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.

A Blood Sport is a Blood Sport?

The other day on a site on Face Book dedicated to Pit Bulls, one person commented that everybody was against dog fighting, but how was it any different to boxing?  Was he really serious, I wondered, or just stupid?  Could he not see that there is a world of difference between the two and although this world would probably be a better place if humans did not enjoy the so called “blood sports” like boxing, of the two it was absolutely essential to outlaw only the dog fighting?  Apparently he couldn’t.  I wonder how many other people are like him.

In the first place, the most obvious difference is one of free will and choice.  A human chooses the sport of boxing.  Yes, it is true that some of them choose it because they are poor and if they were not poor they would probably elect to work at some other job that does not involve surgery at the end of every shift.  But not all of the boxers in the world have come from the ghettos – people like La Hoya came from wealthy families and chose boxing because he liked it.  But even if the reason is based on finances – there was still a choice.  Nobody put a chain around the boxer’s neck and gave him the option of fight or die.  When we return to slave societies and people can be conscripted by force to be boxers, then I might say there is no difference.  The dog is not given any choice – he is like a slave.  In fact, the very idea of giving any dog a choice in anything is ludicrous to people who support dog fighting.  They will tell you that a dog is wired to please his or her master.  That they want to fight because they know that will make their master happy.  I find this even worse that the image of Dog as Slave.  At least the slave goes to his doom in a healthy state of hatred for his tormentor.  But the thought that some human has so taken advantage of the dog’s very nature and is using his love to kill him, is obscene.  I know that if you really look at it, no dog ever signs up for any of the activities we human involve them in – but there is a difference between teaching your dog to pull a truck tyre, and teaching your dog to happily lose an eye or a litre or two of blood and perhaps an ear. By doing that an owner is betraying the very creature he is supposed to be protecting.

Secondly, when last did you hear that Muhammed Ali beat his sparring partners to death?  Or that his handler took the poor sap outside after a warm up round with Ali and kicked him to death, hung him from a tree, buried him alive, electrocuted him, drowned him or put a bullet in his head?  I am guessing never.  But that is what is done with the bait dogs – often pups stolen from yards or “rescued” from shelters – who are given to fighting dogs to practice on and then disposed of when they become so badly hurt they can’t even run to save their own lives.

In the 18^th and 19^th centuries, it was not uncommon for boxers to inflict serious injury on their opponents, just like fighting dogs.  Boxers used to fight bare-knuckled too – no protection for their groins and mouth guards were unheard of.  They frequently fought as many rounds as it took for one of them to be unable to go on and rules like no holding, no hitting below the belt, no hitting after the bell (what bell?) were not always on the books.  But, as the old cigarette advertisement used to say, we’ve come a long way, baby, and now the goal of the boxing match is no longer to kill your opponent or damage yourself beyond repair in an extravaganza of brute force and endurance.  While nowadays boxers certainly still need strength and endurance, more emphasis is placed on technique and playing by the rules.  Can the same be said for dog fights?  The only protection the dog has is his owner’s willingness to risk ridicule by grabbing his dog out of the ring before he is killed or permanently disfigured. We are applying 18^th century morality to 21^st century living.

The mortality rate at dog fights is high, even if you put aside death from injuries incurred during fighting, or death of the bait dogs mentioned above.  This is because dogs that can't or won't fight and win are killed. One person on this same site said in another thread that any puppy that had faults should be killed by the breeder.  He said it was the breeder’s duty to do it (he called it “culling”).  So if a breeder would be willing to look at an adorable little puppy and kill it – what do you think will happen to a scarred up older dog that is not winning any money for its owner?  People shoot or abandon race horses when they stop earning their keep – what would make the fate of an ineffectual fighting dog any different?  If this modus operandi was true of boxing, there would be many boxers, some of whom went on to improve and become champions, who would now be six feet under ground.  In boxing, the penalty for losing is not death.

