This story is fairly wide spread in its distribution. With minor changes I heard it from my grandfather. I have this one from the Apache. I imagine all the local tribes have versions.
Some dogs were going along in the woods. Coyote saw them and he said, “Why don’t you dogs come stay with us in the mountains? We’re happy here. We live free among the trees and the cold clear streams. We eat deer and all kinds of good things.”
The dogs said, “We live with some people, and they give us meat and a warm place to sleep. they’re all the time saying to us, ‘You dogs, we love you.'”
Feeling the pinch of a less than successful morning hunt, coyote said, “But up in these hills we hear you crying down below when those people whip you.”
“If we don’t obey our masters, they have to whip us sometimes.”
“A whipping is a whipping,” said Coyote.
“But you have many enemies out here in the woods. Down below, we don’t have to dodge anyone the way you do. When it snows, you get cold while we stay warm. Sometimes you don’t have enough to eat. we don’t think we should live in the woods with you.”
Coyote watched the dogs trot off down the mountain. “Still,” he said to himself, “A whipping is a whipping.” And he went away.
Be careful trading freedom for security, it rarely ends well. You just might find that “you’ve traded a walk-on part in the war for a lead role in a cage.“