Gone to the Dogs

So after a full season of America's self proclaimed and acclaimed search for the best talent in the country, the winner is announced:    a dog act.  Talented dogs pushing each other in carriages, wagons, little cars, or just one another.  Dogs walking on their hind legs.  Dogs dressed in little suits.  Dogs jumping over objects, or other dogs.  And one dog doing backflips.  (That is NOT good for dogs' spines.) I swear I saw all these tricks (maybe not the backflip, but maybe so) at the midway of the Schaghticoke Fair when I was a young child.  I was probably amazed then, when I was seven or eight years old.  I guess it's not surprising, considering the winner of Britain's Got Talent was a dog who danced around its human master.  I'm sure audiences don't want to consider whether an animal is actually talented, nor would they want to know what training methods are used to persuade animals to engage in unnatural activities. 
     When I was a young child, we had pet goats.  My father made a small goat cart and fashioned a little harness out of some old leather strips, so the goat could pull the cart.  A cute sight for sure, made even cuter because my dog, Lassie, loved to ride.  She used to sit in my little red Radio Flyer  wagon, and whine for someone to pull her along in the wagon.  So when she would see the goat, Patches, hitched up to the cart, she would jump right in and go along for the ride down the sidewalk.  People driving by would stop their cars to look at the sight, asking how we made the dog sit in the cart.  Little did they know we couldn't have stopped her.  Too bad we didn't have You Tube then.