Actually the only similarity I can think of is that both sports attract criminality and the use of illegal drugs like steroids.  In boxing there is always the issue of fixed fights and the huge betting that goes on.  It would seem that steroid use in athletics these days is a given.  I understand the same thing happens with dog fighting.  It is not unusual to find illegal firearms on the persons of people organizing or attending dog fights either (sometimes because of the enormous sums of betting money on the premises).  The whole aura that dog fighting creates seems to be one of bad boy/gangsta/tough guy ethos.  It seems to attract the type of person who likes to test the limits of endurance, to see brute force, agility and “gameness” combining  into a fast moving blur of fury, who can look at gaping wounds and hurting animals and shrug it off.  People who think that because they “big up” a winning dog, because they loudly sing the praises of a champion fighter, that means they are animal lovers.  They don’t love animals or dogs or even that particular dog any more than the spectators in ancient Rome loved the gladiators.  They are just entertainment for them.

To Cut or Not To Cut

Every so often the conversation and argument for and against cropping a dog’s tail and/or ears comes up. Not so long ago, in one such discussion, a man who has reared Pit Bulls for years and cropped all of their ears, said that there was nothing wrong with it – “people have plastic surgery all the time”, he said. Well, I am not too sure that one should make canine decisions based on human practice, but just for the sake of this argument, let’s go with that particular trend of reasoning.

Yes, people have plastic surgery all the time. They have it for physical medical reasons: breast reduction, scar tissue removal, skin grafting. And this is absolutely right and to be encouraged. I would do the same for any dog of mine having a physical medical problem. They also have it for emotional problems and there is no doubt that if (for example) you have a nose that is way too large for your face, or excess fat that makes it impossible for you to appear in a bathing suit on the beach, you would be much happier and self confident if you had the problem fixed and so you should. But if you have a perfectly reasonable size 36B bra size and you increase this to a 40DD, then your problem is too big (no pun intended) for surgery to fix, and I really can’t say that I would condone the decision to go under the knife.

But what physical or emotional problem does cropping a dog’s ears cure? Do you think the dog cares what it looks like? Or is it done simply to give the dog a certain look that in its owner’s eyes, makes it better looking, or more ferocious looking, or more symmetrically structured?




Two majestic Dobermans with their natural ears

I once wondered in a discussion whether cropping a dog’s tail or ears would not hinder its ability to communicate, either with humans or with other animals. After all, the position of ears and tail mean something – most humans don’t have a clue what that something would be, but other dogs certainly do. If they see a dog with its tail and ears erect – they know that dog is not harbouring warm, fuzzy feelings towards it. If they see a dog with its tail at half mast, gently waving, they can be fairly certain that the dog wants to make friends. And a dog’s hearing is super-sensitive – hundreds of times keener than ours. Wouldn’t it hurt, I wondered, to have his hearing apparatus totally exposed to the noise, with no way to cover or muffle the sounds? No, I was told with authority from people who have cropped tail/eared dogs – it makes no difference to the dog. But how do they really know that for a fact? Certainly, the dog didn’t tell them and I doubt very much they made a scientific study over a period of months or years of cropped and un-cropped dogs.

Somebody in that discussion said confidently that dogs are excellent adjusters and that they soon get used to the situation. Is this really what we want – for our dog to adjust to a less than optimal situation? My brother in law lost her right arm at a young age – and yes, he has adjusted wonderfully. But I am sure he will tell you that he would find it a lot more preferable to have both his hands every time he has to tie his shoelaces or buckle his belt.

A Doberman with cropped ears. How is this better?

The other day at the vet's office, I was discussing this subject with a gentleman who felt strongly that it should be illegal to crop or bob an aniamal's ears and tail.  He said that the argument he had heard most often from breeders and owners was that they cut their dogs' ears to prevent them getting ear infections. I don't even know how to answer that.  It is like saying that parents should have their children's teeth removed to prevent them from getting cavities. 

A Rottweiler with bobbed tail. I think he looks unbalanced

People believe what they want to believe. They believe what prevents them from worrying, what fits in with their own pre-conceived life view. It is how for hundreds of years people believed that binding the feet of Chinese baby girls and thus forcing them to grow in a U would make the child more attractive. It is how people in Burma believe that inserting an increasing succession of rings on a baby girl’s neck and thus elongating her neck to giraffe like proportions (to the point that her un-ringed neck can not support her head) would improve her looks. It is how people in certain countries in Africa and the Middle and Far East still believe that all girl children should be subjected to genital mutilation, although they call it circumcision.

