I blame Barbara Woodhouse

I blame Barbara Woodhouse, remember her?  "Walkies!"?

I think she was the first one to really gain attention with the line "no bad dogs".

I understand the motivation, she was famous in the era I came from where rolled up newspapers and "rubbing their nose in it" were common training techniques.  Probably not the best for the dog.

Anyway, what appears to have happened in the average dog owner's mind, is that No Bad Dogs implies Dogs can do No Wrong.

Dogs can do No Wrong, means that if the dog does something that appears wrong, than it MUST be the humans' fault.

TADA!  Dogs suddenly are a vengeful deities who must be placated, appeased and sacrificed to so that nothing bad happens to their human subjects.

Dog bite you?  It's your fault, you must have provoked it!

Dog kills your livestock?  You should have put up a better fence!

Dog harasses your animals and you shoot it?  You HORRIBLE PERSON!  It was just PLAYING!  HOW DARE you kill my DOG just to save your worthless animals?

Dog barks all day?  He's just trying to protect his owners!

Dog kills your kid?  Well, just see the comments after any news article of the sort and you'll see all the nauseating excuses.

Yo! Moron! Voice control means CONTROL!

So I nearly ran over your freaking dog yesterday as it darted across two lanes of rush hour highway traffic in pursuit of a jogger on the other side of the road from you and where IT should have stayed.

Again I kick myself for having too fast (or maybe too slow) reflexes that kept be from running down your mutt  and instead slamming on my brakes and honking my horn.

Don't know if the jogger was attacked or not, but that damned dog didn't even bat an eye with all the noise my car was making and you, YOU pathetically ran 20 yards behind it carrying a leash.

The leash SHOULD HAVE BEEN ON YOUR EFFING DOG, YOU USELESS WASTE OF SKIN!

You LET you damned dog off leash, you DAMNED WELL BETTER HAVE CONTROL OVER IT!

Yeah, yeah, I know this is a hard concept, I had difficulties with it myself, when I as SIX.

Yep, when I was six, I got my first puppy.  Second dog, first puppy.  One hard headed Keeshund that didn't believe for a second that a punk kid should outta tell it what to do.  

Took a bit 'fore my Mom realized this situation wasn't going to sort itself out successfully,  but then she laid down the law.  You take the dog out of the yard, the dog's gonna be on a leash, and if you can't hold onto the leash, the dog doesn't go off the property again.

See that?  Isn't that hard, it is?

Oh wait, you don't know what voice CONTROL is still, do you?  You think running after your dog yelling it's name is some kind of control, don't you?  I mean, it will EVENTUALLY stop, maybe, like when I run it over with a car, or somebody shoots it for attacking them, or it gets hungry or it runs into a wall... 

Got news for you, that's not control.

THIS is CONTROL.  Watch.  Take notes.   You can't control your animal that well with voice commands?  Then DON'T LET IT OFF THE LEASH!

Guest Post - Sometimes, I feel guilty about what happened to your dog

Sometimes, I feel guilty about what happened to your dog.

I see how much my friends love their dogs.  They take care to keep them safe with fenced-in yards, obedience school, and Flexi-leads.  They’d grieve long and hard if any harm ever came to their pet.  If they thought they could have prevented their dog from being hurt, they’d carry the burden of such a failure with them for all of their lives.

Sometimes, I feel guilty about what happened to you dog, but then I remember that it wasn’t my fault.

You moved into the triple-decker at the end of my street when I was in elementary school.  Immigrants from a war-torn country, you assimilated nicely in the suburbs, hanging your laundry on the clothesline outside and sending your kids to Girl Scouts on Wednesday afternoons.  I had just started middle school when you got Stormy*.

She was a lab mix with solid black fur and the pricked ears of a German Shepherd.  I never saw her in your yard.  I never saw her in your house.  I never saw her on a leash, although our city had a leash law and my mother called the animal control officer nearly every day about Stormy.

I did see her as she leaped from her sleeping place in the middle of our street to jump on me and knock me down on my way to school every day, her jaws snapping and claws tearing into my clothes.  The animal control officer feared you, telling us that you were in the Mafia, no small accusation in the land of Whitey Bulger.

