I was recently having a discussion at my friend's home followed by lunch. He had three lovely dogs. They were not pedigrees and one would expect a person at his wealth level to have pedigrees imported from an exotic foreign country! Unfortunately he is a real lover of animals, so he go these from the blue cross.

One of these dogs died recently. "Why?" I asked, and he answered with a crony smile. "The senior vet who loves dogs was on leave when my dog took ill. The two assistant vets don't think that dogs that are not pedigrees and exotic are worthy of real attention. So they treated Bessy in a very cursory manner. She died before the senior vet came back. It appears they did not diagnose properly!"

This left me wondering how deep our slavish admiration of things foreign is, and how this attitude translates into various ways in which we discriminate.

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