JEROME

I saw a little boy in the mall today.  I almost did not notice him, except that he was only about six and alone, and when he walked past me I saw that he was crying.  It didn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to figure out that he must have lost his parents.  It turned out that he had lost his granny.  His name was Jerome and he was trying not to cry, but you could see that he was just barely hanging on to his last nerve and was a hair’s breath away from blind panic. I could not get him to stop, he kept walking and looking frantically around, answering my questions (what’s wrong, are you lost, what’s your name) in such a soft voice that I could not hear everything he was saying.

The mall was so noisy – Christmas carols blasting, people rushing in every which direction, all seeming to be talking at the same time. I had to bend almost double to get on eye level with him, but I could see that as far as he was concerned I was just getting in his way of finding his granny. He wanted to keep walking until he found her, not answer my questions.  He knew she was somewhere in the vicinity and he was not supposed to talk to strangers anyway.  I tried to reassure him – don’t worry, I’ll get somebody to make a loud announcement and your granny will come and get you, I told him.  But at the same time I was trying to figure out a way to get him to go with me to the Mall office – heck, I was trying to figure out where the hell the Mall office was! As I was walking and talking to him, to my great relief he suddenly saw his granny in the distance – he must have sharp eyes because there were a lot of people in the mall – and he took off and half-ran, half-trotted, towards her.

She was with a younger woman and two little girls and I expected her to show some signs of relief when she saw him. A short, plain woman of in her late 40’s, with black rimmed glasses and a white dress, she looked like a Coco-Panyol.  Expecting a different reaction, I was so disappointed to see that when he went up to her, she immediately started to scold him.  I was too far away to hear what she was saying, but you could tell she was not happy – grabbing him by the shoulder and shoving him, gesticulating and pointing to him as she spoke to the other woman, who seemed not in the slightest bit interested.  He just stood there, a little behind her, with his head hanging, his eyes sad and his little face worried.

He looked so downcast that I had to say something.  So I walked to meet them. "Hello Jerome's granny - I'm glad he found you - he was so frightened... I guess you were frightened too, right?"  Apparently not.  She didn’t look frightened, relieved, or even marginally happy.  What she looked was pissed off. She told me that she had told Jerome not to stop to watch a demonstration of a remote control helicopter with flashing lights all over it - and he did!!!  Clearly a mortal sin, punishable by neglect, if not deliberate abandonment.

I was trying not to say anything, or say anything in a way that would make things worse for Jerome.  But I could not just pretend that her actions were a-okay.  So I said, as lightly as possible, "Well granny, what do you expect - he's a little boy - I would want to watch that helicopter myself!!" I hope that what I said sunk in, or will eventually sink in, but at the time she was clearly not amused and she walked on with the two little girls gawking at me over their shoulders and Jerome trailing behind.

But then, I was not particularly amused either.  In fact it ruined my whole mood and I had to leave the mall.  I was very near to tears – I thought of all the Jeromes in the world who are looked after physically but neglected and abused emotionally.  No wonder we have so many young men (and women) who have no sympathy or compassion for anybody and who don’t think particularly highly of anything – including themselves.  Children truly are what they learn.  And all Jerome learned today was that his granny could be trusted only to make him unhappy.

Going into the mall at Christmas time is nothing if not an education in child rearing practices in this country.  For instance, there was a young couple with their two daughters getting a bite to eat in the food court – the man had the younger daughter (about a year old) on his lap and he was sharing his Coke with her.  I mean that literally – he did not just give her a sip or two – she had 50% of a large glass of Coca Cola. God alone know what that amount of sugar can do to an infant.

I walked behind a young mother and her little daughter for quite a while as we headed in the same direction.  The little girl, who seemed to be about 4 or 5, was dressed to the nines, from the crown of her head to the tip of her shoes, all bows and frills and glitter.  She was holding her mother’s hand and quite often had to run to keep up with her.  Her mother did not notice her daughter’s discomfort because she was talking on her cell phone the whole time.  In fact, when I got to a store I wanted to go into, and they walked on past it, she was still talking on the phone and the little girl was still trotting behind her in an effort to make her age 4 legs match her mother’s age 22 stride.

And it goes on and on – parents who create literally hundreds of “don’ts” and enforce exactly none of them - the mother who takes her 3 year old son into a store selling costume jewellery and tells the child not to touch anything, while she wanders around and leaves him to touch every thing in sight; or the father who watches on in an apparent stupor while his daughter tries her best to pull the decorations off of the trees dotted throughout the mall.  These are children who are accustomed to doing what they want, coupled with parents who don’t pay attention to them.  The result is Jerome.  The result is also children who are abducted, raped and killed in alarming numbers every year in this country.  If I wanted to, I could have abducted Jerome.  Nobody was paying attention, the mall was so noisy and busy it would have gone unnoticed.  And he is a thin, obviously docile little boy, who would not have been able to put up too much of a fight.  All I had to do was tell him that I knew where his granny was and that I would take him to her.  Abduction accomplished.  Then you would have seen one more granny on TV News, holding her head and bawling, and saying “If I did only know!!!”

Canine Racism

There is a young lady right now in Trinidad who is considering doing her MSc thesis on racism.  Not human racism, canine racism.  A few months ago I came across the term “breedism” – which is what dog people are calling canine racism, most likely because we refer to “breeds” of dogs.  People are categorized according to “races”, hence racism.  Personally, I don’t care what you call it.  Breedism or racism, the effect is the same - discriminatory actions and practices against dogs in general, and Pit Bulls specifically.

I also have to say upfront that I understand how people could be racist.  By that I mean that I consider it quite natural for someone to think that people who look like him are better than people who do not look like him.  I believe that one of the causes of racism, a mixture of fear of the unknown and comfort in the familiar, is a very human reaction.  But because I think racism is an understandable human condition does not mean that I accept that it should be condoned. On the contrary, I think it should be fought tooth and nail because its results are evil. The synonyms for racism are also its results: discrimination, prejudice, bigotry, intolerance, bias – as  I said, usually extended to somebody because they are from another ethnic background or tribe. Or breed, in the case of animals.

When I heard about what this young lady was doing, I got to thinking – not always a good thing for me to do - about the way animals are discriminated against, exploited and misunderstood.  I have never studied sociology, but I have lived with racism my whole life and have more than a nodding acquaintance with its many faces, so I felt confident that my opinions had value. And I always think best when I write, so here we are.

As I see it, racism has two components. First, racism is the feeling that people who don’t belong to your tribe are not as good as you.  Secondly, it is the belief that your “betterness” gives you special privileges.  It is not enough to say, 'I am a more superior human being (which automatically makes you inferior) because I am African/Indian/Chinese/Whatever' – you also have to say, 'I am superior, you are inferior and that means I get to live a better quality of life than you do'.

Sometimes, it does not stop at the inferior people not having the same quality of life.  Sometimes it extends to not having any life at all. Hitler was a racist – he put the Jews and others in ghettos and then in the gas chambers.  The American settlers were racist – they put the Native Americans on reservations after doing their best to wipe them off the face of the earth.  King Leopold II of Belgium thought nothing of enslaving and brutalizing and murdering Africans from the Congo by the thousands. In these cases, it is difficult to untangle where the hunger for power left off and the racism began that led the various leaders to attempt genocide.  A question for debate at another time might be whether a leader can conquer people without trying to annihilate their race. Can a person be power-mad without being racist, or is everyone racist but not every racist is homicidal. However, what is clear is that, although racism does not necessarily always end in a holocaust, history has shown us that when racism is empowered, it easily can.

