Caveat

ET TU, PQ?

 

Someone in a Facebook group I follow (the "Pit Bull" Co-Op) raised an excellent point. How is it that Quebec plans to ban "pit bulls" as quickly as possible? The province of Quebec recently passed a law stating that animals such as dogs are sentient beings.

They will ban sentient beings because of qualities they can't change, their physical characteristics? Talk about cognitive dissonance. 

We all agree it's not the dogs, it's the owners who are being marginalized.  Dogs don't have civil rights, probably because they can't read or give informed consent. They are just the tool in the toolbox, right?   The way in. 

It's about targeting the perceived 'other': the gangsta, the dealah, the punk, the thug, or, if you prefer your bigotry straight up, the black, the brown, the young, the poor. "Those people" as city official Bob Fitzgerald said in Aurora CO to media, weren't welcome in Aurora if they were trying to escape Denver's ban.*

There are no data to support the rather whimsical view that physical characteristics are a predictor of behaviour.  In fact, researchers who study this kind of thing are finding more evidence all the time that breed is also not a reliable predictor of behaviour.  Neither breed nor shape would be able to predict a behavioural pathology, which is what people who fear "pit bulls" are talking about.

Breed-specific legislation (BSL) could be funny, I suppose, from the right angle.  It is definitely the stuff of theatre and one day, we will hopefully all look back, shake our collective heads and wonder what the hell was going on in our legislative offices in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.  Right now, though,  it's obscene, unsupportable and alien to anyone who believes in a democratic society.  The beauty of targeting a tiny minority - and according to kennel club registrations, the three breeds usually named are among the rarest in Canada - is that most people will not care. They certainly don't care about "pit bulls" (whatever they are supposed to be - the definition seems rather, er, fluid, to say the least) because of a long-running propaganda campaign by a complicit media structure desperate for audience share.

They don't care about punks and thugs either because if you aren't doing anything wrong, well, you know how it goes, except that BSL allows the state to target people in the absence of any wrongdoing. It allows the state to walk into your house, stop you on the street, search your car, seize your property, all without a warrant, simply because you own a dog.

Any dog.

Think about that for a second. 

If you doubt what I'm telling you, take a couple of minutes to read the current version of a once-useful but now destructive law, Ontario's Dog Owners' Liability Act.  Think outside the "pit bull" and you'll see what I mean.

_____ 

* Council Woman Molly Markert was even more fun:

"Oh, you bet if I could, I would ban the owners, too," said Markert. "By banning the dogs, we lose the violent behavior that comes with the owners."

Markert said, for her, the bottom line is that breed bans make people feel safer.

"It's not about a fact, it's about a feeling," said Markert.

Well, at least she's honest.

More here, from a good page : Majority Project, put together by Animal Farm.

This old blog of mine from 2008 discusses the folly that is Aurora's "pit bull" ban:  Aurora Colorado Must be High

DIVIDED WE FALL

 

 

We had purebred dogs in my childhood but so did most people.  As an adult, I adopted mixed breed dogs from the shelter and now I have purebred dogs again.  Some dogs were great, some could be a drag - quite literally - but I loved them all as much for their quirks as anything else.  I should mention that I was raised to reject any kind of snobbery, and it stuck.

Today, due to social media and other enhanced forms of mass communication there is a lot of misinformation that is either being deliberately spread or is just a result of a high-speed crazy game of pass the word.

The rescues slam the breeders, the shelters and pounds slam the innovators and social workers, the kennel club breeders huddle together and talk to each other.  The puppy farmers make a killing while the USDA and Ag Canada do nothing to stop them, likely because the pet industry is b-i-g business and they don't want to piss off Hunte, or whomever.  I presume that's why it's legal to raise dogs in outdoor chicken coops in Iowa, for example, regardless of weather, or to have 200 dogs in a barn in Grey-Bruce county here in Ontario.

The breed snobs play My Dog's Better Than Your Dog in their heads while the noose tightens and the money runs out because due to decades of propaganda, nobody wants what they are selling these days.  The irony is something they never grasp: dogs are the least snobbish beings on this planet.

The raw feeders sneer at the kibble feeders, the cooked people scoff at the raw people and so on and so forth and everybody forgets that dogs will eat garbage (and worse) quite happily.  I'm a fan of good nutrition and have read a fair amount about it, so I get it, but it's becoming pretty nuts out there.  Foodies.  Yikes.

Everybody looks down on somebody.  The purpose-bred owners sneer at the pet fanciers who backstab each other relentelessly and of course nobody likes the flat-faced dog people but me. The doodle-dogs are almost universally despised  except for the people who believe all the hype about 'hybrid vigour' and 'hypoallergenicity' and 'non-shedding coats'.

The 'pit people' keep acting as if they are under siege, even though everybody is telling them that war is over if they want it so they can come out now and play with the rest of us.  The crackpots who promote discrimination based on the shape of a pet are such a tiny number (let's face it, most of us can name them all quite easily) that they really don't warrant any attention, but the 'BSL fighters' keep advertising them.  It's like a symbiotic relationship of some kind, a bizarro yin-yang setup that I just can't fathom.

