the happy dog problem

I originally posted this to Facebook, and I hesitated to post it here because it's not strictly related to the topics of this blog and I'm worried about having to great a diversity of topics. I decided to go ahead anyway. If you have no interest in philosophy, go ahead and skip down to the next post.

You are sitting in a dog park when you notice a dog in the distance. This is a happy therapy dog that lives in the park and whose job is to cheer people up by playing with them. The dog is very good at this job. People always seem very happy after interacting with him, and more than one person has remarked that playing with the dog turned a bad day into a good one.

You’re about to go play with the dog when he dashes away toward another person, barking and wagging his tail. This other person is clearly extremely sad. You’ve never met this person but he or she has clearly suffered a devastating tragedy of some sort, and is on the verge of tears. The dog is currently running toward the sad person at full speed.

Closer to you than the sad person is a group of five people who also look extremely sad. You’re not sure if they know each other or not, but you’re guessing that they probably don’t since they’re not interacting. In an astonishing coincidence, they each seem just as sad as the individual sad person.

You know this dog well. You’ve interacted with him before and have built a rapport. You can reasonably expect that if you call him, he will come. Furthermore, you’re close enough to the group of five sad people that you could easily use your calls to steer the dog toward them.

However, the sad individual looks as if he or she is about to leave the park. If you call the dog now, the sad person will leave the park before you have time to get to them and cheer them up yourself.

Two questions:

First, do you call the dog over to cheer up the five sad people instead of the one?

Second, if you are familiar with the question known as “the trolley problem”, do you believe that your answer to the happy dog problem is fundamentally or essentially different from your answer to the trolley problem? Why or why not?