Mexico: Just another place to get a dog

Dear Hipster:

Why does it seem all the hipsters go to Mexico to get their dogs? Not to sound too Trump-y, but what’s wrong with our local dogs?

— Ed

Till recently, a run-of-the-puppy-mill mongrel from the local SPCA shelter could give even the smuggest modern citizen good cause for feeling superior to suburban dog-owners whose $1750 golden retrievers allegedly have a direct genetic link to some Westminster champion or other.

These days — when every Tom, Dick, and Admiral parades a three-legged mutt of dubious ancestry around the local dog park — a dog procured from the wild hinterlands of Ensenada brings with it limitless hipster cachet. Thus, when you ask a hipster where he got his dog, he can deliver you a smug glance, say, “Oh, Rex is from MEX-ico,” and then let that pregnant pause hang in the air like a silent affirmation of the hipster’s Moses-like deliverance of man’s best friend.

Of course, this practice deserves commendation for at least two reasons.

(1) There’s no doubt that Rex is better off chewing up vintage Smiths albums and piddling all over the ironic shag carpeting than when he spent his already short life scrounging for garbage along the Tijuana River’s banks.

(2) In a way, getting puppers from beyond la frontera treats Mexico like the neighbor it is and ought to be; in short, just another place to get a doggo. All the politics and outreach in the world can’t seem to cross that imaginary line in the sand just south of San Ysidro, but people really like dogs, and that seems to be enough.

Once again, hipster nature is complicated. On the one hand hipster stuff provides fodder for some ironic, self-aware laughs, and on the other hand reveals a bit of human nature at its most aspirational.