Dog Sleep Clinic Causes Mass Euthanasia Due to Unclear Euphemism Use
“He doesn’t bark like he used to,” says little Jimmy, “but he can sure still cuddle!” - photo by Michael Swaim
Mohammed Suhail
Scripps Dog Sleep Clinic has been the target of a massive class-action lawsuit after they unwittingly euthanized over 5,000 dogs due to a misunderstanding between laboratory technicians and researchers in which technicians were supposed to induce sleep in the dogs, but instead ended up euthanizing them.
“They asked us to put them to sleep,” said lab technician John Meter. “I guess it was just a big misunderstanding.”
“We should have seen it coming,” said one researcher who wished to remain unnamed. “All of our data was the same for the past few years, even in the control groups. Their heart rates were very low and it seems they went into a permanent sleeping state. We tried using everything to wake them up, even making them listen to Andrew WK. Nothing worked.”
“I guess they were just dead.” He continued, “That’s probably why they started to decompose…But, as they say, hindsight is always 20/20.”
“I think we’re going to have to change our newly adopted slogan, ‘Sleep is forever,’ now,” he added. “Goddamnit, it took me forever to get buttons with a blinking light on them.”
Benjamin Aaron, spokesperson for the Center for Prevention of Euphemism and Idiom Usage issued a statement yesterday in which he said that the CPEIU had seen this coming.
“We have been, for years, aware of this problem in the English language. It seems idioms are all anyone ever uses anymore. Nobody wants to tell you the truth for fear of being thought of as politically incorrect.”
Another Scripps lab was closed down under similar circumstances for almost a week after a child’s fecal matter was found in a room in which medicinal marijuana was grown. After an official investigation, police concluded that the child had misunderstood the label on the room door as “Potty Room.”
After the contamination, patients complained that their marijuana smelled of spoiled milk and peanut butter, but most also said that it was definitely “the shit.”
“If the child had been told to refer to the bathroom as ‘the shitter’ instead of ‘the potty room,’ this never would have happened,” said Aaron.
PETA, the leader of the class action lawsuit, says that this isn’t the first time this has happened; dog clinics have “mistakenly” put dogs to sleep all the time.
“It happened to me, personally,” Jan Rivers, spokesperson for PETA, said yesterday. “When I was twelve, my parents said that my dog went to the dog farm. But later, when I found out the truth, I was outraged. Some dog clinic had a communication error and put my dog to sleep.”
She added, “My parents didn’t have the heart to tell me, I guess.”