If you share your life and decisions on social media, especially about animals, you will learn quickly that traditional manners, civility and ethics disappear in the flash of fingers typing on a keyboard and the safety of distance. I enjoy social media, it is of great value to me and my work, it has helped me survive as a writer in rapidly changing times, and it has given me a wonderful creative outlet for my work.

But like all technology, it is a mix of good things and bad, and whenever the animal world reveals itself – just like the political world – you see a lot of the bad.

I can’t really complain about social media, I have my 24,000 likes on Facebook, I sell most of my books there, but the digital armies of self-righteousness does raise all kinds of questions about boundaries, self, individuality and truth. Whenever I mention getting a new dog online, I expect a wave of messages like the one Kathy sent me last night, which read: “Please rescue a dog, save a life.” Or the one Donna sent me, that read “I beg of you, get a rescue, do not buy a dog.”

There were a score or more like that, and they will be a part of this dog process, they will come every day until the day I have a new dog, and then, they will  mysteriously stop, as if a magic button had been pushed and everyone got the same message at the same time. Perhaps they did. Perhaps there are some people who listen to messages like that, I can hardly imagine it. But they are part of the process, like nasty storms in winter, and we have to learn to live gracefully with them too.

For all I know, Donna and Kathy are one person, sending out robo-messages,  they post and vanish, if contacted, they never reply, they never send two messages, they are strictly hit-and-run messengers. For me, they are avatars of righteousness, they are not real humans.

I should say also in fairness that these messages are a distinct minority. The overwhelming tenor of the messages I get are encouraging, supportive and engaging, and I thank you for that.

The impulse to send messages like that to me is curious. I didn’t ask anyone for advice, and I don’t take advice from strangers on the Internet. If I need any, I will find people I trust and speak to them. I have acquired many dogs in my life, rescue and otherwise, and I most often give advice about getting them, I don’t really need any. I’ve written a dozen books about dogs and I feel I am well prepared to choose them, train them and live with them.

For one thing, I don’t need to be reminded of animal rescue, rescued animals have been all around me – Red, Simon, Frieda, donkeys, sheep, chickens, cats.  I imagine I have more rescued animals than all of the people sending me messages about rescued animals. I know what rescue is and what it means. Like social media, it can be very good or very bad. It is not the only way to get a dog or always the best one. The best way to get a dog, since you didn’t ask, is to get a dog that is right for you and your life.

For another, it is important for me to explain how I view getting a dog. Until the 1960’s, getting a dog was a very practical decision. It was not about rescue, or saving a dog, nobody would dream of being so rude as to tell a stranger how to get  a dog and why. Our culture has changed. Getting a dog now is primarily about rescue for many people, the details – what the dog is like, where it comes from, how to train it, how it will interact in a family or different environment – fade into the background or do not seem to matter at all.

As human beings became more disconnected from one another – technology, divorce, the decline of religion, mobility, uncertain job security – dogs have moved in to fill the void, they have become powerful and emotional objects of love, rescue and redemption. Dogs once lived on the periphery of our lives, they have now moved to the center. The Internet has made animal rescue into an international social movement, powerful and growing. For many, rescue, not dogs, are the point.

It is sometimes difficult, in our polarized and contentious culture, to feel good about ourselves. Dogs and other animals are helping people to do that, especially when it comes to rescuing them.

As always, it is the dogs who suffer from this human arrogance, not the people. Dog bites on children are epidemic, millions of dogs are returned to shelters and rescue facilities each year because people get them without knowing anything about them or how to live with them.

Sometimes it seems that the whole point of getting a dog for many people – this is quite clear from my messages –  is to rescue something, to feel good. The messengers have no ideas about getting a dog other than that it must be rescued. As if that is enough to know.

I know this because I have rescued dogs and other animals for years, and it does feel good, it is a wonderful thing to do. I would not have Red if some good people had not rescued him. Very often, it works very well. Generally speaking, though, it is not the primary way I wish to get a dog, and that will not change, no matter how many intrusive or unthinking messages people send me. These messages help me to be clear, to understand what I feel and want, to stand in my truth.

In America, it was once taken for granted that one had the right to make his or her own decisions, ones that were best for them. We are losing that idea, learning for yourself, making your own choices. The Thoreau idea – living a life of independent judgment and individuality is fading, drowned by thoughtless people with computers. No one would have dared message Thoreau and tell him what to eat or how to build his cabin, he would never have stayed at Walden if they had.

Nobody will tell me how to get a dog, I will never tell anyone else how to do it, especially if I am not asked. For me, getting a dog is not a statement of morality or emotional need. I feel no more pressure to save a dog’s life when I get one that I did to forego having my own child because there starving and needy children all over the world. And I think there is a stronger case to be made for saving starving children than for scouring the earth for animals to rescue. There are many millions of each.

I do not see dogs or other animals as piteous and dependent beings, they do not exist for my emotional gratification or so that I can feel better about myself or superior to others. That is the poison that has infected the animal rights movement, which once was actually about saving animals rather than pummeling and judging people.

I believe the best thing I can do for a dog is to choose it well and thoughtfully, to match the dog to me, my family, my life. To give it a good and humane life, full of love and purpose and good care. I have never returned a dog to a shelter or breeder, I intend to keep that record intact.  For me, that is saving a life, as much as getting a dog because I can rescue it, and then trying to pick up the pieces later. For me, dogs are not about playing Animal Russian Roulette. I have rescued as many dogs as I have purchased, and I hope to rescue more.

But that will be my decision and Maria’s, in my own way and time, it is not the business strangers on the Internet whose mothers and fathers bought them computers, but forget to teach them restraint,  manners or boundaries. I need to rescue myself from them.