Today is National Dog Day, social media are flooded with cute paintings, photos, drawings, and sketches of our dogs.

The dogs look beautiful, the shots are pretty professional, the cameras are not cellphones.

The day seems a bit forced to me, I honor my dogs all the time, and our political system reminds me every day how better dogs are at living in the world than humans.

The idea doesn’t sit quite right with me.

More and more this year, I wonder about the idea of a “National Humans Day.”  A day calling for us to be kind and gentle with one another.

Despite what you see and read online, most dogs are happy, loved, and well cared for. You don’t read much about them. I know so many people who brag about having an abused dog as if it makes them a better human. I think it’s the dogs that are supposed to make us feel good about ourselves, not their rescuing or abuse.

The dog could care less what he is called.

Every time I look at the news I think that humans need celebration as much or more as dogs do in America these days.

A day celebrating compassion and empathy is desperately needed, and there are all sorts of gifts I can think to send the elderly, the poor, and the sick.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but readers of the blog perhaps already know that my dogs do not need a special day of celebration.

For our National Human Day, we could send photos of an immigrant living in fear, or a sick person without health care, or a low-income family getting evicted and with no prospects of work, or a family that just lost someone to Covoid-19, or to one of the millions of children who go hungry every day.

When I looked at the photos of the happy and well-fed dogs on the National Dog Day page, I just kept going back to the many sick and poor families in America getting booted out of their jobs and homes while politicians posture and lie.

We could honor people of compassion and empathy and tell their stories. Maybe send them a few gifts or write a few letters to Congress.

I love dogs and am happy to celebrate them, but I always think of what my parents said when I reminded them my birthday was coming: “every day is Jon’s day,” they would reply.

My dogs are celebrated almost hourly.

I don’t really get the idea of a National Dog Day, it seems forced to me, the site is a rescue and safety warnings page, there are lots of excellent photos of dogs, cute dog contests,  many in costume, dogs riding on fire trucks, eating ice cream in cars, looking lovingly at people and other animals and dogs, dozing in bed, standing in canoes, or looking longingly at the camera.

The site definitely celebrates the cute side of dogs; I didn’t see a dog who wasn’t beautiful or well cared for and posed. And there are links as well to rescue organizations and adoption sites.

The photos I like best are of dogs and people sitting together and looking out at the world. To me, that is what my dogs do for me, they are my companions in my journey through life.

National Dog Day was founded in 2004 by an animal welfare advocate and “pet lifestyle expert” named Colleen Paige.

National Dog Day “celebrates all breeds,” says the site, “mixed and pure, and serves to help galvanize the public to recognize the number of dogs that need to be rescued each year, either from public shelters, rescues, and from pure breed breeders. National Dog Day honors family dogs and dogs that work selflessly to save lives, keep us safe, and bring comfort.”

Nothing to argue with there, but the dogs I saw on the page were all gorgeous or adorable, their humans gushing over them with great joy and passion.

I think of the photos I got of Bud just after he was taken out of a pen with no heat or roof and away from the penmates who died of exposure, and how grim, emaciated and battered he looked. I guess people would not send beautiful and expensive photos like that to National Dog Day, people want to rescue dogs, but they don’t seem to want to look at them much.

The site lists 20 ways to celebrate dogs – most are pretty mundane – adopt a dog, donate to animal welfare organizations, send a dog gift to a family member’s dog, have a National Dog Day party and invite your friend’s dogs, spend the day taking photos of your dog and send them to the website, buy an official National Dog Day T-shirt which says “I am a better person because of my dog;” write your congressperson and ask that he/she support the ban of Puppy Mills and Gas Chambers in your state.

You can become a rescue member for free and follow shelter dogs and adoption campaigns.

I can’t argue with any of those goals or ideas, but I don’t really want to celebrate dogs in that way either. I celebrated Red by taking photos of his wonderful work, and Zinnia in her therapy work, and Bud in his brave and never-ending search for a chipmunk we now call Teddy, since he is almost a member of the family.

I was not moved to take any of those gift ideas, I either do them all the time, or they seem somewhat desperate to me, perhaps the pet lifestyle expert is short on creative suggestions.

I’m not sure what troubles me about the idea. Maybe it seems out of sync with the suffering raging all around us. Or that it is somehow too much. Dogs’ glory is in serving people, not being worshipped by them.

It focuses a great deal on dogs in need, and there is no shortage of rescue and adoption groups or shelters in America. Sometimes, I am almost embarrassed to have a dog who was not abused and has not suffered a single day in her life.

People need to adopt dogs who have been mistreated, it seems to give them a moral fulfillment they may not be getting elsewhere. I also have a dog who suffered terribly in his life but is happy now.

Do dogs really need this celebration, I wonder, and if so, are the dogs who really need to be celebrated being celebrated? The National Dog Day sight is slick and professional; it didn’t connect with me and my feelings about dogs.

But, of course, this isn’t really about dogs. Dogs don’t need to be honored or have a national holiday, they don’t care if they are featured on a slick website or are all over Facebook.

Like so many other things involving dogs, that is what the people need, not the dogs.

Are these really causes for national celebration? The gift I wish to give my dogs – hey, maybe I am becoming a dog lifestyle expert – is stewardship.

I celebrate stewardship.

Dogs deserve to be chosen thoughtfully and carefully. They deserve proper medical care, as do people. No one should tell anyone how they should get a dog.

Dogs can be researched.

It is often possible to know if there are issues a child should be aware of, or if your home is right for the dog you are getting or buying. Dogs deserve the right to be considered, not simply acquired as a moral or emotional statement.

Dogs deserve to be trained, lovingly, and continuously. As stewards, we are obliged to be their advocates, and spare them from pain and the occasional terrors of canine health care. We should be able to afford them and not let them bankrupt us or send us into debt.

We should care for them in a way that respects their needs, not just ours.

At the moment, reports on an insurance survey, nearly half of all dog owners (46 percent) say they spend the same or more on their pet’s health care as on their own.

While we spend billions on our dog’s care, millions of children have no access to health care at all, and many more are food insecure.

It’s just hard for me to swallow the idea of a country so willing to lavish every care possible on dogs and celebrate them with their own national holiday and spend so little on people. I just struggle with the idea of that.

And I love dogs.

It is wonderful to rescue a dog, but that is not the only way to get a dog. There are several.  At the end of our jobs, it is our duty to speak for them and spare them the pain of what we need rather than what they need.

At the moment, I think most dogs are doing better than most humans. I don’t see people honoring humans and their needs in the way humanity calls us to do.

I don’t fault anyone for wanting to celebrate their dogs today on National Dog Day.  If you are doing it, good luck to you and your dog.

It’s an individual choice. But I think I’ll pass.