Dec 17, 2015 4 min read

There’s a young man in Arizona who triggered an avalanche of dogs. If you spend any time on Facebook at all, you know about the page called “Photo Doggies for Anthony.”

The young man, who is battling cancer, loves dogs. His mother reached out asking Facebook members to cheer him up by posting photos of their dogs. Every day, my Facebook feed is filled with pictures of pooches. In most cases, their humans offer names and breeds; some show the dogs hanging their heads in shame after bad behavior; some are wearing costumes. All are charming.

Last January, the website reported Facebook members posted more than half a million dog photos, a number that brings a kind and life-affirming element to a social media that, lately more than ever, was jammed with political sniping. For every bit of angry, sexist, bigoted or bitter snark that pops up on my feed, there are 10 grumpy bulldogs and goofy Labs to even the score.

It says something good about the humans behind all of this. If we’re to believe what much of the rest of the world thinks of us, we Americans are selfish, materialistic, bossy, overextended, tubby and spiritually bankrupt. It would seem all these dogs would make a case that the stereotype is wrong.

Dogs are expensive, time-consuming, inconvenient, noisy and messy. And yet, we have them anyway, by the millions. As many as 47 percent of our households have a dog, 70 million canines in all, according to the ASPCA.

Practically speaking, dogs are siphons, taking a household’s time and money while returning nothing tangible to the bottom line. Dogs are our children who never grow up. They never build their own lives and move away.

What they do bring is profound and obvious, the topic of hundreds of books and movies and the subject of a million photos. Of the legions who posted photos, most, probably, were inspired by Anthony’s health challenge. I can think of no gesture of support so easily accomplished as snapping a cellphone photo and sending it to Facebook. I can imagine Anthony scrolling through all the photos, feeling loved and encouraged.

But I would argue that all these photos are about something even bigger. People who, out of safety concerns, refrain from posting photos of their children will happily share multiple, ridiculous pictures of Lily and Max (which seem always to hang onto the top spots in the most popular dog name lists). Dogs are anonymous and innocent and totally devoid of political persuasion or opinion. Dogs don’t know a thing about Donald Trump, care not about religion, and wouldn’t know Caitlin Jenner if she showed up on the porch and rang the doorbell.

But dogs are photogenic, and they are funny. You scroll through all those photos, stopping on each to reach the name and the breed and the town, and then you move on to the next one. It’s like eating popcorn: tasty little bites of goodness. We don’t know these people, and in most cases don’t see their faces, but we connect for a moment. Maybe all these dog photos are providing a common ground for us, right when we need it.

I added a photo of one of our three dogs to the Facebook page. Smoothie the sheltie is shown sitting on the marble hearth, regal and calm.

“This is a rare moment of quiet,” I wrote. “He is usually spinning in circles through the house.” I liked that millions of people were seeing our Smoothie.

And with that post, I joined the Photos for Anthony world. The page shows no signs of stopping. Keep the doggies coming. We can use them.