Comparing human and canine racism has one obvious disparity.  Unlike humans, dogs are not racists.  Humans discriminate against other beings just for not being like them. Dogs don't do that. So in effect, we are still talking about human racism – but only directed to animals this time. Humans have extended their animosity against people who belong to other races to animals who belong to different breeds.

In traditional racism, the “other” person is de-humanized.  He or she becomes sub-human.  It is okay to rape a young girl if she is not human; it is okay to whip the back of a man into shreds if he is not human; it is okay not to provide proper education, health care, nutrition and housing for whole families if they are not human. Because being human assures everybody of certain rights.  Not human = No rights. Therefore, it is ridiculously easy for humans to extend their racist attitudes and propensities to dogs because they are truly not human to begin with!

You hear people saying all the time, “I hate cats”.  Why? Why do you hate cats?  “Because they are sly.”  “I just don’t like them.”  “I’ve always hated them.” “Because all cats are thieves.”  “They just give me the creeps.”  “Because they kill children by stealing their breath while they sleep.” Just like all Chinese are sly; and all Indians are thieves; and all Africans are potential rapists.  So perhaps I should add one more criteria to the definition of racism.  It must have no factual basis for existing.  All that is necessary is a willingness to believe in stereotyping.

I have always said that I was very fortunate to be born of a mixed union – I am not speaking so much of my mother’s marriage, but of my grandparents’ union.  My maternal grandfather was black as the hinges of hell, and my grandmother was as white as the driven snow.  From a very early age this taught me that stereotyping was bullshit.  In the days when it was widely known and accepted that all black men were lazy and ignorant, I knew that my grandfather was a child genius, went to a British university on a scholarship he got at age 14 and became a very well known and respected jurist.  Also in the days when all white people were cruel oppressors, I could see that my grandmother was the most kind person I knew (or have ever met in my entire life), who would literally give her last cent to any person who told her a sad story.  It was from her that I learned to love and respect animals and to treat everybody as I would like them to treat me. 

So though I grew up surrounded by racism, including racism within my own family, I was perhaps fortunate that I did not buy into it as deeply as I could have because the foundation stone of accepting stereotyping was missing from my emotional makeup.  I countered every given with “how do you know that?”  I demanded proof.  Basically, I was a pain in the ass.  Which is not to say that I did not develop my own prejudices – but I like to think that I at least give everybody a chance to prove their worth before I decide that I am better than they are.  Though it might even turn out that they are more intelligent, or more caring, or more cultured, or more educated than I am, neither of us will be better than the other simply because of our race.

If it is one thing that I have learned about racism, it is that it is insidious.  It hides in laws and facts that nobody challenges. It creeps.  It slithers and slides and envelopes the atmosphere like a fog.  You don’t notice it, even though it is all around you.  And then when you finally notice it, you begin to see it in places where it does not really exist. 

When I was a child, our next door neighbours were a Dougla family.  Their three girls ranged in hue from the first daughter who brown-skinned, to the middle one who was most aptly called Darkie, to the youngest who was better known as “Reds”.  One day, the family was thrown into turmoil when the eldest girl brought home her first boyfriend because it was found that he was “too dark”. Apparently if the couple were to wed and have children, the offspring would not improve the ‘quality’ of the family. Nobody noticed that they were rejecting a young man with the same skin colour as their second daughter.  As it turned out, they did get married and had three boys, all of whom were lighter-skinned than their mother.  The family’s prejudice was groundless.

An elderly woman I worked with once told me about her grandmother, who would not allow anybody to enter her house with their shoes on.  This was in an effort to keep the floors clean.  Or to be more accurate it was in an effort to keep the floor clean of what she termed “Coolie spit”.  She did not want anybody tracking saliva from the mouths of the surrounding Plantation Indians onto her floors.  When I heard this story, I was aghast.  At least I was, until I visited India and realized that mostly everyone does indeed spit continually on the streets, so it is quite likely that the indentured labourers had brought this habit with them to the West Indies.  Although it would seem that my friend’s grandmother was a racist – her prejudice was based in the fact that it was highly probable that people's shoes would have spit on their soles. And the spit would have come from Indians (or Coolies, as they were called).

An important component of stereotyping, is misinformation. There are so many misconceptions and myths surrounding dogs, especially Pit Bulls, that listing them would take reams of paper. These misconceptions are fatal for dogs because they are what humans have used to create their stereotypes and resulting racist attitudes towards dogs.  For instance, dogs bite with no warning.  Wrong.  Dogs always give warning – sometimes several warnings.  It is just that humans have never taken the time to listen to dogs.  For centuries we have been so busy making dogs into our own version of what a dog should be, and training them to do what we want them to do, that nobody has stopped to ask what the dog is trying to tell us.  You may ask, “You really expect everybody to learn to speak dog?” In a word, yes.  At least make an effort.  If you were living cheek to jowl for centuries with any other species that spoke a different language, you would by now at least know a few words – and they won’t all be commands from you to that person. You'd make damn sure to learn what the person said when he reached his tolerance limit with you and was about to slap you upside the head.

Just the other day in the vet’s office, a very nice woman who said that she owned two Pit Bulls sagely informed everybody in the waiting room that people were afraid of Pit Bulls because once their jaws locked onto somebody, you could not prise them open.  This is such an urban legend!  No basis in fact whatsoever, but it is repeated like the holy grail of Pit Bull characteristics.  Nobody questions it, especially if the person repeating the “fact” has even the most tenuous connection to a Pit Bull.  It always surprises me how many dog experts exist around us - and how many of us believe every word they say just because they tell us they know what they are talking about. 

If necessary, I can lie.  But I don’t quite see the point of putting myself to all the trouble of lying for no good reason.  I have a family member who lies just because he can.  How do I know he is lying?  His lips are moving.  I have met other people like that, and always with surprise because I never expect somebody to lie to me for no good reason.   During the attempted coup d’etat in 1990, a man looked me straight in the eye and told me he had just come (to Diego Martin) from Port of Spain where he had seen with his own two eyes the bombing and total demolition of TTT House on Maraval Road.  That building is still standing to this day, 21 years later.  I have read of people swearing that they saw a Pit Bull attacking a person, when it later turned out to be a dog that looked absolutely nothing like a Pit Bull.  I don’t know if their assumption that only Pit Bulls attack humans made them see a Pit Bull, or whether they knew that if they identified the attacking dog as a Pit Bull it would create a better story.  But the fact is that stereotypes can start as a lie.

It seems that an inordinate number of dogs were bred to guard or be companions to Royalty.  In fact, almost everyone I have ever met with a purebred dog talks about the dog’s ancestral links of some kind to long-ago royalty. Take the Shar Pei for instance.  This is a dog from China whose job as a defender of the farmer’s crops from wild hogs was made redundant by industrialization.  Out of work, he then became known as a good fighting dog.  Because of this, in some areas, he is treated with the same prejudice as the Pit Bull.  But I am yet to speak with a Shar Pei owner who did not inform me that this breed was created specifically to guard Chinese royalty.  Likewise, albeit in a reverse kind of way, with the Pit Bull.  Recently, a radio announcer said that the Pit Bull was not a real dog – it had been genetically engineered.  You have to admit that term has a certain science fiction glamour about it – a kind of Mutant X dog.  Well, the truth is that all dogs in the world have had their original wolf genes interfered with by humans – the gene that made this wolf big was mated to the gene that made that wolf big to create the Mastiff; and the gene that made that wolf fast was mated to the gene that made the other wolf fast to create the Greyhound.  So what?  Does "genetic engineering " mean Pit Bulls should be ‘de-caninized’ like how the African slaves were de-humanized?

