Three cheers for our ugly mutts

The honor of our dogs has been sullied, and this cannot be allowed to stand. Or sit, and stay. A survey by Mixbook Photo found that the cutest dogs in America are in Oklahoma City, and Twin Cities dogs don't even crack the top 25. We're Ugly Dog Central, if you believe this Instagram-sourced study.

Which, of course, you should not. Dogs don't care if they're not cute. No dog prances around like Maria in "West Side Story," singing "I feel pretty!" More like "I smell awful!" More like "I smell offal," to be honest.

Ask your dog if he's the best looking dog ever, and you know the response: Bright eyes, a swishing tail and everything else that signals he has no idea what any of those things mean but this might end with "food" or "walk." You never know! It could happen!

A few decades ago, the very idea of ranking cities by aggregate dog-cuteness would have been impossible. Dogs existed in the periphery of the family photos — a blur in a shot taken in the backyard.

I think the entire existence of Pepper, the dog out at the farm, consists of a black-and-white blob in the corner of an Instamatic snapshot, about a fourth of an inch wide. This didn't do her justice, because she cornered a rabid skunk in a drain pipe, barking in great alarm until my uncle dispatched it with a shotgun. Sundays at the farm were fun, I tell you.

No one celebrated the triumph by taking a picture of Pepper. You had 12 pictures on a roll. You saved those for company or vacations. You didn't spend them on a dog, for the simple reason that if you wanted to look at your dog, you moved your head to see where it was. Yep, dog.

Now we carry devices that can shoot thousands of photos at extraordinary resolution. And we are more involved with our dogs, whether they like it or not.

The question is whether dogs will become socialized to phones, the way they pick up on human expressions and cues. After a few more generations, your basic dog will see the phone in front of your face and think: "I am involved in this situation. I don't know how. But I am often given compressed meat dust in cliched bone form when I sit and face the human, so I will do it."

They will never know they're being captured for posterity, because they do not know the concept. This is why people can keep pictures of previous dogs around the house, and the current dog doesn't get upset like a spouse who finds ex-wives in picture frames at the husband's office.

We're at a point in human history where there are more images of dogs than ever before. And that's good. When I scroll through pictures and videos of dogs I think, "Well, I may be reducing my attention span to a housefly-on-a-hotplate, but on the other hand, awww."

On Twitter — sorry, X — there's an Irish guy, Niall Harbison who rescues street dogs in Thailand and narrates their heart-warming tales. Or heart-worming, as the case may be.

For instance: "When I first met Tina, she had a wound in her head from an ax, all of her fur was gone and she was missing two legs. Also, her body weight was 42% mites. Now she's healed, her legs grew back and she's been adopted by a couple in Wales, where she ran for town council and was elected by a landslide!"

I exaggerate only slightly. He traces the recovery of the dogs and their eventual new homes all over the country, and you can't help but get a bit misty when you see these abused creatures find homes and loving owners.

You want to bury your face in your own dog's fur for that Good Dog Smell, even though the dog wonders why: "Have you forgotten what I smell like? I mean, I'm 124 years old in your years, and I can tell where you are from a weak burp on another floor of the house."

The stories of the rescued dogs restore your sundered faith in humanity and remind you of the enduring spirit of caninity. And there's something else: The dogs for whom you root the most are the ugliest. Scabby, patchy, rheumy, scrawny. They're not Instagram-ready.

But Instagram is not life; it's a parade of boasts and postures. If Minnesota had the ugliest dogs in the country, according to Instagram, I'd assume we had the most ordinary mutts with old collars, not coiffed and blow-dried lap-candy. The sort of dogs who smell like lake water with a whiff of Alpo-burps and a foundational note of stealthily issued flatulence. A slobber dog who'd plop down in front of the King of England and slorp away at his neutered parts. (The dog's, not Charles'.) The best dogs.

Of course, all dogs are the best dogs, and because this is the best of all possible states, we should win this competition. Perhaps we'll regard this loss with resolution and start slapping up primped-pooch pix on social media for meaningless likes!

Or maybe just cook an extra brat for the dog, who will give you a "like" no matter what, for as long as its big heart beats.

james.lileks@startribune.com • 612-673-7858 • Twitter: @Lileks • facebook.com/james.lileks