Man's Best Friend

There is an old saying that dogs are man's best friend. Harry Truman reportedly declared, "if you want a friend in Washington, get a dog". A few days back a dog was killed in Spain for the crime of belonging to a nurse who had treated a priest who later died of Ebola and had the misfortune to contract the disease herself. I have heard it said that some more or less despised politicians are "dogs". I would not flatter politicians by comparing them to our loving and loyal canines. Where our political masters are concerned, I would stick to "rats" as the appropriate nomenclature. Even if you are far away from DC, a devoted companion is as close as the kill pound, sometimes mistakenly called a "shelter", nearest to you.