The people who own Heinz 57s want to play in the kennel club sport rings with the purebred people but those folk think the barbarians are at the gates so they resist, becoming more exclusionary and isolated from the mainstream.  If they were smart - I mean really smart - they'd invite everybody to play in the sandbox because that is the only way to win them over.  What's wrong with different types of owners getting to know each other?  What's wrong with people wanting to get out and have fun with their dogs?  What's wrong with mixed breed owners actually getting to know purebred breeders and owners, and vice versa?  Knowledge is power, isn't it?

And as long as everybody is running on propaganda and hatred - you can just call it bullpucky if you like - the people with the nasty agenda are gaining ground faster than you can say mandatory neutering, breed ban or warrantless entry.   Or, just call it what it is, class warfare.  Why can't we all just stop buying what they are selling?

Everybody is exploiting dogs (for good and bad).  Everybody is in the same business, you know.  Rescues, shelters, pounds, dog fancy and working breeders sell dogs - they don't 'adopt' them out.  Purebred breeders actually invented private rescue, decades ago.  People who import pariahs sell dogs and so, of course, do puppy farmers.  I don't see anything wrong with being paid for work and breeding or rescuing dogs is most definitely expensive work.   That's not the point.  The point is, everybody is doing the same thing so why not break down walls instead of reinforcing them at the behest of those who do not have your interests at heart?

Politicians use dog owners as whipping boys when their failings are obvious to even the most dim-witted constituent.  Dishonest people use dogs to beg for money on social media sites and elsewhere.  I wondered for awhile if the big animal liberation groups might be running their own puppy farms to assist with revenue generation.  It's easy enough to do, according to them.  That way, they'd have an endless series of poster pups and undercover filming opportunities readily available.  I think it was just a flight of fancy on my part, though, likely after an especially hard year.

 

You know who doesn't sell dogs?  Kijiji, Craigslist, Petfinder or your local newspaper or magazine.  They are just tools to get the word out.  It seems so obvious, doesn't it?  Did you know that CKC members are strongly discouraged from advertising anywhere except in the Annual or on the CKC website?  No?  Well, it's true.  Did you know that selling an unregistered, unmarked dog as purebred violates federal law in Canada?  That's true, too.

 

And while CEOs at provincial shelter headquarters cry poor while receiving tens of millions of public and private dollars, they slam No Kill as they push a scheme with pet limits, restrictions on hobby breeders (and more) using a fifteen-year old poster of puppy farm inmates which shocks people who aren't hardened to that type of 'visual aid'.  It works very well.  They always forget to mention that hoarding is a psychiatric disorder and breeding or keeping dogs under squalid conditions is probably one, too, so a bylaw will have little effect.  Meanwhile a private charity, which is unaccountable, is enforcing the law for monetary gain, but nobody seems to care about that because it's all about the puppies, isn't it?  Isn't it?

I like to imagine how nice it could be if everybody got together and shared ideas on ways to improve the health and longevity of dogs, on strategies to help each other to keep dogs out of the pounds and shelters in the first place instead of swapping slogans and looking for scapegoats and being so nasty most of the time.  Too much emotion, too little reason makes for a bad mixture.

Imagine the reaction among the bad guys of all stripes  if everybody who truly cares about dogs started working together, or at least stopped being so damned judgemental about people they've never met and know nothing about.  Let's defeat sleazy politicians, groups who don't want us to share our lives with dogs, and cruel people who only see the dollar value of these marvellous friends of ours.

Maybe people should start behaving more like their charges, who have an uncanny ability to see both the forest and the trees.  They do have better senses than we have (and, I'd argue, more sense) and don't give a damn about trappings; that's not what they judge at all.  They judge intent.  Intent is everything to them, as it should be to us.  But you have to be able to look past all bloody distractions, and there are a lot of them these days.  Disinformation.  Misinformation. Us and Them.

There are enough homes for dogs.  There is room for everybody who has a heart to participate in dogdom.  Your dog may be better than mine, although I doubt it, but if he is, it won't be because he's a member of a rare family or is FCI rather than CKC or isn't a Peke, Pug or Bulldog.

 

It will most likely be just because he is yours.

E pluribus unum, baby.

 

Josephine with one of her beloved Pugs

STOP WHINING AND LET FLUFFY BITE YOU, ALREADY...SHEESH

 

I felt a bit mean in putting up that post about my encounter with Stanley Coren at the All About Pets show on Easter weekend but I got over it.

He put up a rebuttal at the Psychology Today page in which he made a few assumptions, the most hilarious being "As a psychologist I suspect that I know what is going on in her mind."

I guess what I said directly to him about his flawed sources was just a neurotic attempt to hide my real agenda.  Apparently, in arguing against the stereotyping of dog owners I'm similar to a mother whose offspring is arrested for holding up milk stores but pleads with the court for mercy, since she's a good kid.  Denial is a bitch.

