apso? Holy hell! That’s a lot of breed symptoms to study up on and track. Now I gotta know all the things that could kill fuckin’ thirteen different breeds and then I need to calculate the percentage of maladies that may occur when each of those breeds crosses with the other and the possible personality quirks and allergies and skin conditions of an impossible number of mixed breeds. “Hey man, that’s a nice dog you got there, what is it?” “Oh, it’s just a mutt.” Well now since everything’s a scientific proposition backed by DNA, you can’t say that anymore … “Hey man, what kinda dog is that?” “Well, funny you should ask, how much time you got?”

What if you buy a “purebred” Norwegian Elkhound for 800 bucks? When you get home you decide to run a DNA on his little ass and when you get the results they indicate the pup is .17 percent Irish Setter? Can you sue the breeder for advertising these dogs as purebreds when they obviously aren’t? Would you win a lawsuit to compensate you for the emotional damages you suffered when you found out there was Irish in your Norwegian?

How about this, what if you scraped the beak of your parakeet and found it was a rooster? Now you can’t sleep because you live in fear that it might be killed in a cockfight. See, you were perfectly fine not knowing that your parakeet was a Gamecock, but now since we need to understand everything at the DNA level, life’s complicated as hell.

It’s silly right? And poor Lassie. She lives in England and barks with a cockney accent only to find out that she’s Italian and needs to go visit relatives in Bologna. I say we should just leave Lassie alone. If you look like a Collie then you’re a Collie. You don’t need to get her DNA tested, all dogs go to heaven anyway. Just feed her and give her water and brush her when you can. Tell her she’s a good dog and follow her when she wants to show you where Jimmy fell into the well. One day she’ll walk out into the field and fall asleep the way dogs do.

Her DNA will live on in your soul forever and you’ll have an extra eighty-five dollars in your pocket.

If you wanna re-engineer your life at the genetic level, if you wanna use DNA to reimagine who you are and the life you’ve lived, get it to it – but just leave the fuckin’ dogs out of it.