I live in California, where there's outdoor dining. My husband and I disagree about bringing our dog to restaurants. Our pooch has to sit under the table, and I think it's really dirty and unkind to put him there. My husband thinks we should bring him. What do you think?

--Concerned

Dogs long to please us, which is why they always give us such wonderful little presents: "Wow, Toto, headless dead bird? Oh, good, because a diamond tennis bracelet would be super boring."

By human cleanliness standards, dogs are seriously disgusting. The "Merry Corpsemas!" gifts on the duvet and the love some breeds have for rolling around in the mud (immediately after you spend $75 at the groomer) aren't the half of it. Dogs live to sniff poo; they'll snub their water bowl to drink out of the toilet; and they have the lovely habit of using your Persian rug for toilet paper -- especially when you've got company over for a chi-chi cocktail party.

In other words, any minor foot dirt under a restaurant table is unlikely to be a problem for your dog. All that's likely to be "really dirty" are the looks you might get from patrons with allergies or dog-in-dinery issues. From your dog's perspective, it'll be simply awesome to be at your feet.

Anthrozoologist John W.S. Bradshaw explains that dogs co-evolved with humans, starting between 15,000 to 25,000 years ago, per archeological estimates. Over all those doggie-human generations ever since, dogs have been bred to find human contact extremely rewarding. Bradshaw and his colleagues discovered that some dogs -- Labs and border collies, for example -- suffer intense "separation distress" when they're apart from their human. "They find it difficult to cope without us," writes Bradshaw. "Since we humans have programmed this vulnerability, it's our responsibility to ensure that our dogs do not suffer as a result."

As I see it, we're cruel to exclude dogs from so many areas of our lives. Take airline travel. Airlines require dogs over 20 pounds -- no matter how well-behaved -- to be put in a cage and stowed with the luggage in the hold of the plane. The airlines could easily adopt a more compassionate policy: Instead, give the cage space to that baby who's sure to scream all the way from Dallas to St. Louis, trashing the mental health of everybody from 1A to 32E.

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