Last week, The Straits Times published an article about Covid-19’s low death rate, but some readers were too busy staring at something odd in their featured photo to read the article.
If you’re rubbing your eyes wondering if you’re seeing things, don’t worry, everyone noticed that dog with a bag over its head.
But then some netizens started questioning if this was a case of animal abuse, which is understandable, because a dog with a bag wrapped around its head isn’t exactly a regular occurrence.
But not everything is as it seems, of course. As with many things on the internet, netizens were a little too quick to judge.
Mystery of the Dog With Plastic Bag Solved; It Wasn’t a Face Mask But a ‘Protective Mesh’
On 4 May, the dog’s owner took to Facebook to explain the mystery of the chihuahua with the plastic bag.
According to the owner, her mother places a bag over the dog’s head to prevent it from licking other dogs’ urine when they go for walks every day.
She says that the bag is made of a breathable mesh material, which is “thin” and has “soft netting”.
She added that she and her brother were a little worried about her mum – who appears to be taking care of the dog – when the article was published.
They were “quietly observing” the situation in the hope that no one would attack their mother, who’s been putting the protective mesh over the dog’s head for walks for a while now, even before the Covid-19 outbreak.
Clearly, this isn’t a case of animal abuse. This is simply a case of one loving owner wanting her doggo to stop licking other doggos’ urine, which is quite a reasonable desire to have in life.
Not Uncommon
Amusingly, everyone who saw the photo was either too outraged or tickled to notice that ST’s caption below the image explained everything in a single sentence:
“A pet dog, with its head shielded with netting, and its owner in Toa Payoh on Monday.”
Which begs the question: are there other dogs out there with bags over their heads?
The answer is yes.
One company called Outfox in the US actually sells mesh bags for dogs like these online.
Why? According to them, it prevents protect dogs’ eyes, ears, and nose from foxtail penetration while walking or running over trails or through grasses, and while engaging in casual sniffing.
Foxtail is a common meadow grass that has soft brushlike flowering spikes, and while we don’t have that here, it shows that putting mesh bags over dogs’ heads isn’t that uncommon after all.
I mean you can even buy a bandit mask for dogs in case you want to train it to rob a bank without being identified, so it’s not that weird if you think about it.
