Dogs. Nanny State

Politicians & Animal Rights vs the right to breed YOUR dogs

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By intention I don’t do much politics here- I am neither partisan or, mostly, interested enough. But does ANYONE pay attention to the fact that one socially conservative Republican presidential candidate, Rick Santorum, is in bed with HSUS, Wayne Pacelle, and the whole Animal Rights movement, and has been for many years? Worse, he seems to fly totally under the radar. If you care about hunting, or, especially, private dog breeding, Google “Santorum HSUS” or “Animal Rights” or even “Wayne Pacelle”…

A lot of nutty stuff left and right, approving and critical, is available, but some of real substance is up too. Many people think or comment “I’m against puppy mills.” Fine, but much of the proposed legislation, like Governor Perry’s below or some of Santorum’s failed attempts, would not just ban commercial breeders (who in any case have the money to move, fight, rebuild their kennels in technical compliance, or otherwise evade). Such laws would have prohibited my breeding (all of five non- profit pre- homed unique sighthound litters so far), and/ or have stopped me from bringing over my entire hound family, including Ataika, Queen of the World, who we got and lived with for a month in Almaty– she was among other things, including just IMPORTED (apparently inherently evil), under 6 months old. Think she would have been as social and civilized later?*

The very sane Bob Kane on Santorum’s proposed 2005 PAWS bill:

“PAWS has virtually nothing to do with animal welfare or closing Animal Welfare Act “loopholes.” It’s a direct attack on U.S. hobby breeders, hunting dog owners and animal rescuers. PAWS federalizes hobby pet breeding.“

And then there is his fellow Republican Rick Perry, who fails on dumbass grounds anyway but tends to pose as a red blooded western foe of bureaucracy. I call bullshit. From petbreedersandowners.com: “HB1451 created a new state agency, allows for entry into a private residence without the owners presence, establishes a public database to include the private information of pet breeders, established a bounty fund for animal rights activists to report pet breeders to the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, and is a contradiction of the key values supposedly upheld by Gov. Perry. These bills were heavily backed by the H$U$, ASPCA, PETA, and other animal rights groups, and promote their agenda.”

Statist meddlers & “botherers” both…

The results can be seen in Continental European countries, where an unholy alliance of government and closed registry breed clubs can now decide who is born. A friend in Germany wrote:

“But here in Germany it is very difficult to breed with brindle salukis. I think you remember the brindle Metzlers dogs. They tried to get permission to breed their bitch Bahia, but in the shows they only got a “good” and that is not good enough for the breeding permissions.”

Priceless unique genetic diversity is being lost for no demonstrable reason at all, and it CAN happen here– intact dogs of my AKC and Saluki Club unacceptable bloodlines are in peril of compulsory sterilization in Albuquerque because of former (Democrat– stupid knows no partisan boundaries) Mayor Marty Chavez’s Orwellianly- named HEART regs. Longdogs and staghounds, types prized and run in New Mexico longer than (I suspect) the authors of such regulations, are mere worthless “mongrels” of course.

[Elaborated from a comment of mine at Atomic Nerds.]

*Meanwhile it seems it is OK for urban shelters to import strays from Mexico to meet the demand caused by the “birth dearth” apparently resulting from too much compulsory spay neuter in pc precincts– look it up…

More on Spaying

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Dr John Burchard writes on mandatory spay neuter, resurrected in California. I had said:

“Only Americans (and perhaps Canadians) have this neutering thing. I think
European members [ of our list– they did] will confirm that neutering of purebred dogs is much rarer there.

He replied:

“It is beginning to catch on there too … but at least when I lived in or was
based in Europe (1958-1996 inclusive) desexed dogs were an anomaly there.
People managed their intact dogs, mostly without problems. Of course Europeans
tend to be less complicated about “the facts of life” than Americans. Those
crazy Puritans still cast a long shadow over here.

“I think there may still be some European countries where spay/neuter is
considered “unnecessary surgery” and actually prohibited except in case of
medical necessity?

“It is amazing that some of our own people (I mean, for example, Saluki breeders
who hunt with their dogs) do not see the illogic here and actually think
breeders should be licensed (of course, only the “good” ones) and everyone else
forced by law to sterilize their animals. That is problematic at many levels
… for example, who is a “good” breeder? Laura Sanborn has pointed out that
would mean the immediate end of the supply of police dogs and search-and-rescue
dogs, because most of those come not from “professional breeders” but from “pet
homes” – people who discover, when the dog is a year or two old, that they have
too much dog on their hands. Most of those dogs – who of course become the
parents of the next generation of good working dogs – were not originally
intended for breeding, and were not in the hands of a “breeder” at all. All
those dogs would have to be sterilized. Police patrol dogs are, anyway, nearly
always intact males, because most bitches and nearly all neutered dogs of either
sex don’t have enough “drive” for that job. Police dog training is a long and
expensive procedure and you don’t want to begin it with animals nearly all of
which will “wash out” during training.