I hear people saying that they don’t like Rottweilers (too unpredictable), or PomPeks (too snappy), or Pit Bulls (too vicious), and I have a problem.  Rottweilers can be snappy and Pom Peks can be vicious and Pit Bulls can be unpredictable too – they are dogs, not predictably packaged Pringles.  People buy dogs and either do not teach them how to behave, or use such harsh methods that the dogs become emotionally damaged, and then they are amazed at the resulting undesirable behaviours.  They say, “See what I told you?  Those dogs are vicious!”  It is like ill treating a slave until he runs away and then saying, “See what I told you?  These people always try to run away!”

Now they are instituting laws that are targeting specific dogs.  They are called Breed Specific Laws (BSLs).  If laws that targeted specific human races were instituted, the world would rise up in protest.  But using the same methodology of racism, they do it to dogs.  All dogs can bite and all human can abuse; all dogs are capable of killing – a small dog can kill a baby or a child, a larger dog can kill a human or other dog – and all humans are capable of killing everything in sight.  Humans kill more humans in one day than dogs do in one year.  But all humans are given the benefit of the doubt until proven guilty, and even if they might have committed murder, in some cases they never have to pay with their own lives. Dogs are never given a trial, but are killed instantly, no questions asked, sometimes just for seeming to show aggression.  The other day, in the USA, police shot an elderly, chained Golden Retriever for growling at them when they came into its owner's yard.

But this brings us to the point of whether the same rules that we apply to ourselves should be applied to animals.  I have made this point before, and I will make it again.  You are either just or you are not just.  You are either humane or you are not humane.  You can not decide who you want to be humane to and still consider yourself a humane person.  You can not decide to show justice to only one type of person and expect to be considered a just person.  Compassion, concern, care – they all have more in common that just the same first letter.  They are attributes of a civilized person (strangely, also starting with the letter “C”).  I think it is a good thing to strive to be civilized, don’t you?

Mercy, Mercy, Mercy

Making your way in the world today takes everything you've got.

Taking a break from all your worries sure would help a lot.

Wouldn't you like to get away?

Sometimes you want to go

Where everybody knows your name,

And they're always glad you came.

You wanna be where you can see,

Our troubles are all the same

You wanna be where everybody knows your name.

“Cheers” Theme Song

Sometimes I wish I could live in a place containing only people who think like I do, especially about the things that I hold important.  ‘People who try to kind’ would be number one on that list.  I am not asking for much, because I know that there are not many people in this world who are as weird as I am, so we would only need a very small area. 

Yes, I know that diversity brings interest to your life and stretches and expands your horizons.  But most of the diversity I meet on a daily basis just makes me sad.  I am tired of rubbing shoulders with people who are unkind – to children, to older people, to poorer people, to people with handicaps, and most especially to animals.  I don’t want to be with them.  As the Desiderata says, they are injurious to my spirit.  They fill the air I breathe with toxicity. I just want to be with people who reflect who I am.  People who I don’t have to explain myself to, to justify my thoughts to, to argue with or force myself to ignore. I want a meeting of minds.  I want to be around soul mates.

Imagine somebody cheerfully announcing that he killed two puppies from his female’s litter because they did not meet the breed’s standard.  Not because they had an incurable disease.  Not because they were so badly deformed that living would have been agony for them.  Simply because they were not perfect, according to what some book told him perfection should be.  He felt he was being heroic and self sacrificing in not selling or giving away those puppies because his ethical code would not allow him to risk these sub-perfect specimens reproducing with another owner. 

"Anyone who has accustomed himself to regard the life of any living creature as worthless is in danger of arriving also at the idea of worthless human lives."

- Albert Schweitzer, (Alsatian Theologian, Musician, and Medical Missionary)

How can I begin to express how deeply depressing I found this to be?  I wanted to scream at him “You’re not ethical, you’re maniacal!” but I knew that would end badly and nothing would change. I thought about calmly stating my dissent in a civilized and measured manner because I felt disgusted that my silence would seem to be condoning what he was doing. But ultimately I just wanted to slowly, carefully, back away from him, like you would back away from a cobra with venom dripping from his fangs. I felt sick.

“Dogs are not humans.  We are not obligated to treat them the same way we treat humans. In fact, it is bad if we do.”  Over and over again, I’ve heard so many variations of this theme that I’ve lost track.  No, dogs are not humans – but they are thinking, feeling beings with emotions that include trust, loyalty and unconditional forgiveness towards their human masters.  And I stress the word “masters” because it is the part of dog ownership that a lot of people like the best – to be in total control of something with a pumping heart, and millions of cells and nerves and chromosomes and synapses that we could never in a million years hope to recreate. We can’t make it, but we can destroy it – the power of destruction with impunity, with no repercussions, is in the hands of any idiot who can walk into the TTSPCA or visit a breeder and plunk down some money, or beg, borrow or steal a dog.

And I would argue that we do treat dogs the same way we treat humans.  Historically, mankind has raped, murdered, enslaved, tortured and oppressed his fellow humans, and still continues to do so. Hopefully putting aside the rape, we do the same to dogs. Many years ago I read a book called The Chrysalids by John Wyndham – I still have it, battered and falling apart.  It was about a world after the final holocaust, where because of the radiation from the nuclear warheads used in the war, the chances of breeding true to the standards (which its inhabitants found in a book called The Bible) were less than 50%.  Deviations to the breed standard were considered abominations and rooted out and destroyed – animals, crops and humans.  Fiction based in fact. People who would kill a child for having an extra thumb, as was done in the book, are based on the same people who would burn a young woman at the stake for having a mole under her arm, or put a dog in a bag and throw it in the sea to drown because it dug up a flower bed – or did not have a correctly curved tail.

As Shakespeare said, “the quality of mercy is not strained.”  Mercy is mercy is mercy.  You can’t say you are a merciful person, or a kind person, or a loving person and then decide who you are going to be merciful and kind and loving towards. You can’t filter your mercy. Hitler was kind to children and dogs – German children and German Sheppard Dogs.  Did that make him eligible for the Noble Peace Prize? 

There was a woman once who wrote a critically acclaimed book on dog training.  It was a masterpiece of prose and beautiful poetical allusions.  And it related how she dug holes, day after day, and filled them with water and held her dog’s head under the water, day after day, in punishment for the dog digging up her garden.  Did authoring a beautifully written book make her a merciful person? Because she was a well respected dog trainer, were her actions kind? No, on both counts. But thousands of people read what she had written and calmly accepted her cruelty to that dog - and even applied it to their own dogs.

When I first went to live in Canada, I never saw anybody living on the street. It would have caused an uproar if Torontonians discovered that people were eating out of their garbage cans.  I went back to visit years after returning to Trinidad and was shocked to see Yonge Street filled with homeless people.  And nobody saw them.  I still remember the first time I saw a woman driving a taxi in Trinidad – I was so surprised, (and delighted) that I couldn’t stop talking about it for hours afterwards.  Now, I don’t even notice the hundreds of female drivers we have on the roads. What has this got to do with cruelty?  I am making the point that if we are immersed in a certain way of doing things for long enough we don’t see what we are doing.  We can act cruelly without even thinking about it being cruel. We just accept it as the way things are and it becomes okay for things to be that way.  We stop questioning the status quo, especially if no one else around us is doing it.  We become cruel because we stop seeing. We stop seeing the dog.  We see only the breed.  The species.