As an aside, I can’t think of one instance that these types of changes are made to a male child as an general accepted custom, unless you consider circumcision in that category. The boys seem to go in more for scarring and tattooing when they get older, and even that has less to do with appearance and more to do with seeming stronger and fiercer, and it is done by individual choice, not custom. Perhaps somebody should make a study for the reason for this – perhaps somebody already has – why are females and animals both altered with impunity in an effort to make them more attractive?




A Rottweiler with his tail in tact

I don’t think that cropping the ears or tail of Boxers, Dobermans, Pit Bulls or any other breed improves their looks. I would do it in a heart beat if it was medically recommended, but not for cosmetic reasons. I consider the cropping of a dog’s tail or ears to be mutilation and the height of human folly and conceit. In some countries it is illegal. I wish this level of kindness and respect existed in all countries, especially the one I live in.

Good Dog Parents

Yesterday I was in the grocery and this man was bringing two young children through the door "to find granny". The automatic door started to close after they passed through and the children panicked - one started to fight to get away from his father and both were screaming, clearly terrified that the door would shut on them, even though they were nowhere close enough for that to happen. It was clear that they were not used to automatic doors and I thought - that is exactly what happens to dogs when you don't socialize them. When you take them out in public they are frightened because everything is new and, as my mother used to say, they behave like neversee-comefuhsee. The lesson here is - if you don't want your dogs (and your children) to embarrass you, make sure they get used to all kinds of situations and experiences.

Earlier, when I got to the grocery, I had seen the children in the backseat of a car in the parking lot.  Their daddy was off to one side, smoking a cigarette, and just as I passed their car I heard him tell them to “come go and fine allyuh granny”.  He was speaking in that loud, self conscious way that adults who are not used to dealing with children have.  It was interesting to see granny’s reaction when he brought them to her – she steupsed. The older child was put in the seat in her grocery cart and the younger one immediately started to slam the cart against the side of the meat chiller – both hoarsely screaming in delight at the same time. I stopped to speak with granny for a minute and saw that they were not at all shy – just rambunctious.  Daddy disappeared and returned with a second cart which he put the little one in.  Then for some reason, he decided to put them both in the same seat. Inevitably, the older one (a child of about 5, dressed in a pair of jockey shorts and singlet and nothing else) immediately got stuck because any idiot could have seen there was not enough room for both of their little legs, and started to scream in a voice that could shatter glass.  His little brother, similarly dressed and maybe a year or 18 months younger, joined in – more in support of his brother’s discomfort than anything else.  Granny said with a sigh to the people near to her who could hear above the uproar that this was exactly why she tell de faddah to lef de chillren ouside.

And again I could not help but compare the handling of the children to the handling of animals in this country.  People who should not have high energy, young dogs seem to be exactly the ones who have them.  You see it all the time – somebody who is away a lot leaves their Pit Bull or Boxer or Malinois for the maid or their mother to see about.  This person does not have the knowledge or the energy to deal with the dog and when the dog does something bad it is punished.  But the treatment that caused the bad behaviour does not change. Or you have these doggy parents who really should take classes in dog behaviour before being allowed to own any dog.  Although they might provide the necessities for the dog, they alternatively neglect or ignore issues like obedience training or socialization, and still expect the dog to be model canine citizens.

But in this country, it is not easy to be a good doggy parent.  It seems like the whole country is in cahoots to prevent an owner from doing the right thing by his or her animal.  Take this morning for instance.  My youngest puppy has only one more inoculation to go which she will get at the end of the month, so it is time to start the socialization process with her.  One big issue is that she is the only dog I have ever had who hates to drive in the car.  She whines and cries the whole time.  So my job is to show her that car drives are really nice things, and one way to do that is to make our destination the pay off.  She has shown, also unlike all my other dogs, a strange liking for water, so I thought that I could combine the two and take her, by car, to a beach for a little run. I did not want to overwhelm her so I chose a nearby beach that does not usually have many people on it. I think the reason not many people go to it is because the people who do leave it in a mess.  But I wasn’t interested in aesthetics, so off we went.