But so am I.  Here's his article (comments available at the end where it says 'join the discussion'):

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/canine-corner/201304/dogs-bite-and-people-dont-listen

"On the second day of the event, a woman accosted me and began to harangue me about statements that I had published about pitbull terriers. The statements which so offended her were reports of research published in respected scientific journals that found that pitbulls, and pitbull crosses accounted for a disproportionate number of dog bite related injuries and deaths.."

Here's the study he mentions in his post.  Obviously I have a problem with the breed ID which I don't see as relevant and I dispute Stanley's new assertion that "pit bulls" make up only one percent of the dog population in Philadelphia, but overall it looks like decent enough research.


 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19644273

Plast Reconstr Surg. 2009 Aug;124(2):551-8. doi: 10.1097/PRS.0b013e3181addad9.

Pediatric dog bite injuries: a 5-year review of the experience at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

Kaye AE, Belz JM, Kirschner RE.

Source

Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pa 19104, USA.

Abstract

BACKGROUND:

The objective of this study was to characterize the nature of dog bite injuries treated over a 5-year period at a large tertiary pediatric hospital and to identify relevant parameters for public education and injury prevention.

METHODS:

Investigators performed a retrospective review of emergency room records of a single tertiary pediatric hospital. Records of all patients who were evaluated for dog bite injuries between April of 2001 and December of 2005 were reviewed. All demographic, patient, and injury details were recorded.

***

The rest of the abstract is available at the link.

Here's the thing.  Nobody is disputing that dogs bite.  Nobody is disputing that children tend to be bitten around the head and neck often, due to their stature and way of interacting with dogs.

Nobody is saying that "pit bulls", however you define them, do not bite people.  Quite the opposite (by nobody, I mean those of us who don't believe myths spread by 19th century crooks).

What people who study the issues say is that all dogs are capable of inflicting injury if poorly socialized or poorly trained, or exposed to poorly trained people in unsupervised situations who hurt or frighten them, usually unintentionally.

As someone pointed out in the comments at Stanley's post, "pit bull" is the only dog type where a bunch of breeds are lumped together and then any mutt that may resemble them is included so they all become one breed.  Any statistics based on this flawed method (which are hearsay) are skewed right off the bat.  Nobody is verifying the breeds of dogs involved in bites, attacks or fatal maulings, mainly because nobody, anywhere,  can determine the ancestry of a mutt to any degree of accuracy.  It's all just smoke.  

I wish we could unring that CDC bell from hell, but we can't.  What we can do is move forward, start talking about dogs instead of perceived breeds and look for better ways to prevent nasty incidents.

As I said over at Stanley's place, I doubt we will ever reduce serious maulings or fatal attacks much below what we have now because they are already incredibly rare.  Unfortunately, there will always be people who either don't care or don't know enough to behave responsibly around dogs (or much else).  I think that with some education for parents, kids and public workers, we can definitely reduce nuisance bites and make things better, not only for people and dogs they include in their lives but also for people who don't own or don't like dogs.  That is what has been shown to work in Calgary, the home of the best nuisance owner control system in North America.

Karen Delise did a great critique on a hospital study from Texas where they postulated a conclusion and then 'proved' it.  It's well worth reading; you can find it here:

http://legal.pblnn.com/9-uncategorised/121-why-the-texas-study-on-mortality-mauling-a-maiming-by-vicious-dogs-is-scientifically-unreliable

 

POP GOES THE SCIENTIST

"Sweetheart, I'm a scientist!"

"That's hot but I think I'll pass."

This weekend, as we've done every Easter for a few years, we worked a booth at the All About Pets show at the International Centre out by the airport.  An estimated 40,000 people visit the show although this year it wasn't as busy as in previous years.  People always rush over to our booth to sign petitions and talk about the ban. We got a couple of thousand signatures this year and only 8 people refused to sign. That's about right, ratio-wise, in terms of support.

Presenting at the show again this year was Stanley Coren, the author of  The Intelligence of Dogs and other pop-science books about our canine friends.

I was very anxious to speak with him, since I'd come across a news report the previous week in which he was quoted:

Stanley Coren, the Vancouver author of over a dozen books on dogs and their behaviour, is sharing some statistics compiled by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

“This is quite astonishing. Although pit bulls make up only a half per cent of the total number of dogs in the US, they are responsible for 43 per cent of fatal dog bites,” he points out.

“That says something about the wiring of the dog.”

I wanted to find out what his sources were for the population and the percentage of dog bite-related fatalities (DBRFs) he attributes to "pit bulls".  Luckily for me, he stopped right near our booth to talk to somebody about their dog so I was able to sneak up on him and pounce.

He said he got his DBRF number from 'available data' because in the US there is a requirement for bite reporting only in cases of fatalities.  It's all in some database, apparently but he couldn't remember how to access it.

He said his "pit bull" population estimate, .5% (yes, one-half of one percent), was obtained via UKC and AKC registrations for  American Pit Bull terriers, American Staffordshire terriers and Staffordshire Bull terriers.  I asked why he didn't include ADBA.  He didn't know about them.