“That’s only one of many reasons AB 1634 and its very numerous kinfolk are a very
bad idea. They won’t have much effect on the supply of “pets” but they will
practically eliminate the supply of working dogs (including hunting dogs). And
of course they will cause a dramatic *increase* in the animal shelter numbers,
the euthanasia rate, and the costs of animal control. That has been the effect
everywhere such regulations have been enacted.”

More Dog Control (and related misunderstandings)

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Dog owners in Toronto are no longer allowed to walk bitches in heat or any unaltered males in parks, period, full stop. Canadian saluki breeder Maril Semph sent text from a friend but no link:

“Effective February 01 2008 Toronto did ban all intact male dogs and
females in season, not just from off-leash dog parks but from all
Toronto parks.
It is a nightmare!

“I would have called the CKC but in the original proposal that was
circulated last summer there was no mention of this rule. Then the
city held discussion groups about the proposed changes for all
people who were interested and in one of those groups, one single
person complained of agressive un-neutered males.

“Following that when the rules were finalised it was suddenly
included, based on the complaint of one single person, and no
ability to discuss the rule. We had a matter of days before it went
to council. I and some fellow show dog owners wrote a lot of
letters and asked for an exemption clause for certain dogs
(including show dogs) but it passed with the rule included.

“There is a LARGE fine for violators. If a dog walker is caught with
an intact male they can lose their dogwalking license (they must all
be licensed now and they have a two strikes and you are out
policy).”

DOGWALKING LICENSE??

Matt, we might just have to post the “Harden the fuck up” video.

Meanwhile, Los Alamos NM– the county not just the town– has proposed dog and other animal regs that among other things would not allow dogs off lead for anything but work, which does not include hunting– as a matter of fact they would not allow any dog to pursue any wildlife, period. Dr. Gail Goodman sent me a PDF, which I can send to anyone interested. I wonder if Stingray and Lab Rat can add anything?

In NYC you can now be fined for feeding pigeons in your own back yard. (Incidentally, virtually all claims of pigeon- borne disease are false.) HT Margory Cohen.

An overpopulation of migrating coots offends the residents of a California subdivision. I don’t know who is more pathetic– is it the anti- control housewife who opposes killing any because “I have two small children. What if my dog got out in the yard and they mistook it for some wild animal?”

Or the developers:

“Savaikie recalled that in January, two days after she learned about the possible fate of the coots, a new sculpture was dedicated at a shopping center being built across the street from Bridgeport.

” “The Birds of Valencia” features dozens of silver birds in a celebration of the region’s annual migration.

“It will be placed in the middle of a man-made lake.”

Finally, an idiot gets called out by Luisa at Lassie Get Help:

“Jon Katz has parlayed inept stockmanship and mismanagement of his dogs into a Slate column, a movie deal, the odd radio appearance and a string of books, and there’s a website, too, but I won’t link to it…. He is a willfully ignorant, patronizing author who wants you to believe everything he tells you about dogs in general and border collies in particular even though, gosh, he’s never claimed to be an expert or anything. And besides, experts are just big old snobs, ha ha ha! He is like that man who wrote The Emigrants’ Guide to Oregon and California back in 1845 with directions to a new route he’d never actually traveled himself and when a group of settlers took his “shortcut,” they wound up struggling across the Wasatch Range and the salt flats of western Utah and were trapped in the snows in the High Sierra, where they ran out of food and resorted to cannibalism.

“On second thought, he’s much worse than that.”

Read it all!

Doggish Blogstuff

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In a post forthrightly called “Nannying Idiots Continue to ignore real problems”, Patrick starts with the case of someone arrested for docking a terrier tail in England and then gets REALLY wound up.

“Women are getting breast implants or breast reductions, and men are getting hair transplants and scalp reductions.

“Noses are bobbed, fat is sucked out, teeth are capped, botox is injected, and ears are being pierced, ringed, barbelled, and pinned.

“Ever been to a PETA rally? If you look around, you will see a lot of metal hanging out of nostrils, off of eye brows, or rammed through tongues. Every other girl will be showing off her “tramp stamp” tattoo on the small of her back. God only knows what you might find ringed, belled and pierced if you were foolish enough to ever see one of these PETA lunatics standing before you naked. The mind shudders.

“Consider PETA spokes-idiot Pamela Anderson, who not only married the walking Erector Set known as Tommy Lee, but who also got her own body repeatedly tucked, sucked, injected, lifted, dyed, bobbed, and implanted. And these people are worried about a ten-second tail nip? What on earth for?”