When you park, there is a KFC to the side. Then there is a little walk in under almond trees to the water.  The beach is really a thin strip of mixed sand and stone and usually has a generous mixture of flotsam and discarded junk on it.  At one time some construction (other than from the building of the KFC) took place on the beach, and there is a beach wall and life guard booth, both that were never finished, and pathways that now need clearing of water and mud.  Much of the surrounding land is muddy and dug up.

As soon as we arrived, I started to feel uncomfortable.  A security guard was sitting on the ledge around the KFC building and he started long and hard at the puppy.  I started back, silently daring him to say something.  He didn’t, so we walked in to the beach and started to walk along it.  The puppy was half afraid, half curious – running ahead and then darting back to the safety of my leg.  We approached a man with two children, and the puppy nosed curiously up to them, or as close as her leash would allow her to go.  The man jumped to his feet, “hold dat dog, hold dat dog”.  I tried to reassure him that she was only a puppy – which was obvious to anybody if for no other reason than her size. “Puppy? Look at dem teeth oui!”    We next came to a woman and a teenaged boy, then two men, even a couple in the water and it was all the same – people moving away, people steupsing, people telling me what they would do if my dog bit them. 

I feel like I am part of a very small minority of animal likers, living under attack in a country where the majority of people are animal haters/fearers. I would not say I want us all to be animal lovers, because I do not expect everybody to get all dewy eyed at the sight of an animal, but is it too much to ask for people to at least give animals the benefit of the doubt and don’t automatically assume that they are going to attack them?  That man who said that my puppy had teeth obviously was implying that anything with teeth would bite.  Well, it is probable that man has a penis – does that make him a rapist?  Why do these people feel that they are so special that only humans like them can enjoy this earth?  If you are not human, you should be caged, penned, chained up and scorned and neglected?  Who died and made them Inheritors of the Earth? Walking to the beach, we passed a man peeing on KFC's back wall, and the beach was filled with discarded cyrotex containers, plastic bags and KFC wrappings - so tell me, who is the menace to society here?

How is a person to be a good animal parent under these conditions?  The law is not on your side – the rules that exist are either un-enforceable, not enforced, archaic, discriminatory or downright asinine.  The culture is not on your side – by and far Trinidadian think of dogs in utility terms (guard dogs especially) and treat them with the same compassion they would a wrought iron gate.  There are no dog parks, dog activities, dog sports – even the dog shows are mostly to show case pit bulls “attacking” some idiot dressed like the Goodyear Tyre guy.  Almost all parks and many beaches prohibit you from having your dog there.  I once took my extremely well behaved dog to a company Family Day which was held on very large grounds, and many people were not pleased.  I figured if their screaming, tantrum-throwing brats who were not on leashes could be there, so could my dog who was – but that kind of thing tends to sour your day.

All the dog experts in the world agree that dogs must be socialized – they must be exposed to different sounds, sights, smells and people and combinations thereof, if they are going to be able to get along with us humans.  But how are you going to socialize your dog when, like this morning, every single person either glares at you, or passes some ignorant remark, or literally runs from the dog whenever you take him out?  Almost every adult I met this morning had a child with him/her, and every adult reacted negatively.  So not only is the problem present in the here and now – we don’t have any hope of things getting better because what lessons did this morning’s children learn, do you think?  My puppy is four months and was on a leash – God alone knows what would have happened if I had decided to take my 76 pound male Pit Bull for a walk instead of the puppy! And it is not only Pit Bulls – the dog I took to the Family Day was a Shar Pei and Trini Pot Hounds have got to be the most abused and neglected dogs in the world – people think nothing of throwing hot water on them, speeding up to bounce them with cars, or putting them in bags and throwing them into the sea. 

Tell me again about the milk of human kindness – I want to hear that story……