A few more thoughts on dog restrictions

Annie Hocker, Matt, and feminist hunter and gun writer Mary Stange were having an online discussion on the erosion of support for unpopular kinds of hunting like that with hounds. I saved a few of my thoughts as I thought them appropriate for the blog.

Mary said (rightfully) that we must mobilize and stand up: "You cannot complain about being a marginal group if you accept the marginalization, and act accordingly."

True, but there are difficulties. Me:

"I think the trouble is that the playing field isn't level, or rather that one or two players can outspend the others with ease. HSUS has literally millions a year to commit-- they have a bigger budget than a Third- World country. There are only a couple of thousand falconers in the North American falconers Association, and only twice that nationally. There are even fewer coursing dog people, few if any in urban states. Hound dog men are rural, inarticulate, and poor but for foxhounds of course, and THEY, a tiny number, can be demonized as evil elitists as they were in England. We can't afford lobbyists-- how can we NOT be marginal?

Yet we fight anyway. We write letters and testify. How can you get attention when both statewide newspapers (NM) editorialize for AR laws and don't print your letters? Many Cal hunters and coursers went to Sacramento. Many were not let in. So far the Internet helps..

The second biggest player here, the AKC, is now in bed with the HSUS, hoping they will play nice to protect their enormous investment in the outmoded, unhealthy, Victorian- racist closed- studbook paradigm, which ironically is giving birth to many genetically defective dogs that in turn feed PETA's propaganda. They-- AKC-- want to eliminate mongrels, crossbreds, and genetic diversity. That's why you can't make an intentional crossbred running dog in Albuquerque these days.

ASPCA is just PETA lite.

Science and experience with animals should surely count, as I said in the blog post, but do little up against money and sentimental lies."

Then someone (Annie?)reminded me that:

"Many foxhunters, (horseback version) are very squeamish about this, however, as they do not support any other use of hounds for hunting other than what they do, so the veneer of unification is thin, and fractionalization, if not marginalization, is just
temporarily "at bay." "

I replied:

"This is extremely unfortunate and as common as it is bad. Falconers can be among the worst offenders.

When I was rallying people for the Cal coursing fight one falconer said that nobody could equate beautiful birds with I quote "those vicious hounds". I countered by sending him that pic of the child napping with the gorgeous coursing saluki and said "What if I juxtaposed this with a pic of an adrenalin- fired, wild eyed Gos beginning to eat a bird alive?" (As Matt and Annie know I have a Gos so this is not an example of longwinger prejudice!)

The anti - hound faction on the hunters' side is exemplified by nature essentialist Dave Peterson's furious attacks on the practice. I think he soaked up too much of the nuttier side of Paul Shephard, who thought domestication was evil and domestic animals "goofies". Bulldogs or peeks maybe-- but primitive hunting breeds like Laikas or Asian sighthounds, with their pack structures, wolflike vocalizations, denning habits, and single estrus, are as like wild animals as domestic except for the innate tractability that marks them as "dog"...

Getting off on a hobbyhorse. But I support all ethical and sustainable hunting, and reject over- regulation of one's animals (ALWAYS by people who know less about it than those on the human - animal interface, and always at the behest of AR agendists with their money and sentimental ads and Hollywood star publicity.

If I were in my thirties I'd move to K'stan."