I told him his DBRF data came from news reports, as stated by CDC, which is his source.  He disputed this and said I had no understanding of data. I told him it's right in the journal articles themselves, that there is no 'database' of DBRFs, that they scanned news reports, that there were missing death certificates and other weaknesses.  He became rather argumentative  at that point.

I said that in a population of 78 million dogs, 30 fatalities a year, while a horrific for the people involved,  are not statistically significant enough to predict any kind of trend.  He insisted there are 12 fatalities a year, not 30 on average.  I then realized he was talking about 5 fatalities attributable to "pit bulls" on average, per year.

I told him I think there are probably at least 5 million dogs that could be construed as "pit bulls" in the US.  He was sputtering by now and said that would mean 1:10 dogs are "pit bulls".  I said yes, that would probably be about right but actually it would be roughly 1:16.  I asked him if he includes mutts in his "statistics" he said no, just those three breeds.  I asked him who would be able to determine the purebred status of a dog in the US involved in an attack, since there is no requirement for identification. He didn't have an answer for that.  He didn't respond to my point about how most "breed" attributions are guesses or hearsay.

I didn't bother getting into how he determined how many were alive or  how he must be the only person who doesn't count mutts because they are in every piece of legislation, etc because by then he was kind of yelling that he was a scientist, repeatedly.

I had reminded him about our email conversation from 2006, when I had found his claim about 2000 psi pressure in a bound book after reading it in several news reports. After trying to throw me off-track and failing, he finally had to admit he couldn't find a reference and thought he might have overheard it. I have spared him the publication of our email exchange because I actually feel kind of sorry for him, but here is where he finally admits I've got him by the nuts over the 2000 psi:

 

I really can't be more specific. I apparently simply noted the
 essence of the findings to use as an aside in a talk I was
 giving. I always felt that  I could recover the original
 reference if I needed it, although you have proven  that 
this is not necessarily so. This has happened several times
 in the past,  where a bit of interesting data was briefly 
noted by me and then my contact with  it disappeared in the
 dimming memory of an aging psychologist. One would think
 that I would have learned to be more obsessive by now but
 being only 9 months from  retirement probably means that 
I have lost the window of opportunity to change my habits.

 

He told me on Saturday that he isn't responsible for what media write about him.  I said he's responsible for what he tells them - was he now accusing them of making it up?  "They can't print what you don't tell them and when you have an audience you should be careful about what you say."

He started yammering about his friends who have done studies recently but couldn't remember their names, which university they are from or what the titles of their papers are.  He thought they had a couple of papers in the Journal of Public Health. I said I'd look for them.  He mentioned a lurid paper from Detroit - one we have all seen that was written by an ER doctor. I said that "pit bulls" are very popular in Detroit, so it makes sense there will be more bites by that type.  He said they aren't popular there at all.

I asked him why he doesn't talk about Canada.  He said there aren't enough data.  I asked him how many people have been killed by "pit bull" types, ever, in this country.  He didn't know.  I asked him how many had been killed by "sled dog" types.  He didn't know.  He kept saying there are not enough data in Canada.

He then beetled off down the hall at top speed.

So that's pretty much what Stanley Coren is about. He's not interested in accuracy, he's not interested in science, he accused me of being closed-minded about "pit bulls" and incapable of understanding data.

Somebody's neurons are misfiring, but I don't think it's "pit bulls".

Postscript:

Later that day somebody visited our booth and said "Stanley Coren said that "pit bulls" used to be called the nanny dogs".  I said "That's not true.  Dr Coren says a lot of things that aren't supported."  She said "But it's good, right?".  "If it's not true, how can it possibly be good?"

 

Rupert considers marking Stanley's leg but is too polite

Note belt and suspenders!

 

KEEP YOUR BELIEFS, JUST GIVE ME THE FACTS

Something's been bothering me for  awhile.  I don't know what to do about it.

It's the bullshit, doctor.    It's everywhere.

Yesterday, as a contribution to the truth in advertising campaign, I highlighted a common, outdated meme using a Facebook poster (for want of a better term) put out by a member of the choir.   It sounded nice and truthy but its message is  impossible to verify one way or the other.   I don't know what these things are supposed to achieve anyway, but that's another issue. 

If you can't back  up what you are saying with evidence, why would you present it as factual without any qualification?  How is this helpful?

You can't fight fiction with more fiction.  Isn't that what we dislike about media and others who believe a bunch of malarkey about dog owners?  Why aren't we holding ourselves to the same standard we expect from others?

I was surprised when another member of  the choir criticized my criticism because, apparently, if you can't prove it's true it doesn't mean it's untrue.  I guess the opposite applies as well, then:  If you can't prove it's untrue it doesn't mean it's true.  It's a wash.

I prefer to say that if you can't verify it, it's untrue and belongs on the big steaming pile of horse-pucky labeled "mythology" until it can be proved.   Apparently, I'm wrong in saying that a person who presents information as factual has the burden of supporting it.  Who knew?  I figure the first guy out of the gate has the burden of proof.