Compassion for animals is intimately connected with goodness of character and it may be confidently asserted that he who is cruel to animals cannot be a good man."

- Arthur Schopenhauer, (German Philosopher)

Yes, we are the masters.  But it is the dogs who are merciful and forgiving.  Perhaps, instead of humans training dogs, dogs should teach humans how to be humane.

C is for Confrontation

Today I took Rescue for a walk in the savannah.  This might appear to be a simple sentence, but it is loaded with nuance. I have never walked Rescue anywhere that somebody has not told me to (a) “hole dat dog hole dat dog”; (b) “he shud haf on a muzzle”; (c) “woman, you kyar hole dat dog, nuh”; or (d) “steups”.  Walking a pit bull in Trinidad is highly recommended as a sovereign remedy for low blood pressure.  I can only hope that Rescue has no idea the amount of negativity that is directed his way, because if looks could kill he would be lying senseless at my feet before we rounded the first bend by Queen's Royal College.

Today we actually managed to get as far as opposite to where Casuals Club used to be without attracting more than a few dozen glares.  Now, it must be clearly understood that we do not walk on the paved perimeter of the savannah.  I gave that up after the first two or three afternoons when I came to the conclusion that seeing almost everybody walking towards me scatter, scream, gasp and cuss was just not worth the while of using the concrete as an emory board for Rescue’s toe nails.  So we walk inside the savannah – far inside the savannah.  This means that if rain had fallen that day (as it did today), both Rescue and I return to the car with mud up to our ankles.  If anyone should ever have to know where every depression, hole, drain or marshy area in the savannah is to be found, then I am the person to ask.  I am also on intimate terms with the various packs of feral dogs who live in the savannah, and having to watch their misery also does nothing to lower my blood pressure or raise my depression.  But, as I said, we had reached the second stretch in our walk when our paths were crossed by two men, one considerably older than the other, who were toting a goal post.  We slowed down politely to let them pass, and the older one looked at Rescue, looked at me, and then said the inevitable “that dog should have on a muzzle.”

 
I did what I always do.  I ignored the fool and walked on.  But then something clicked in my brain and I thought, no.  No.  I am not going to take it this afternoon.  I am going to defend my dog.  So I made an abrupt turn around and with Rescue seemingly just as happy about the directional change of plan, started to walk rapidly after the two men.  I am not the type of person to gracefully walk rapidly, especially not over soggy, muddy ground.  Nevertheless, I slowly closed the distance between us and caught up to them.  If I am to be totally honest I suppose I have to admit that it also helped that they stopped, having reached their destination.  I have no idea why they could not play football nearer to the edge of the savannah, but at the time I felt it was all part and parcel of their inexplicable determination to irritate me.

“Excuse me, sir” (I am nothing if not polite) I called out to the elder gentleman who looked around enquiringly at me.

“Hi – I was wondering – when you passed me just now you said something about my dog needing a muzzle?  I was wondering, what made you say that?”

The man looked a little taken aback. “Well, he is a pit bull…..”

“Yes?” I said in what I hoped to be a neutrally encouraging voice that conveyed kindness but common sense, maturity but not abrasiveness, friendliness and stunning intelligence, all at the same time.  The poor man just looked harassed.

“Well, they have a reputation you know.  They have attacked people….  So I was just suggesting….”

“Sir, I think you would agree that in the United States of America there are many more dogs and people than in Trinidad, right?”  He nodded agreement.  “But in the United States of American more children are killed by their own parents than by all the breeds of dogs combined.  And I have never heard anybody suggest that parents should be muzzled!”

“That’s true, that’s true.  But you have to be careful..”

“Tell me something” I asked.  “Have you ever seen or heard about a dog attacking someone while on a leash?”  You could actually see the computer in his brain checking all of his back files.  After a little while he admitted that he had never heard of a bite, but he had seen dogs on leashes attacking people.

 "Attacking?” I asked disbelievingly.  “While on a leash that was held by its owner?”

 “Yes, I am telling you!  Lunging at people!  And the owners, like they want the dog to do it!  They find it’s a joke.” Oh Lord.  The infamous bad owners strike again.

“Lunging can mean anything.  Lunging is not attacking.  But what made you think I was an owner like that?  I really want to know because you are not the first person to tell me about muzzling my dog, and I want to know what it is about him or about me that makes people feel threatened.”

“No, no – I was really only joking, you know.  Ask this young man here – when we passed you I told him that the dog looked like he was well trained and if he wasn’t so well trained you could never hold him back if he decided to attack somebody.  He’s a real nice dog.  A real big dog – especially the head and mouth.  Real solid body. Plenty teeth, boy.” (Rescue had chosen just that moment to indicate his boredom with sitting in one place by yawning widely.)

Well.  Who could stay vexed at somebody who was clearly a discerning connoisseur of canine excellence?  After that the conversation quickly progressed to a catalogue of Rescue’s finer points,  the conditions under which I came to be owned by him, the near saint-like attributes of pit bulls in general, and all the difficulties we both have to overcome just to live a half-normal life.  At the end of it all we parted the best of good friends, with Rescue grinning companionably at both of them before trotting off with what he thought was a wave of his tail-stub, but was actually only a twitch.

Breeding Bitches

When I was a youngster I knew for sure that one of the most important functions of a woman is to produce at least one baby, preferably by the time she was 20.  In fact, the subject was not up for discussion until I was in my teens and the pill was invented, giving women a choice in the matter. In those days, if a young woman announced that she had decided not to have children, you could read the thoughts going through the mind of whoever she was speaking to as plainly as if they were written on that person’s forehead:

“Not having any children?  I feel something wrong and she too shame to say, so she just playing brave.  But I always thought she was kinda selfish, you know.  Only thinking about herself all the time – what about the husband?  What about the grandparents – they going to be too sad about this foolishness. So what she get married for in the first place?  These young people ain’t play they could make you feel shame, nuh.”

Then in the late 60s and early 70s a new movement came into being in the midst of much ridicule and resistance.  It was called the Women’s Liberation Movement and one of the things that it said was, “I am a woman.  This is my body. I can do whatever the hell I want with it.  And if you don’t like it, you can kiss my rosy red cheeks!”  Now, more than four decades later, only people who were born before 1940 would think twice about an announcement from a woman that she had decided to remain childless.  And even they probably won’t say anything other than “Oh.”  (Perhaps if they are friendly with either of the couple’s parents they might also console them by assuring them that their children will change their minds in time. But that would be about it – no gossip, no stigmatization, no judgements.) We’ve come a long way, baby!

 However, although this change has come surprisingly quickly, it is not universal.  In some countries, particularly Eastern countries, a woman is still expected to present her husband with at least one child.  The child is usually considered the husband’s property, but the care of it remains with the woman until the (girl)child is married or the (boy)child becomes old enough to fend for himself. 

 The change has not come to the canine world either.  It is still accepted by almost everyone that if you have a female dog, then she should produce at least one litter of puppies.  If you ask the reason for this, you will find there is usually no particular reason – it’s just because the dog is a female.  As with women of a generation ago, it is simply expected.

 I know some people will find it strange to compare human female issues with canine female issues, but I have personally found a strange similarity between the two.  Both dogs and women are admired mostly for their beauty and conformity to what society has decided is beautiful.  Both female dogs and women are expected to be docile, obedient and loyal – not to mention self sacrificing if necessary.  Both female dogs and women are called bitches – albeit not with the same meaning (leaving me to wonder if calling a female dog a bitch is not meant as an insult as well).

