One reason why this comment made me so angry is that I've encountered this cruelty --altho on a less grand scale.

I had bad skin allergies when I was a kid, and my classmates made fun of me mercilessly. I'll bet quite a few of us who wind up depressed got similar stuff when we were very young.

Second, I was mugged and seriously injured when I was in my 20s. Fortunately, a very good surgeon corrected creeping paralysis from a spinal injured, and I came out okay.

I'd been mugged on my own front doorstep, in daylight hours, dragged down 11 cement steps on my back.

I decided NO ONE was ever gonna do that to me again. But how could I stop it? A knife? A gun? I wouldn't have had time to reach for either, and they could have been taken and used against me, if I had.

Aha. A dog to watch my back! On our newspaper, the woman who started the Devil Dog unit for the US Marines in WW2 was working, and helped me find a companion animal and train it. The breed she chose for me was a Doberman -- and this breed isn't what people think it is, but I'll not get into that stereotype now.

He was of excellent bloodlines, with a sleek body, and long, thin legs, and he looked like a tiny horse in motion when he ran joyfully across a broad field.

I was in a city elevator one day with my dog and a lttle boy said to his mother, "Look at the ugly dog, mom.." And she agreed!

I could only imagine what these two might say to a woman with a baby or child they considered "ugly." Yuch!