So if I say, for example, that yobs in UK council flats are fighting Chihuahuas in bathtubs, is it true? It would be pretty hard to prove either way so I guess it's not untrue then.  (It wouldn't surprise me at all  if that became the takeaway point from this post and got sprayed all over The Book.  No joke.)

If I say that Dalton McGuinty's family owned a "pit bull" named Tory, is it true?  That one is actually in Hansard and I've seen it spread by self-styled BSL warriors around here.  It was a joke but there I go again, spoiling a good story.  What a bitch.  I should change my name to Buzzkill.

I guess that anything said by any crackpot with a website or buffoon who claims expertise is true if it can't be proved to be untrue.  So when some piece of garbage like this comes out:

Stanley Coren, the Vancouver author of over a dozen books on dogs and their behaviour, is sharing some statistics [huh?] compiled by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

“This is quite astonishing. Although pit bulls make up only a half per cent of the total number of dogs in the US, they are responsible for 43 per cent of fatal dog bites,” he points out.

...is it true? 

Nobody knows how many "pit bulls" there are because it all depends on how you define the term. You'd have to go from town to town, counting "pit bulls" to get the actual numbers. (I know that Alan Beck thinks "pit bulls" are only Bull terriers and Staffordshire Bull terriers.  He told me so.  He is a good friend of Stanley's.  He told me that, too.)

So, are people saying that if you can't define "pit bull" and you can't count "pit bulls" then anything said about them, including the bullshit blanket statement that they are responsible for 43% of fatalities is true. because it's not untrue?

Is that how this should work in some people's minds?  It is certainly why "pit bulls" are one of the best propaganda models in history.

You can't have it both ways, people.

I don't care if it's old messaging.  It matters.  I matters when hormonally unbalanced, demented "journalists" quote supposedly credible sources when writing  hate-filled rants intended to wound people by hiding behind dogs.  They can't be called before a human rights tribunal for spreading hatred as long as they stay focused on those who can't read - or vote.  "Hey, what gives,  just talkin' about "pit bulls" snorgle burfft schizzleconk bloob...you got a problem with that?" 

It matters when some poor newbie stands up at a public meeting and quotes one of these memes  (there are lots out there from which to choose) or uses an infographic from a supposedly reputable site like National Geographic that uses 'the facts' as a title for a graphic that doesn't contain one fact because he doesn't know any better, then gets called on it and is stuck for an answer.  Oops.  Bye bye credibility.  For everybody.

Those head-cases with their demented little echo chambers out in the cybernetic wastelands where all the bigots hide like to bend the truth, quote from unreliable sources and just make stuff up.  I don't know what their problem is, nor do I care because they are irrelevant to what we are doing.  If you validate them by treating them as serious players, you give them power.  If you don't care what you put out, you give them snips to use against you.

If you only say what you can support, you don't have to worry about the nut-jobs and nobody can shake you or make you worry about what might leak.  It's too late to change is not a valid reason for keeping on keeping on.

You aren't 'educating' the [imaginary] public when you are spreading mythology. You are talking to your own, brainwashing yourselves, marginalizing yourselves.  That's how religion operates - march in lockstep, don't rock the boat, just go along with it, don't stir up shit, just say it, don't question it, repeat after me  wink wink nudge nudge, this should make everybody like "pit bulls" or hate "pit bulls" or believe in "pit bulls" - it doesn't matter what the angle is.  It's truthy. Get with the program and stop stirring the pot, heretic.

I don't care what people believe.  I'm not going to try to convert them because that won't be possible.  I don't care if they hate dogs and dog owners.  That's their right.  It's my right to be free of harassment when I walk down the street with my dog, regardless of my appearance or his.  It's my right to not have to sweat the neighbours because a law is in place that allows them to put me through if they feel like it for no valid reason.  It's my right to not have the government walk into my house any time they want to because I own universally legal  personal property.  It's my right to be judged by my behaviour - not my race, religion, nationality or my personal appearance or perceived status in the community.

Anything else is irrelevant to this struggle as far as I'm concerned.

We don't need to make stuff up. We don't have to hide behind anything.  We are right out there in the open, drawing their fire and their impotent ire while laughing in their faces. 

I don't believe in truth or much else, maybe because I was brought up without religion and was taught to question everything from an early age.  

I trust evidence.  The evidence does not support BSL.

End of story. 

***

There are at least three battles being fought around dog ownership these days.

1. The battle against the animal-rights driven agenda to exterminate domestic dogs.  This is fought by brainwashing sensitive people so they will parrot nonsensical messaging about "pet overpopulation", "nasty breeders" and more. It is embraced by those who don't fact-check and don't think about the long game or even what they are 'saying' because all their friends are singing the same song.  Ignorance is fertile ground for this agenda.

 

2. The battle against legislation that discriminates against a minority to allow the erosion of civil rights for the majority.  This is achieved by using propaganda and distortion to create a distraction.   It's a trick.  It is not hard to deal with legislators, even obstinate ones in thrall to ideology.  It's a lot easier than trying to inject some sense into the animal welfare zone in my experience.