On a slightly more serious note, Eric at Classical Values ponders doggish souls:

“It strikes me that there cannot be a definitive answer to whether dogs have souls until there is a definitive answer to whether humans have souls. But I think if we do, then they do. When you spend fifteen years together with a loyal being, and the familiarity, intimacy, and emotional interdependence develops and deepens, that’s real life you’ve got invested. Life lived. A dog becomes a part of you, and you become a part of that dog. I can’t prove souls, but I am convinced that if we’ve got ’em. they’ve got ’em.”

Excuses & Around the Web

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Bear with me a bit, dear readers! I have just begun my eagle book, mentioned below, and am stll shaking down a schedule. Also doing last reread of my collaboration- in translation of Cherkassov’s 1865 Notes of an East Siberian Hunter with Vladimir — a labor of love that will not be an easy sell! A check came in in pounds sterling that will likely take 5 weeks to cash, and we need it now. Libby is on 50 hours a week at the PO, neccesitating a lot of hours for me with animals (mating up all the pigeons) and garden. So I am not blogging or even surfing as much as usual..

Still, a lot of good stuff out there– well, good and awful, but Attention Must Be Paid.

Awful: smoking will get you an R rating. See also here. Casablanca unsuitable for the young??

Awful 2: almost anything to do with the California mandatory spay- neuter – at – 16 weeks bill. Eric at Classical Values has posts here and here, among others.

“Considering that this is my ninth post on the subject, it may seem that I have become single-mindedly obsessed with AB 1634, but the fact is, that bill is only one tentacle of a growing, seemingly unstoppable juggernaut. To me, government-mandated pet surgery is both a symbol and a clear line that is being drawn. It’s an early warning sign of something far worse — the growing public acceptance of the idea that government can and should invade the most utterly personal areas of our lives.

“Few things are more personal to me than my relationship with my dog, Coco. The idea that the government can make me a criminal for not cutting out her ovaries (something which is entirely my business and no one else’s) fills me with horror.

“What happened to all the people who used to scream “KEEP THE GOVERNMENT OUT OF OUR BEDROOMS?”

“What about the idea that a man’s home is his castle?”

He is starting to sound like me– or at least that is what people say I am sounding like these days.

Sad news: Tasmanian devils are succumbing to a grotesque and incurable facial cancer. One of the strangest threats to a species seen yet…

Patrick has been on a roll lately. Read The Whole Blog! He has posts on animal experimentation and breast cancer, and on the pathetic “wolf man” from the National Geographic show (who, though he hasn’t yet been eaten, is beginning to approach Timothy Treadwell levels– according to his new girlfriend, he has dropped from Alpha to Omega pack member and “… is in charge of diffusing tensions between the wolves so he spends a lot of time lying on his back, showing his underside and whimpering..”). Patrick also posts on the terminology of scat, deconstructs the “heroic rescue by Jack Russell” story, and (rightfully) disses Tony Blair. What more could you ask for?

More good stuff: a wonderful essay by Odious on food and the pleasures of the table: “When things are bad, I want to eat, and when other people are having trouble, I want to feed them. I told this to a psychology major who responded that I had confused food and love. This is utter nonsense (I am in no danger of eating my wife or son). Food makes things better. Things are always worse on an empty stomach; only after a seriously good meal, and some good drink, and good company, is life manageable.”

More delight: Pluvialis is back at the top of her form, writing one of her trademark perfect essays, this one relating pigeons kept in her youth to an air disater she witnessed, and Icarus (also including one of my favorite poems):

“I’ve always found the sight of a rolling pigeon strangely disturbing: it looks too much, to me, as if they’ve been shot. But perhaps that’s why they are here. As if the whole point of this artificial selection was to show pigeons cheating death, day after day after day. Pigeon-breeders reinscribing a defeat over mortality: little feathered souls falling, righting, and winning. One in the eye for god.”

Finally. Chas reports on a new “Code of the West”. Something like it should be required reading for Nuevo westerners. An example:

“Agriculture is an important business in Larimer County. If you choose to live among the farms and ranches of our rural countryside, do not expect county government to intervene in the normal day-to-day operations of your agri-business neighbors. In fact, Colorado has “Right to Farm” legislation that protects farmers and ranchers from nuisance and liability lawsuits. It enables them to continue producing food and fiber.”

And:

“The topography of the land can tell you where the water will go in the case of heavy precipitation. When property owners fill in ravines, they have found that the water that drained through that ravine now drains through their house.”

That is all for now. Soon, I hope. picture posts and a long one on how you shouldn’t bet on North American wolves staying “benign”.