I even find a correlation in the whole issue of birth control.  The Catholic Church, and many men from male-dominated cultures, are totally against a woman preventing pregnancy. Likewise, whenever you tell someone that you are going to spay your dog, they usually try to talk you out of it, saying in consternation “But whyyyyy?”

I don’t know if medicine had already found a way to neuter dogs when I was a child – if they did I had never heard of it, and everyone I knew who had a dog, sooner or later had at least three or four puppies rolling around their yards. Although neutering has been available for several years, I meet an astonishing number of people who still don’t know that it can be done. Or more frequently, they  see it as an unnecessary expense when it is much easier and cheaper just to let the dog have her pups.

And why not? Everybody likes puppies.  They are adorable, they smell nice, they lick your faces with their little tongues and suck on your fingers, they feel good to hold and tickling their small, round tummies is one of life’s purest pleasures.  When they get a little older, watching them gambolling, tumbling head over heel in pursuit of a child or a butterfly, could bring a smile to the face of Scrooge himself. In a world that is already so hard, where all of life’s simple pleasures seem to be slipping away every day, why can’t we indulge ourselves in the unadulterated joy of watching a mother dog feeding and grooming her fat little babies?

And there is also the issue of monetary rewards.  After all, purebred dogs and even crosses between purebred dogs are very expensive to buy and maintain.  If you can get back some of your investment in your dog by selling the pups from the female dog, why shouldn’t you?  You could have the best of both worlds – a dog that is a beloved family pet, as well as a source of income, and you don’t have to get up in the morning and face traffic to go to the office to do it either!

The answer is that you shouldn’t breed for lots of reasons.  But they all boil down to one reason – for the good of the dog.  By ‘the dog’ I mean dogs all over the country, and by extension all over the world.  Think globally, act locally.  People who are asked to spay and neuter, are being asked to be selfless – to put aside their own desires and to think of an entire species of animal.  To think of its health, to think of its welfare, to think of its impact on the earth we live in, to think (dare I say it?) of its happiness.

If you breed your dog you need to understand that you might become one of those people who are responsible for canine cruelty.  There are hundreds of dogs on the streets of this country and in shelters.  Almost all of them were once owned by a human.  Before coming to the shelters, these dogs were neglected, beaten, starved, burned with cigarettes, hot oil, hot water and fire.  Their flesh was cut into by collars that were too tight and sometimes made of wire; their wounds and illnesses were left untreated and their fur left unwashed and un-groomed.  They were driven insane by isolation and lack of socialization and they were forced to fight or work at jobs for which they are not suited and under appalling conditions. They were abandoned by people they trusted and rejected and hurt by people they didn’t even know. Many dogs live like this in their own homes. And all of this has happened because somebody decided to breed their dog.

Before you breed your dog, you should be able to answer yes to all of the following questions:

1.               Can you afford the cost of proper (health and nutrition) pre-natal care for the mother dog?

2.               Do you have a vet whom you can depend on to give emergency as well as normal attention to your dogs?

3.               Do you have an area where the mother and her pups can be safe, warm and clean for at least 7-9 weeks after birth?  Most people in this country sell their pups at 5-6 weeks.  This is wrong, wrong, wrong.

4.               Can you afford the cost of post-natal care for the mother and the puppies, including food, vitamins, inoculations and any unforeseen expenses that might arise?

5.               Can you devote the time necessary to begin the socialization process for the puppies?

6.               Do you have the will to closely question any prospective buyer and do follow up visits and investigations to ensure that the puppy will be going to a safe and loving environment?

7.               If you can not get homes for all of the pups, can you afford to keep them permanently?  And by “afford” I mean both financially and physically – do you have sufficient space and are you patient enough to deal with the needs of a multitude of dogs?

8.               Are you chiefly concerned about the improvement of the breed if your dogs are purebred, and do you know enough about the breed to educate any prospective buyers on it?

Unless you can answer yes to all of these questions, you should not breed.

 People often feel pressured to breed their dog if it is purebred and registered.  But being purebred and registered simply means that the owner can trace his dog’s ancestry – somewhat like royal families.  And just like many members of royal families, it does not necessarily mean that the dogs should reproduce. Yes, it is flattering to have lots of people begging you to use your male dog to impregnate their female, or bugging you to use their male dog to impregnate your female so they can get a puppy.  But responsible dog ownership is not about satisfying your ego.  It is about doing the right thing by your specific dog, and all dogs in general, whenever possible.

BLOOD AND BONES

Early yesterday morning, as usual, I started my day by shovelling poop.  I was going to say ‘shovelling shit’, but although it has a certain ring to it, it is a vulgar expression and I am genteel, so I decided against using it.  Anyway, after I had picked up all the excrement which the dogs had, well, excreted during the night, I hosed down and disinfected the back of the house, the side, the garage, the front, and the other side.  After turning the hose off, I went back to the garage to sweep away the water that always collects near to the gate. 

WTF!! There was blood everywhere! The garage looked like some creature had bled to death in it.  It wasn’t there a few minutes before, and I had not heard any barks, yelps, growls or anything else that would have alerted me that one dog had the other in a death grip, but I just knew right away that either Rescue or Sahara had really bitten Aslan badly this time.  My heart started to jackhammer and I ran to the back of the house where all the dogs were lying in front of the back door, waiting for me to let them in the house. 

Aslan and Sahara got to their feet when they saw me – Aslan because he is skittish, Sahara because she is nervous and always seems to be expecting a blow.  The other two didn’t move a muscle – Rescue was on his back, feet waving limply in the air, while he let the early morning sun tan his exposed tummy.  Hope was sprawled out on her stomach seemingly fast asleep. I managed to grab Aslan before he could bolt and anxiously ran my hands over his body, fully expecting them to come away covered in gore.  Nothing.  I did it again, this time more carefully, but still nothing.  I checked Sahara and Rescue and Hope.  Nothing, nothing and nothing.  Maybe one of them had caught a bird.  Maybe there was a criminal with a bleeding gunshot wound hiding somewhere in my yard. Maybe I had hallucinated the whole thing.  I even went back to check – no, the blood was still there, more pink now than red as it mixed in with the water on the ground left from when I had hosed down the garage. 

I couldn’t figure it out, so I decided to let it go and washed the garage again and swept away the water.  Calling the dogs to me, we all went inside – Rescue barging in front of everyone as usual.  There is a school of thought that dogs should never enter or exit a room in front of a human because it gives them illusions of superiority.  I think that is a lot of doggy excrement – I want my dogs to go ahead of me, that’s what I pay them for – to take the bullet in case there is an assassin waiting to kill me. It is a good thing I think like this too, because by his going ahead I was able to see the bloody paw prints that Rescue left on the tiles – his right front paw was leaking a small river of blood. 

When I looked at it closely I realized that he had managed to break off one of his toe nails and that it had broken below the quick.  They always warn you not to cut a dog’s toe nail below the quick or it will bleed, and I’ve had birds whose nails bled when I was clipping them, but I never realized just how copiously one little nail could bleed.  Of course, in calm retrospect, I realize that it was not a blood bath that I had seen in the garage, but a little blood mixed with a lot of water.  The worse part of the whole thing was that Rescue did not even seem to notice it.  This is why I need a prescription for Valium.

