Of all the things that make dogs so objectively wonderful, nothing is quite as charming as their honesty. If they’re excited, they act excited. If they’re indignant, they act indignant. If they’re emotionally manipulating you by holding your shoe hostage until you trade with them using a piece of steak, they will not pretend like they’re participating in anything other than emotional manipulation.
Dogs wear their hearts on their tails, and if they smell trouble, the whole world going to know about it. Enter Mushka the service dog, who’s had just about enough of this volatile political circuit, and has no qualms about voicing her disdain for the most toxic piece of that puzzle.
When TikTok‘s @subatomicmatta heard growling coming from her backseat, she turned around to see what Mushka might be upset about. When she glanced at her service dog, the pup was sulking with pointed intent at something out the window. That something was a picture of the one and only Donald J. Trump stuck to the window of the car next to them.
Now, Mushka’s scorn could have come from anywhere. Was it solely Trump’s face that elicited such virulent disappointment in her? The fact that somebody presumably spent money to have Trump’s face in their car window? The brief-but-overwhelming reminder that this political system is propping up deeply traumatized celebrities in order to prey on the specific insecurities harbored by many Republican voters, all in hopes of falsely legitimizing the system’s own insecurities while upholding this increasingly charlatanic act of a two-party system? There’s plenty to be upset about.
According to Mushka’s owner, the pup is a Keeshond, which perhaps sheds some light on why Mushka has a a beef with Trump. According to Hill’s, Keeshonds have a natural tendency to remain alert, and will be all too happy to signal the arrival of a stranger (and what is Trump if not a stranger to us all?). Outside of that, however, Keeshonds tend to be playful, friendly, loyal, and affectionate, in other words, everything that Trump isn’t.
What’s interesting is that Mushka isn’t responding to Trump himself, but the idea of Trump, which also happens to be the only space that Trump well and truly exists in. Trump doesn’t have any opinions, nor does he meaningfully comprehend anything he does, will do, or has done in his life. No, at this point, he’s serving as a commercialized vessel of our worst tendencies; tendencies that we all feel urged to fall back on when our pain becomes so laceratingly deep. It’s no wonder he has as many followers as he does; having permission to fall back on those tendencies is the closest some people will ever have to relief. That makes Mushka sad.