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upworthy

Mark Hay

At some point in my childhood, my hands began to shake.

Not badly at first—I couldn’t draw a straight line, but I didn’t mind much since I’d never had any inclination towards art. As I entered my teenage years, though, the tremors got worse and started spreading out of my hands.

Although I tried to control the spasms in my face with ever-increasing doses of beta-blockers and anti-epileptics, by middle school I’d acquired the nickname “Twitchy.” In high school, my handwriting had gotten so atrocious it’d become a running joke among the teachers. And by the time I reached college, I finally admitted to myself that my neurological condition made a few things in life definitively harder.

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It’s not uncommon for people passing a homeless person with a dog on the street to voice sympathy for the animal and derision for the human.

Often based on the assumption that a homeless individual is just using a pet for warmth or to guilt people into giving them money, it’s easy to argue that people who can’t take care of themselves could be subjecting animals to deprivation and risk.

This skepticism is so baked into society that some people apparently consider it acceptable to cut the leashes of homeless people’s animals as they sleep, taking them to a better life. Authorities regularly sweep homeless camps, picking up animals, or grill homeless people for proof of animal ownership they may not have and few pet owners would ever keep on their person.

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