After feeding the dogs and doing some more morning chores, I got dressed to go out.  When my dogs see me undressing they get very alert.  When I actually turn on the shower they become restless and by the time I am dressing they are pacing the floor.  I used to worry that these were signs that they had separation anxiety and I read several books on what to do about it.  It took me a while to realize that what I thought was anxiety was actually happiness, because they were soon going to be faced with a win-win situation.  Either I would take one or more of them with me, or they would be one of the ones being left behind who would get a treat.  They couldn’t lose whatever happened. 

That day they were all getting treats as nobody was going with me.  I stuffed two Kongs with cheese, kibble, peanut butter and hot dog sausages for Aslan and Hope, who were staying inside, and I took two huge bones out of the freezer for Rescue and Sahara who would be taking the outside guard duty shift that morning.  I am saying that sarcastically because those two pit bulls would probably end up guarding any thief who came around them.  I boil very large beef bones with vegetables and garlic and keep them wrapped separately in the freezer to give to the dogs when I might be gone more than 3 or 4 hours as it keeps them occupied for a long time.  Since we got Sahara I’ve never given her a bone, but she took it willingly enough and of course Rescue took his like it was manna from heaven. 

When I got back home the bones had disappeared.  I was a little surprised that they had been able to eat the whole thing, because these were huge, very hard bones, but I knew that Rescue’s jaws could pulverize steel beams, so I didn't think much of it.  I let the two inside dogs out and they immediately went around the side of the house to go potty.  Aslan soon came back inside, but Hope remained outside and when I looked through the window I could see her busily digging a hole in a vegetable bed that I’ve been trying to grow melongene plants in for the longest while.  She was a little distance from the melongene plant, but I knew it would only be a matter of time before she backed into it or trampled over it, so I called her inside.  It was time for dinner anyway.  I fed the dogs and Hope disappeared again right after eating.  I went on the computer and forgot about her.  Unlike the other dogs she can still squeeze through the security gate, so she more or less comes and goes as she likes. 

About twenty minutes later I heard a noise from the front door and when I went to investigate, I saw that Hope had come inside and was now struggling to drag something through the bars of the gate.  Mission accomplished, she trotted happily into the living room with the biggest, nastiest, bone you have ever seen in your life clenched determinedly between her jaws.  Her mouth was stretched open to capacity to accommodate the bone which was about the same size as her head, and her neck was also stretched to capacity to keep the bone from dragging on the ground.  I have no idea how she got it all the way inside, especially as the journey involved several steps up, and several steps down as well as crossing two drains. 

Aslan woke up from his snooze on the couch, sniffed the air and immediately jumped down to investigate.  Without losing her grip on her treasure, Hope growled menacingly at him and he backed off a little, eyeing her warily while clearly wondering how to get the bone away from her.  She growled again and he backed further away.  She can get up on the couch only if she takes a gigantic leap while in full flight, and there was no way she could make that leap with that enormous bone in her mouth, so she wiggled under the couch and proceeded to gnaw at it, dirt, pebbles, dry leaves and all. 

 It wasn’t too long before Rescue got wind of what was taking place and tried to force his bulk under the couch too.  Unhindered by the bone which was now in a death grip between her two front paws, she snarled like a wild cat at him.  Unlike Aslan, he did not demean himself by backing off, but he didn’t advance any further either. 

 I was in a quandary about what to do.  On the one hand, I was extraordinarily impressed that this little puppy was able to sniff out a bone that one of the older dogs had buried probably hours before, especially as the rain had fallen that afternoon.  Not only that, she had struggled and laboured to drag it from its hiding place at least 50 or 60 feet, across drains and up steps and then through a fairly small opening and was now guarding it tooth and nail from a pack of dogs four times her size.  But on the other hand – she sleeps in my bed and her paws and mouth were filthy!!! So I did what any sensible dog owner would do – when it was time to sleep I put her on my husband’s side of the bed!

Love Thy Dog

The other day there was a rather moving email circulating on the web.  The writer lamented that he had often heard, and each time with a great deal of distress, “but it’s only a dog” and he was explaining that his pet was more than “only” a dog to him.  I can empathise with him, because I too have heard the same thing from childhood.  My experience started with my mother who was definitely not an animal lover.  Fortunately, my grandmother lived with us and from her I got the clear understanding that it is our duty to care for and about all animals.  My granny was big on duty and I will forever be grateful to her for instilling those values in me.

 Granny and I were conspirators in a no-holds-barred war against my mother and her “no animals allowed in this house rule”.  Over the years we found all kinds of inventive ways to force her to allow us to keep a variety of animals. I remember one incident clearly: we had somehow acquired some hens and a cock and Granny and I used to go outside early every morning to the henhouse to collect the eggs.  Unbeknownst to my mother, we stopped collecting the eggs from one of the hens and within a very short time we had three adorable little boy chickens (named Tom, Dick and Harry) running around the yard.  We naturally named their mother Mammie.  After my mother had stopped cussing, she began to eye our protégés with a view to putting them in a pot.  But I have found that once you name a creature it is very hard to kill it, and she never did.  I don’t remember what happened to our livestock, but I suspect they all died of old age eventually.

 Maybe because as a first child I had a longer time alone with her, my Granny’s influence on me regarding her love for animals was stronger than on my other siblings.  They would not be cruel to an animal, but I don’t think they feel the same connection to them as Granny and I did.  Granny used to talk all the time about her childhood, and animals always played a part in the stories – her father used to tame wild horses and there was a black stallion named Asia that she particularly loved.  She had a parrot that bit her first husband’s very long nose and he wrung the parrot’s neck (I always suspected that this incident might have had some bearing on their subsequent divorce).  She almost drowned one of her boy cousins in a water barrel after catching him drowning kittens in the same barrel. When she came upon the little beast (her description) she held his head underwater until he was almost asphyxiated. Her last pet before she died was a little dog named Tammy that I got for my 12^th birthday but which I had no illusions of ever really owning – that dog was my grandmother’s shadow and lived way beyond a dog's natural life span, I suspect just because it could not bear to be parted from Granny.

 I say all of this to give some context to why anything I perceive as cruelty to animals upsets me so much.  I am physically and psychologically incapable of shrugging my shoulders and saying “Well, it is just a dog” whenever I come across something that I think even borders on abuse.  It goes deeper than a hatred of animal cruelty because it is rooted in my understanding and belief that animals experience physical and emotional pain as deeply as any sensitive human child does.  And as I would feel a child’s pain, I feel theirs. I am willing to allow that dogs might not have all the same emotions that humans do – spite, generosity, hatred, nostalgia, guilt, etc. But they have some of them, and pain, fear and excitement are a few that come to mind. They might be quick to forgive and forget, but that does not mean they don’t feel.  Nothing is going to convince me otherwise.

 It almost seems as though over the years humans have had a parallel program to the Spanish Inquisition going on against animals.  They have hunted them to extinction, just for the fun of it.  They have poisoned their water and air and cut down their forage and homes in the wild.  They have invented ways to contain, train, feed, breed and dispose of them that could only lead an alien from another planet to believe that we are a race of psychopaths. Most of these actions have been taken by people who believe that man’s wishes, whims, fancies and desires supersede any other consideration, especially if the affected and afflicted party is “just an animal/ insect/ fish/ reptile/ bird.”

