Dogs in the news

Yesterday’s update was by far the largest one I have done to date. I didn’t think that was going to be the case, as I had no idea what to write about when I began it, that was why I just left the four paragraphs from the previous day on there. As it turns out I had a lot to write about, so much in fact that it bored my wife. I think it was probably because of the subject matter. Also I made reference to airplane parts without really describing what they were, but I figured if you had never built or flown an r.c. plane you likely were going to skip that section anyway.

I fear this update may go even longer since I really don’t have anything to write about today. Nothing in the news is worth posting about, well unless I really wanted to beat the dead horse that is the situation in Iraq and I am so not going there. If you want to know the truth about what the world thinks about the situation in Iraq (as opposed to the US Media blowing sunshine up your ass) just read a paper or website based anywhere except the US. We are pretty much universally hated at this point. Because I like to speculate, and love to look for worst case scenarios, imagine this; The US administration continues to fight in Iraq, despite the whole UN asking us to stand down. The US then invades North Korea, even as the UN advises against it. The UN then eliminates our position in the UN entirely. With us no longer having a say, the rest of the countries decide that we are a major threat and must be eliminated. The UN makes a unanimous decision to invade the US to free the rest of the world from the threat. The majority of our army is still deployed in north Korea and Iraq, so it is no problem for the world’s combined military to land in Canada and begin their attack from there, being as the US/Canadian border is the largest unprotected border in the world. Think about it, what country out there doesn’t have a bone to pick with the US? Our demise would be pretty swift. Hopefully, though, that will be the next video game coming to a store near you and not the truth about what could happen if we continue the path we are on.

• I got an email a few days ago regarding my dogs. I sent an email back in response but, just for fun I am going to post his email here. Unfortunately my exact response to his email is on my old computer and I have no intention of taking the time to plug it back in to quote myself. I remember what I was getting at, so I will write a new response, which may vary vastly from the one I sent him.

No offense intended, but out of curiosity, how do you read this type of article, or the dozens of others like it every year about the latest pit bull mauling/murder, and feel safe with your pets? Blog topic for a pit bull owner, eh?
http://www.thelouisvillechannel.com/news/3243296/detail.html

I mean sure, no one thinks their dogs will ever do that. But then again, that’s what the parents of that little girl thought too, until earlier this week. I’m never relaxed around any dog large enough to possibly do me severe physical harm, and that’s all dogs, not just the types that have been bred for hundreds of generations to be vicious, deadly fighting machines.

I will address his last point first. I know that dogs are basically wolves that have been tamed, and as such they already have it in their genes to kill. When dogs were domesticated, some of them were domesticated a bit less than others, like pit bulls. The thing is that your genes don’t necessarily mean that you are going to be like your ancestors. You are a product of your upbringing, just as a dog is a product of theirs. If you get a puppy and truly love and nurture the dog from birth I bet it is a lot less likely to be vicious than a dog that you buy as a puppy then stick on a ten foot chain in the yard and forget about until the day it either dies or kills.

As far as dogs in general, I am afraid of them also. I am deathly afraid of dogs like rottweilers. Unlike the mixed breed pit-bulls that I own, I have never seen a friendly rottweiler. Those dogs look like killers and are killers. They probably don’t get nearly as much publicity about killing children since any sensible parent would not own one of those dogs if they had children, or vice-versa.

The other thing about pit-bulls is that I think they get a really bum wrap. Both of our dogs are identified as ‘pit-bull mix’ which I think is code for ‘we got no idea’ at the local animal shelter. That way when the dog decides to eat your family they can say, “well we did tell you that it was a pit-bull”. That being whether the dog had any pit-bull in it or not. I say this based on the fact that I was trying to find a picture of a ‘pure bred’ pit-bull while trying to see if that was what our new puppy was, that was when I discovered that the pit-bull can look like a labrador, or a dalmation, or a greyhound, while it is in fact a ‘Bull Terrier’, I am not joking on this. The breed ‘pit bull’ is actually a ‘Bull Terrier”. I have found many images that closely resemble both of my mild-manored dogs.

I actually read a lot more about the “Pit Bull” than I had ever known, while I was at that site. It seems that the Pit Bull is getting even worse publicity than what I was thinking, as evidenced by This Report, which I will quote a bit of:

The odds of being struck by lightning are 1 in 600,000 in the USA. Comparatively speaking you are 6 times more likely to be struck by lightning than you are to be killed by a dog of any breed. When you further break down the odds of being attacked and killed by a Pit Bull the odds are in your favor -approximately 1 in 145,000,000. That’s million folks. In contrast, you are 4 times more likely to be killed by a cow in the USA than any breed of dog, much less a Pit Bull.
So why do some dogs attack?

The answer is quite simple really.

• Irresponsible pet owners.

• Irresponsible parents.

• Instigation by the “so called” victims themselves.

Although there are some bad dogs out there these are in the minority and the tendency is to blame the dogs and / or their owners without just cause.

Now, I am not necessarily trying to defend the pit bull, but after educating myslef on the subject I think that it is far more likely that the dogs involved in the vicious, mutilating attacks are of the rottweiler or doberman breed and mixed with the vicious ‘Bull Terrier’ (as a matter of fact, I can not find a single story at the AKC.org where a registered ‘Bull Terrier’ has ever killed anyone.). At the same time I do read/hear the news, and as such I doubt that I would ever have both a baby and a ‘pit bull’ in the house at the same time. I certainly love my dogs, but if there did happen to be an infant in my home the rules may have to change at least long enough to let the infant develop the ability to walk/run in case it did all go bad.

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