Red and Blue Cross

First, to put this into perspective, there are 17 million people living in the Netherlands, which has an area of about 17,000 square miles. That’s a little like cramming the population of the whole state of New York into Maryland. There just aren’t a lot of wide-open spaces. I’ve been following the story of the search for an abandoned Great Pyrenees mama outside Odgen for weeks now. It’s hard to imagine something like that happening in Holland. Still, it’s pretty impressive what the Dutch have accomplished. After a decades-long campaign of legislation and sterilization, the Netherlands is completely free of stray dogs. The Dutch are crazy about their pooches. They carry them about in baskets on their bikes. They let them ride public transportation, and their pets eat with them in restaurants. Dogs are pretty much welcome everywhere people are. The Dutch pony up for pet health insurance. If I was a dog, I’d sure want to live in Holland.