 Even the most caring of us have often inadvertently inflicted great distress on the animal kingdom – I know I have done so repeatedly over the years, albeit through ignorance.  In recent times there has been a great deal of scientific research that proves a lot of our long-held practices to be harmful to animals and in the rapid communication-friendly world we live in, this information is readily available.  Fifty years ago my grandmother did not know that you should not rub a kitten’s nose in his mess as a housebreaking method – so even though she loved cats, this is what she did.  And I can’t hold it against her.  But I can hold it against somebody who does that now, when there is so much information available at little or no cost. It is not that the knowledge is not there, it is that we don’t bother to access it – an animal is not worth the time and effort – after all, it’s only an animal.

 Do I really expect the same compassion and empathy that we have for our fellow humans to be extended to the animal kingdom?  In a word, yes.  I don’t think that compassion and kindness and empathy should have any boundaries. I don’t think you are really a kind person if you choose who to be kind to.  I don’t think you can call yourself compassionate if you categorize the recipients and degree of your compassion.  It is like people who used to say that that they love mankind, but they kept slaves.  I’ll go further – I think we should try to extend the adage “what you don’t like for yourself, don’t give to others” to include animals. If you don’t think it is kind to cut the tips off a child’s ears, then you should not do it to a puppy.  If you don’t think it is compassionate to leave children alone and lonely for hours on end with nothing to do but sleep or stare at 4 walls in a small dark room, then you should not do it to dogs.  If you won’t like someone to shout and yell at your child and hit him with a stick to make him learn, you should understand that this is not the way to train your dogs.

 As an example of our ‘onlyadog’ philosophy, there is a contraption called a Breeding Stand that is commonly used by breeders of many different animals.  Some people call it a Rape Rack because it allows the male to penetrate the female, whether she is receptive or not.  It is used extensively by dog breeders who depend on the sale of puppies to make a living and if you look at it in use you get a strong image of a passive female being held immobile for the convenience of a dominant male. They say this is not rape, as dogs have no concept of rape.  Well, of course they don’t – there is no such thing as rape in the dog world! If a female rejects a male in the height of her compulsion to mate, then you can be pretty sure it is for a good reason that she has instinctively sensed. And he can jump through hoops, once her bottom hits the ground, he is getting nowhere with his advances.  So no canine rape – until the human breeder entered the picture.

Well, says others, they do it to protect the dogs themselves as some dogs (Pit Bulls especially they say) are very dog aggressive and they will damage each other.  Here’s a news flash – if your dogs have any kind of aggression issues, you should not be breeding them.  The third justification is that it takes the male’s weight off of the female, so it is safer and more comfortable for her.  Unless you are mating a dog the size of a Pit Bull with a Rhinoceros, is this really worthy of a response?  Finally, say the proponents of this device, an owner’s job is to do what is best for his animal, not ask them how they feel about it first.  True.  But isn’t that just the point?  Is a Rape Rack good for the animal, or for the owner?  I think the real litmus test being used is this: in a case where it is not good for the animal, but it is good for the owner, who should win?

 I could write pages on the various ways we exhibit extraordinary cruelty to our dogs – choke chains, prong collars, small dog houses and kennels where dogs are locked up for entire days, poor nutrition, over-breeding, harsh and coercive training methods, the use of steroids – the list goes on and on.  A friend of mine from Norway once expressed her disgust of people who dress up their dogs for Halloween – oh for the day when this country only has that kind of animal abuse to deal with.

Respect of the Dog

I am not a dog expert.  I am not a qualified trainer.  I am not a registered breeder.  I am not a vet, a dog therapist or behaviourist and I have never published one word giving my learned opinions on how to raise and care for a dog.  My claim to fame is that I have owned some dogs over my life time (and now realize that I made more mistakes with them than I care to admit).  That I have read extensively about rearing and training dogs and have managed to collect quite a few books on the subject – some of which were a waste of money and some of which I wish I could have written myself.  And I have been somewhat successful in encouraging my dogs to sit, stay, come and crouch, but never had the courage, the time or the endurance to attempt anything more complicated than that. My dogs do not fear me, I am not anything near to being Cesar Millan’s clone (neither do I wish to be), and all of my dogs are fairly spoiled and frequently demonstrate the correct way to NOT be like Lassie. If money spent on animals could have made me an expert, I would be the Queen of Dog Experts, as it would seem that every time I look around there is another medical emergency requiring yet another visit to the vet (who has offered to give me the equivalent of a Frequent Flyer discount card).  I have the vet’s number on speed dial on my phone.  I am on first name basis with every vet tech who ever worked in the clinic. Even the vet’s patients know me by sight!  In fact, you could say that I have single-handedly added a great deal of financial security to my vet’s bottom line.

Based on all of this, you can see that the bar is not terribly high in finding somebody more knowledgeable than I am about what to do with a sick dog, how to get my dogs to stop alternatively embarrassing and driving me crazy, or even having information about current trends and norms in the dog world.  And I was sure I would find dozens of people ready and willing to share their expertise in the name of improving the lives of dogs in this country if I searched the web. So I did, and then I joined a local site on Face Book because it seemed to me that the people on the page were all into rearing Pit Bulls and I was certain that they would (a) be kind to animals; (b) know about dogs in general, but Pit Bulls in particular and (c) want to improve every aspect of dog rearing.  Wrong.  So I went to other pages – wrong, wrong and wrong.  Instead, this is what I found out:

1. Most Pit Bull owners (at least the ones on the sites I have frequented) own dogs that are in perfect health and have never gotten sick.  I base this assumption on the fact that whenever I've asked for help with a medical issue the silence is broken by one, maybe two lone voices.  Or maybe they just don’t want to share their experiences.  Either way I end up in the vet’s office again.
2. Most Pit Bull owners on these sites are devotees of the Cesar Millan school of dog training and have never heard of operant conditioning or positive reinforcement.  With them domination theories and pack leadership reign supreme. Methods like clicker training, Easy Walk harnesses or Martindale collars elicit a virtual blank stare, a steups and a shrugging off of such foolishness when a stout choke collar would do the job.
3. Most Pit Bull owners on these sites SAY that they want people to know what a gentle, loving dog the breed is – and then they dress the dog in large spiked collars and promote logos of evil looking devil dogs that would scare the bejeezus out of anybody on a dark night.  They concentrate on training their dogs to attack and this is THE big attraction at local dog shows. When walking their dogs, they use harnesses that should only be used when a dog is pulling some heavy object (as the harness itself encourages pulling), but perhaps they do so because it makes the dog appear powerful to be straining at the end of their lead. And they do very little to show their dog in the light of a peaceful, family oriented animal, instead they post pictures of the animal looking as ferocious and unfriendly as possible and use words like "beast" and "monster" to describe it.
4. The majority of Pit Bull owners on these sites are deeply interested in show dogs and know a frightening amount about mysterious things like blood lines and conformation.  They post pictures showing their dogs mating, and in some pictures the female is strapped into what can only be called a Rape Rack. Of course, breeders who use these devices call them Breeding Stands and say that they are used to protect the dogs from damage as dogs sometimes fight during mating (especially if you have a female that refuses to mate with the male). They say that dogs have not concept of rape, so it is okay to use them. You have to assume they are expert breeders because they can tell from looking at a 2 month old puppy if it is mixed or pure - although they won't tell how they can tell - and they can trace the lineage of any dog when they hear who its parents are.  They argue exhaustively about the history of the breed in the country, and defend their own beliefs with a passion that inevitably leads to an outburst of colloquilistic obscenities - especially directed to any women who might be on the board, as this is generally a young, male-dominated scene.