 

3. The battle for 'hearts and minds' which is not helped by advocates who send out awful messaging that is supposed to inform the public at large but is usually just a turn off for many reasons.  Most of it reinforces stereotypes and isolates them further.  Hey, if you keep telling me you are different and your pets are different, why wouldn't I believe you?  If you keep telling me to hate/fear your dog, am I supposed to ignore that?  

Somebody told me I shouldn't conflate advocacy with marketing messages.  

What's the difference?

 

LITTLE FISH BITES IF YOU GOT GOOD BAIT

 

Thanks to  the marvel of the inter-tubes and the emotional investment of most of our supporters, we now have a situation where a certain columnist is fully engaged in baiting dog owners with greater and greater frequency.

The columnist in question, whose nickname is "Special", is the mother of the editor of the Comment page at the National Post, a newspaper that is struggling to survive financially and has been for some time.

This woman enjoys presenting absolute poppycock as factual, then sitting back to wait for the reaction.  She has said as much on Twitter.  She is thereby ensuring her future job security as a columnist while feeding her delusions at the same time.   She may not even believe the nonsense she writes.  It is entirely possible that she is more canny than we know and that this is a scheme to help the paper retain some relevance in the dog-eat-dog world that is modern news reporting.  Attention equals ad revenue equals solvency.

The people who gather at her site think "breed" ha ha bans are about their cute little "pit bulls" when in fact,  they are not.

Dogs are not affected by BSL.  They can't be.  They don't understand it, they don't read, they don't view the world the way we do.  They are dogs and happy to be dogs.  They don't know they are disliked because of their size, their colour, their perceived "breed" or any of the rest of it.

It is dog owners who are marginalized when BSL comes to town.  The latest column, which I honestly haven't read (nor have I read any of the others beyond a quick skim and a head-shaking astonishment at how much codswallop one can actually cram into 600 or so words) apparently talks about "caninism" a nonsesne term which I suppose means racism  in Doggyland in the mind of the writer and her ever burgeoning audience.

The thing is, racism is a fine word all by itself.  In Europe they refer to dog breeds as races, although technically they are ethnic groups in most cases.  There are three to five races depending on who you read, but that's not what this person is talking about.  She doesn't know enough about the subject to speak with any credibility at all so certainly won't get into the fine details.

Which brings me to my point. 

In reacting to this person, people are rewarding the behaviour.  Attention is what she craves.  Attention is what she is getting.   Dog owners are rising to the bait like fish and the more fish she catches, the more bait she will cut. 

As tough as it may be for those who are emotionally invested in this issue, the best way to shut this down is to ignore it.  Let her play with the handful, and I mean handful, of low-information people who support the same silly viewpoint she claims to espouse.

Quite frankly, anybody who is still talking about "pit bulls" as if they are a breed and as if they possess any of the preternatural powers attributed to them by charlatans, wags and lowbrows is so out of the loop it's actually kind of sad.

The fact that a paper that at one point had a certain panache, the National Post, has to lower its editorial standards to get the kind of traffic it needs in order to stay in business is even more depressing.

 Here's a thought that may cheer you up.  We are doing very well lately in the anti-BSL arena.  These policies are being removed and rejected outright in more and more places.  We have all the evidence, all the science, all the experts on our side.  We still have public opinion behind us as we have had all along.  That rankles the haters as they become more and more irrelevant in most people's minds.  In Edmonton, they did a survey and over 80% of people favoured lifting the ban.  

That is the story, that is the news.

We are winning.  Because we are winning, the handful of frothing ignorami who want to hate something, who thought they had it made when they could hide behind our only friend, the dog, will go down kicking and screaming and babbling in tongues.

We are the good guys.  There is no doubt about that.  It's time to act  like it by rising above the nonsense.  Let the trogs duke it out in the mud.  We have other things to do that are more important and much more honourable.

In the interests of public service , here is today's column for discussion purposes.

If you have time on your hands, fact-check her column, write an Op-Ed and submit it to the paper, ask them to run it as a rebuttal. Or even just write a letter to the editor.  I recommend getting somebody who knows their stuff to look it over before you send it in.  

We are the ones with the facts.  Never forget that.

WHY DON ' T WE HEAR ABOUT THESE DOG BITES AND ATTACKS?

The media 'journalists' use a simple formula for their 'news' items about dog bites these days.  If it can be at all passed off as a 'pit bull', do it - not showing a picture helps.  Otherwise, just bury it somewhere because the fake hysteria over 'pit bulls' we've created might get diluted - and we can't have that, can we?  We need the hits on our websites to generate ad revenue and stay alive.  A poll about the wisdom of banning 'pit bulls' should be run whenever possible as well - it puts audience share through the roof when all the anti-BSL folk hit it to vote.

Here's a neat little blog you might want to check out:

Dog Attacks You Never Hear About

NEWS FROM ANIMAL LIBERATION-LAND

The FBI has added Daniel San Diego to its list of most wanted terrorists.  He shares the honour with Osama bin Laden and others but has the dubious distinction of being the first domestic terrorist added to the list.

