No pooch ever deserves to be treated like a dog

As barfly Norm of "Cheers" notoriety once so famously announced: "It's a dog-eat-dog world and I'm wearing Milk Bone pants."

Yep, it's definitely a dog-eat-dog world out there all right.

And if I ever needed proof, it came this week on a day in which my own persnickety pooch, Chopper the Wonder Westie, pouted like a five-year-old when I picked him up after his extreme makeover at Happy Pawz.

They had to trim his winter beard, untangle his mane and cut and comb around his sensitive little skin. Needless to say, he didn't like it much, and was letting me know about it by ignoring me on our tense ride home.

If only I could have shared a lesson with him (not that I haven't tried to converse in canine, which I understand is only slightly more difficult than French).

For not all pups have multiple boxes of dog treats stowed in the kitchen pantry. Or have the run of the house all day with the hi-def TV left on Animal Planet to entertain them. Nor do most dogs get to sleep atop the fluffy pillow-top mattress in the master bedroom.

Nope, there are plenty of dogs out there, Chopper my boy, that are about one misstep this side of finding themselves homeless.

And without a local animal shelter -- at least apparently until some time next month -- far too often that means getting unceremoniously dumped along a country road under cover of darkness.

So it was that the antithesis of Chopper's existence -- pouting fit notwithstanding -- was shared by a Madison Township couple appalled at the treatment of man's best friend they observed while leaving the Putnam County Museum in broad daylight on a drizzly Tuesday afternoon.

As they walked to their car about 2 or 2:30 p.m., the couple spotted a tan four-door Buick or Oldsmobile swing into the old Kroger parking lot just south of the railroad viaduct at the north edge of town. The older-model vehicle slowed, and what ensued still haunts the couple that witnessed it.

The car door flew open and a tan or light brown mixed breed, with the stumpy body type of a Corgi, was literally shoved out of the vehicle.

Witnesses, including three more people in the museum, say the dog appeared to be frantically trying to get back in the vehicle. Jumping up on the car door, begging to be let back in, he was fixated like the door handles were made of liver.

But the car just circled around in the lot and took off northbound on U.S. 231, leaving the little fellow in hot pursuit.

Even then, the desperate dog put himself in jeopardy, running along the busy highway, vainly chasing after the car that dumped him. He followed it all the way through the narrow viaduct until conceding his fate and slowing to a trot just south of Doc James Road.

The local couple that spotted all this taking place had followed in their van, and when they opened the car door in front of the Dallas Smith Corp. office on 231, the tired hound found sanctuary and jumped right in.

"He was pretty calm for what he'd been through," the woman noted. "He was really panting and he didn't smell too good. That wet dog smell, you know."

So an older couple with no dog in the fight -- pun intended -- welcomed him aboard while the people that obviously (from the dog's actions) had called him part of the family for at least a few weeks or months showed him a complete lack of dignity or humane treatment.

"You were seen," our intrepid witness said she wanted the offenders to know. "At least five people saw what they did. I want them to know that."

Apparently one of the museum employees has taken in the displaced dog and will try to find him a good home.

Regardless, however, the actions of the dog dumpers are unconscionable.

"Try to find him a home," stressed our incredulous witness. "Take them to another county that has a shelter. Don't do something like this."

A dog-eat-dog world no doubt. Hopefully some of that will change with a new Putnam County Humane Society operation on the horizon.

Until then, pamper your pooch. Please.

Don't make them -- or me -- beg.