Of course, this means that I will have to continue to fork out my  money for vet fees and books on training, and that I continue to feel alienated from the support that I would like because I live in a country that is not Pit Bull friendly, as it is clear that my views on breeding and caring for dogs will never mesh with theirs.

But, although disappointing, the foregoing is not disturbing to me.  What is, however, extremely disturbing is the fact that the majority of people who frequent the sites do not seem to have an ounce of compassion or respect for animals, including the Pit Bull which all of them profess to love.  They talk about Pit Bulls that don’t meet certain standards like they are garbage – and say these dogs should be “culled” when born. Yet they breed indiscriminately, with the sole objective of making money from the sale of the pups which they let go to people that they know nothing about.  I would say that at least half of the posts are from people who have dogs to sell. It is like an on-line Classified Ad page.

And there are those who believe that ownership of a dog is nothing less than slavery – I own him, so I can do what I want with him, even onto killing him, and nobody should interfere.  I’ve seen a post from one guy who said that “a man could do what he wants with his own dog.”  There are those who promote dog fighting and there are those who condone it – even if only by not speaking out against it. Providing simple niceties for their dogs also seems to be beyond them - you see posts from people wanting to know how to treat pressure sores – duhhh – give your dog something soft to sleep on – it’s hard surfaces like concrete that cause the pressure sores.  There was a classic the other day from a guy who thought his female might be pregnant and wanted to know what he should do (Take her to the vet? Buy a book? Google the subject on line?)

 You hear all the time people saying that they love the breed, that they adore the breed, that they would do anything for the breed.  But apparently you can love something and not respect it. Their dogs are not respected as animals that have talents and skills way beyond human comprehension and ability.  The dogs are not respected for what they are.  The dog is only respected for what a human has decided it should be – it should look a certain way (cropped ears, muscular body, unfriendly stare), it should react a certain way (walk to heel, never retaliate against humans, fight or attack on command, stay in one spot for as long as the owner tells it even if the owner drops down dead and can’t release it). 

Then there is the golden grail of Pit Bull attributes called “gameness”. I have read several thousand words written in breathless praise of the Pit Bull’s ability to stick to the task at hand, regardless of personal cost.  It is a prized attribute that every Pit Bull owner seems to want their dog to have which (they say) is natural to the breed.  Especially owners who fight their dogs.

 Another thing you hear all the time are the terms “natural to the breed”, or “specific to the breed”, or “an attribute of the breed”.  What that really means is that a dog is lined with other dogs with certain physical or emotional tendencies, and this is repeated over and over and over with her off spring for a long period of time, until the pups eventually start to exhibit the required tendencies.  Then, if the tendency is emotional, they are “trained up” to enhance it.  The tendency is seldom natural to being a dog.  It is a man-made intervention – a case of man playing God, if you will. Take gameness, for instance. In its really natural state, any animal that would continue to heedlessly engage in an activity that could probably end in its death would soon be an extinct species.  No dog would fight to the death if it could possibly avoid it.  But probably what happened was that some human, who was into dog fighting, decided one day, ‘won’t it be nice if…’ and started to train dogs to become game and then to breed those trained dogs to each other – re-writing history along the way by continuously telling everyone, with all the confidence and assurance of an “expert”, that Pit Bulls have always been this way. 

 This is similar to the declaration that Pit Bulls must not show any form of human aggression.  My theory is that this came about because humans had to be able to handle hurt and hyped up dogs in the fight ring so they decided that the only ones allowed would be the dogs who would never bite them, regardless of the circumstances.  Now it seems to have become an ‘accepted standard’ for the Pit Bull – although I have never seen it in any published breed description.  In dog shows, if a judge is bitten by a dog, ANY dog, the dog will be disqualified.  But who would argue that it would be preferable for dogs not to bite humans?  That’s a good thing, right? Well… maybe, but by making it a standard for the Pit Bull hems the dog in by removing any grey areas – the Pit Bull must never, under any circumstances, bite a human. The Doberman can bite, a Rottie can bite, but not the Pit Bull, because it is a standard! One person on the site said that any Pit Bull that bites a human should be instantly killed because it is showing aggression to a human in direct violation of their breed standard. Is this reasonable, or even desirable? What if the dog felt he was in danger, what if he felt his owner was in danger? Should we kill a scared or hurt animal because it violates a frigging breed standard? That’s like killing a baby because it was born with a harelip.

  Just a quick scan of the myriad of different dog types, all supposedly coming from the wolf who looks the same regardless of what country he lives in, will demonstrate how much human intervention there has been over the centuries.  Imagine some 17^th century farmer saying – ‘hmmm, I am really fed up with these pesky rats eating all my grain.  I need a dog that is quick enough to run after them, small enough to follow them down into small spaces, and tenacious enough to risk getting bitten to kill them.”  Presto – he starts breeding his smallest, fastest, bravest dogs and in short time he has some kind of terrier.  Great – problem solved. But some times we screw up – the Shar Pei was bred to have small, tight ears so that other animals could not hold onto to them in a fight – but now the Shar Pei is famous for getting ear infections because there is no air circulation within the ear canal.  But guess what, a small, tight, close set ear is still the standard of a Shar Pei. 

I totally get it that any creature that you bring to live in your home and among society as a whole has to trained to behave in a certain way.  And I have no problem with cross-breeding within a species to develop an animal that would benefit you. The problem that I have is with people who impose unreasonable standards which are harmful to a dog’s health or totally contrary to a dog’s basic nature and then punish or kill the dog for reverting to his nature.  

 To me it seems that most people lack an understanding of what a dog really is.  To most people a dog is an object – it is A Breed.  It is like a toy that you can switch on and off – and it must not have any desires of its own, instincts and drives of its own, unless they are pre-approved by humans.  The only thing it must live for is to please its owner.  Anything less is not a Good Dog.  And all this pleasing your owner nonsense – what is that about?  Sure a dog will try to please its owner – but it seems that humans can’t get enough pleasure.  It is not enough to say, ‘oh yes, my dog tries to make me happy.’  No, what a human owner would crave more than a dog lusts for liver cookies is to be able to say, ‘oh yes, my dog will instantly obey me every single time I give a command and, in fact, will lay down his life for me in a heartbeat.’ Apparently, if you don’t have this kind of canine martyr, then you dog isn’t worth the time and energy to keep it alive and you are a wimpy and ineffectual excuse of an owner.

 With my dogs, I am like I was with my children, both at home and at school.  I don’t want anybody to hurt them – in ANY way.  When my children were little, I am sure people said (behind my back) that I was over-protective, but nobody could have said that I spoiled my children because I didn’t.  My children had a more rigid set of rules to follow than any of their friends and family.  I was very strict about discipline and like to think that consequently I hardly ever had to shout at or punish them as much as I saw some people doing to their children. 

But above all, I tried to understand what made children act like they do.  And now I am trying to understand what makes my dogs sometimes apparently try to drive me to commit suicide.  I don’t expect I will ever fully get all the answers, but I am trying.  And that is more than I can say for almost all the Pit Bull owners I have met on line so far.  What I see them doing is trying to justify their actions when they are unkind to their dogs; trying to impress people around them with their knowledge about the breed and their ability to train and control their dogs; focussing on making money off of their dogs by using the policy of minimum output and maximum returns; and boasting about how much they love animals while not providing one iota of proof of it.  But none of them are trying to understand the animal on his or her own terms and appreciate them for what they are, not for what they want to make them into. 

 The more I see of humans, the more I prefer the company of dogs.  They don’t try to understand humans either, but at least they don’t post on Face Book about it.