Oh, and thanks a lot, ABC. I was using the same title but had to change it after I visited your story.

The FBI put out a press release on April 22 listing various rewards for information in attacks targeting scientific researchers.

A couple of ALF members were indicted in Los Angeles on  April 22, charged with conspiracy, stalking, and other crimes against researchers at UCLA.

A pro-research rally in Los Angeles attracted hundreds of supporters, vastly outnumbering the animal liberaton extremists protesting at the same time.  I guess the animal liberation schtick is finally wearing thin with mainstream groups, which is a good thing indeed.

And then there's Mr Vick (rhymes with...).  A buddy out west gave me the heads-up on this one:

Michael Vick in Talks to Become PETA Spokesman

Jailed NFL Superstar Looks to Rehab Image After Dog-fighting Rap

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Michael Vick is in talks to become the new spokesman for PETA.

Yes, you read that correctly. The disgraced one-time NFL superstar serving prison time for funding an illegal dog-fighting ring is primed to do public-service ads for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals upon his release later this month. According to three people with knowledge of the matter, the proposed endorsement is part of a comprehensive PR scheme aimed at rehabilitating the quarterback's image and gaining him readmission to the league that banned him from playing.

Well, at least Vick and Peta have something in common - both have used 'pit bulls' to further their own ends, both have shown no respect for animal life and both appear to be greedy and manipulative enough to deserve each other.

What's the difference between bumping off animals you promised to place in new homes then throwing the corpses into a dumpster and bumping off animals you were supposed to care for and burying the bodies in the backyard?  Thirty million bucks a year, I guess.

This guy Vick isn't too bright, is he?  Doesn't he have teh Google?  Somebody should let him know that the worst thing he could do to rehab his image (such as it is) is to join forces with the most hypocritical, self-serving, histrionic group of animal-killing phonies around. 

If Vick thinks people who love dogs are mad at him now, just wait until his goofy mug appears in a Peta commercial.  I hope he goes for it just because I'm nice that way.

Roll 'em!

HSUS: NEVER GIVE A ' PIT BULL ' AN EVEN BREAK

Nathan Winograd has a couple of good posts up about the meeting of the 'pit bull' profiteers in Las Vegas.

I know that nobody is surprised that the HSUS continues to exhibit what amounts to a corporate sociopathy or by the fact that no progress was made.

The burning question isn't whether 'pit bulls' are just dogs (they are), whether fighting dogs are a product of their environment (they are), whether any thinking human would agree that dogs shouldn't die for our sins (they would) or whether the HSUS will veer away from its set course of animal liberation (it won't - at least not until the current BOD is booted out and some truly humane leaders are voted in).

No, to me, the most important question is this:

What makes these people think that they have the right to speak for 'pit bulls', dogs in general, 'bust dogs' (as they call them)  or for all of us who are out here in the frontlines - in rescue, in the courts, and on the streets? 

I deeply resent the intrusive, self-serving, double-dealing campaign by the HSUS to legislate pet breeding and ownership into oblivion while crying crocodile tears for dogs, cats, horses and chickens.

I'm insulted by the unending stream of contradictory, duplicitous and illogical statements that wouldn't fool a first-grader.

I am galled by their hubris in implying to the rubes ithat they are a government-sanctioned agency - worse, a law enforcement group - rather than a private special interest lobbying outfit which does not represent mainstream views.

Their arrogance in presuming to 'negotiate' repulsive ideas such as breed (ha ha) bans 'down' to breed-specific mandatory neutering (Louisville) and then say it's somehow better than a ban - would be hilarious were it not so deadly to dogs.

Most of all, I get really, really, really pissed off by all these people who make money and promote themselves on the backs of 'pit bulls' - be they incompetent politicians like Old Nanny McGuinty in Ontario, cheese-ass journalists who need a hook because they're too lazy or hung over to write an actual story, rescue groups who post all kinds of nonsense about how weird 'pit bulls' are on their websites, hysterics who get information from personal injury lawyers and white-hooders so they can get a hate on and all the rest of them - fooling themselves into believing that people like me give a damn about what they think or say.

If I want an opinion about 'pit bulls', I'll ask a 'pit bull'.  At least they aren't in it for the money.  Sometimes I think they're the only ones who aren't.

TIME FOR THE HSUS TO HIT THE SHOWERS

Suggested Listening While Reading

Interpret that as you will.

Thanks to the efforts of another blogger, we have seen the testimony in the Wilkes County, North Carolina dog-killing by representatives of the Humane Society of the United States.  The dogs were seized from a Mr Faron, who couldn't afford the ransom to get his dogs back, including puppies that were born in the hoosegow.  He pleaded guilty to 14 counts of dog-fighting, something which was legal in North Carolina until 1997.

A hearing was held to determine the fate of the dogs seized in the case and the puppies born in custody.  The representatives of the HSUS testified on February 16, 2009.

