Recent activity started with the California coursing controversy, which has now gone national with CNN and shows no sign of going away.
Now LA wants to neuter all dogs in the unincorporated parts of the county-- for reasons ranging from safety to, of course, animal rights. Some ask for exceptions for purebreds or even, explicitly, "show dogs". This is neither the time nor place to go into what is wrong with show dogs, genetically, behaviorally, or anatomically, but there are real "issues". (Watch a show German shepherd walking some time...) And what about pedigreed but non- AKC and DECIDEDLY non- show Asian tazis, or our intentionally crossbred lurchers? Oh, right, they are coursing hunters and would be banned or euthanized before they were sterilized.
Ban this "beast?"
In Virginia, a move is afoot to require veterinarians to compile a database on all dogs-- details at Sportsman's and Animal Owners Voting Alliance. They ADMIT that "its primary goal is to provide "inducements" for pet sterilization." The data would also be publically available to Animal Rights groups and such people as insurance companies. (Did you know that ... "Owners of pit bulls, Rotweilers, Dobermans, German Shepherds and their crosses have a special concern. No insurance company doing business in this state, or in most others, will sell homeowner coverage to anyone that it knows owns certain "blacklisted" dogs. Those blacklisted dogs vary by company, but normally include, at a minimum, pit bulls, Rottweilers, Dobermans and their mixes." And the list expands all the time-- one city in Iowa now bans breeds by size).
On the other side, a ray of hope: Ohio calls breed specific bans unconstitutional (warning-- this is a 28 page PDF you may not want to download!)
Am I paranoid? You bet. Is there a conspiracy, headed by the organization we love to call "H$U$",to ban dogs as well as hunting? Let's ask its head, Wayne Pacelle: "...We have no ethical obligation to preserve the different breeds of livestock produced through selective breeding. One generation and out. We have no problems with the extinction of domestic animals. They are creations of human selective breeding."
( Animal People News, May 1, 1993)
If we do not attempt to cut off every head of this hydra, dogs will become rare and expensive, and, before that, will not be allowed to act like dogs. They will then become extinct.
More to come....
3 comments:
Suppressing or restricting dogs is a laughable enterprise, about like treating sex and birth that way, and therefore well suited for the organization you justifiably call the H$U$ and its relations. But it IS great way to harass criminals as well as ordinary folks. Just trying to get everyone to immunize their dogs for rabies and wear a tag is an enterprise that works only in terms of percentages.
First of all, there needs to be a massive education project to get rid of this sliding of English notions of snobbish class distinctions over onto dogs. An AKC dog is not a better dog than others, it's simply a dog with known parents. The only way to tell the quality of a dog is to look at the dog itself, not papers. So much of the nasty inbreeding comes from this same idea that ended up with some nasty inbreeding among the royalty of Europe as well. (Hemophilia being one of the consequences and simple stupidity being another.) Bad dogs have become more and more identified with bad people: junkyard dogs for junk people.
There's a great need to control in these ideas. I think people are a little panicky.
Prairie Mary
I'm doing a speech on Breed Specific Legislation and how stupid it is... can anyone offer me some insight?? Thanks!!
Try Dog Politics.
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