Back during the sixteen and a half years I was married to my female wolf-doggie I would never in a million years have given her up for a female human (whether they were allergic or not). Never! That’s how disgusting I am.

I’ve been pet-free for 8 years now and although I miss my doggie wife with all my heart I seriously doubt I would ever get another dog. I guess I’m just a one-doggie kind of guy. I pet for life.

I have zero allergies. It’s hard for me to even comprehend allergies. My daughter also has zero allergies (her mother had no allergies either). But then my daughter married a man with a long list of allergies. And now my two granddaughters both have allergies — especially the youngest one. Currently in kindergarten, the littlest one is allergic to almost everything that is natural. The irony is that she is an ardent outdoorsy girl. She hates being indoors. She is never happier than when she is outdoors running around barefoot in nature, no matter the weather, no matter the pollen count. She loves going fishing with her other grandpa even though she is allergic to fish. She absolutely loves farm animals even though she is allergic to every single one of them. She loves grass and dirt but apparently she is allergic to that, too. I feel so bad for her knowing that she will have a very tough life.

We spend trillions of dollars trying to figure out how to cure cancer. We need to figure out how to cure allergies — not just coming up with meds to treat the symptoms but actually cure the allergies. Allergies to natural things has become an epidemic among humans. When I was a kid I only remember one kid in all my school years that had allergies. Nowadays it’s the kids without allergies who are the rare ones. We need to figure this out because going to Mars is most emphatically not the answer.