First up was Amanda Harrington, former office manager, anti-tethering activist, and member of an animal welfare advisory board.  She is now the North Carolina State Director for the HSUS and, like most HSUS spokepeople, seems to know very little about dog behaviour or dog breeding.

MS. AMANDA ARRINGTON: They [Best Friends] are offering to assist. That is their language that they used. That means it would still be the county's responsibility. And in their own words, it costs about $190,000 per dog to rehabilitate them.

THE COURT: $190,000 to rehabilitate a dog?

MS. AMANDA ARRINGTON: Yes, sir.

THE COURT: That's what Best Friends says?

MS. AMANDA ARRINGTON: Yes.

Wow, I guess a lot of people owe me a lot of money for all the dogs I've adopted that needed rehabilitation training.  We all know that 8-week-old puppies need a lot of rehab.  Way to scare the rubes, Amanda, using big numbers like that.  Did they all touch their wallets when you dropped that bombshell?  This kind of begs the question, though:  How much does it cost to rehab somebody from the Dr Phil show, if it costs almost 200 grand to rehab a dog?

 

Then we get into the fun part, where HSUS people, as usual, show that they really know their stuff.

THE COURT: why is this the so-called humane thing to do?

MS. AMANDA ARRINGTON: To euthanize?

THE COURT: Yes, ma'am.

       

AARRRGGHHH!!!  I can't take it anymore! Make it stop!  It isn't frickin' euthanasia when you are destroying healthy animals.  It's killing.  Face it HSUS/Peta/Shelter euphemizers, that's what you are doing - in record numbers.

But wait, there's more:

MS. AMANDA ARRINGTON: For the dogs themselves, I think, because of the way that they were bred. I think it is an unrealistic expectation for us to ask these dogs that have been bred generations for fighting to become regular pets. And it's an even bigger thing to ask people to take on that responsibility and the county to take on both the financial burden and the liability.

You know, we could be a couple years down the road and one of these dogs could do something, and I think it ultimately could come back on the county of Wilkes.

Ooh, I bet they touched their wallets that time.  The old 'hit 'em with liability' trick, eh?  You know that liability is the one thing that keeps government lackeys up at night, don't you?

There's an HSUS double-whammy here because what this bird is really saying is that nobody should try to place a dog into a new home through a city facility.  Because, you know, a few years might pass and the dog might 'do something' and the city will be left wearing a barrel and suspenders, I tell you what.

Quelle cruche de merde.  Yes, you heard me, merde.  I'm surprised the judge didn't call it as he obviously saw it.  He was probably trying to appear objective while being slimed with a bucketful of vintage HSUS being hurled in his general direction by these witnesses.

Next up is former animal control officer Chris Schindler (oh, the irony) who wants to make it clear that he knows dogs:

THE COURT: Sir, did you want to add something?

MR. CHRIS SCHINDLER: I'm Chris Schindler. I'm the Deputy Manager, Animal Fighting Law Enforcement, Humane Society of the United States.

Swoon -  Not only a Deputy [manager], but a Law Enforcement Deputy [manager].  A regular Dudley Fiddlin' DoRight in the flesh.

There's just a slight problem, though.  The HSUS is not a law enforcement agency, is not a government agency of any kind, has no mandate to represent anyone but its own twisted sistership which, being dazed and confused, supports the animal liberation agenda.

But I digress.  Here's the part that really shows everybody what the HSUS is all about:

Your Honor, basically agree with all the things that everyone else has said. These dogs have been bred for generations upon generations for a single purpose of animal fighting; the puppies included.

They all have been bred to display those traits of gameness and these things that dog fighters look for. People don't come from all over the world to obtain dogs from Ed Faron because, you know, they are just a regular pit bull.

Pick me!  I have some questions, Your Honor!  Pick me!

1. Does Schindler believe that dogs can be bred for animal fighting?
2. Does he believe that young puppies, barely old enough to leave the nest, are dangerous?
3. Does he believe that every dog in every litter displays the same personality traits?
4. Does he know what he means by 'regular 'pit bull''?
5. Does he know that people come from all over the world to buy a lot of purebred dogs from long-time breeders, regardless of whether they are Chihuahuas, Beagles or American Pit Bull terriers?

Answers 1 - 3 are 'yes'.  Answers 4 & 5 are 'no'.

There's more, not as much as I'd hoped, but enough to show that the HSUS people will never change.

They do not believe that each dog is an individual.  They don't understand anything about dogs, breeds or breeding (I know, duh).  They want to kill all the 'pit bulls'.  They think that a dog-aggressive canine is dangerous, when in fact, many dogs don't get along with their own kind and make terrific pets.  I've had a few of those - gasp! adopted from humane societies - and never had any problems.

Oh, and just for Donna and the gang, here's the grand finale from Deputy Chris:

"...I mean, these dogs, they are not on the same level. You know, people speak about the Michael Vick dogs. Those dogs have not even been rehabilitated."

(Brief Pause.)
(Proceeding concluded at 10:52 a.m.)

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