I’d leave the house each morning in trepidation of the abuse to come.  Sometimes I’d be able to get by Stormy and make my way to my friend’s house so we could walk the remainder of the way to school together.  But more often than not, I’d stand in the road in tears before retreating back home to get my father.  My fondest memories of my father are those where he’d lead me down the street, a stick in his hand to beat the dog when it tried to attack me.

My mother was not so kind.  She’s rail at me for waking my father who had just fallen asleep after a night of working third shift.  I felt useless and small when I was unable to defend myself against Stormy’s torment.

When I got to high school, the bus picked up the kids one street away from mine.  Stormy still slept in my street, blocking the route between my house and the school bus stop.  I used to be a good student, but I missed the bus often.  If I was lucky enough to get a ride, waking my tired father and getting a note for the homeroom teacher, I’d only miss half of my first class.  If I had to walk the whole way, five miles distant, I’d miss more.

I was never good in math.  Staying after school for extra help wasn’t an option because I feared little else more than having to negotiate a safe passage past Stormy when I was alone walking up my street.  I missed making the Honor Roll every year because of my math grade.  When I clutched my books to my chest as I walked by Stormy, I didn’t understand how much Stormy was shaping shaped my life.  I only felt the paralyzing fear of a child who was threatened by a vicious beast from whom no one could protect her.

After I graduated from high school, I didn't get into a four year college.  I went to a Community College for two years and landed a job as a retail manager at a store at the mall.  The work was hard and customers were annoying, especially during the holiday season when I was kept late at night, sometimes not getting home until well after midnight.

I never saw Stormy, but I heard her yelp loudly as my wheels ran over her on a night when the roads were slick with rain.  I pulled into my driveway, hoping there were no blood stains on my car.

“A black dog... sleeping in the middle of a dark road,” my father said when he learned the news of Stormy’s death from the neighbors the next morning.  “It’s a wonder it didn't happen sooner.”

*Story submitted by a dog-hating friend.  Dog's name changed to protect, uh, somebody.

Hey YOU! Ya moved out into the country to GIVE YOUR DOG ROOM TO RUN

I hate YOU and YOUR DOG.

Why?

Well, for one, I don't like playing dodge-em-doggie at 60 MPH, especially in the DARK and the RAIN.  Frankly, if I weren't worried about body damage, I run it right over.  And ya know what?  If' I'm hauling horses, I'm not going to hurt them to try avoid your mutt.

But that's not the main reason.  The main reason why I HATE YOUR DOG, and every livestock owner I know HATES YOUR DOG is that your dog is a THREAT to my animals.

Oh, but your doggie wouldn't hurt a fly.  Well, I'm not going to give it a chance.  Any dog near my stock is vermin as far as I'm concerned, and I'll take it out if I can get a shot at it.

No, I'm not going to call Animal Control, they've got their head stuck too far up in the dark to actually CONTROL animals.  In fact, I've been TOLD by AC that the best thing to do is to shoot first and forget about the questions.

Shoot, Shovel and Shut up is what most farmers do. However, because the law in this state is that any dog caught, chasing, harassing or killing livestock can be shot on sight, the best advice I've heard was from one old farmer who said, shoot them and if you know the owner, contact them and have them call the Sheriff, and let the Sheriff read them the law.

Knowing the law keeps SOME of you idiot owners from doing the same thing with your next dog.

Seriously, you don't have a clue how bad it gets.  People who let your dogs run, blow off any request for compensation or assistance with boundary fencing.  Ha, Ha! Your chickens got killed!  Oopsie, you lost another lamb to my poochie.  We'll try to keep him in. 

Sure you will.

Yep, I hate your dog.

Hate it so much, I'll shoot it on sight.

And I'm an animal lover.  Ninty percent of the dogs I've had, have been pound pups.  But my sympathy for random dog X ends right at my property line. 

Hey, HEY!  I got an idea!  You keep your DAMNED MUTT on your property and I won't run it over or shoot it, OKAY?

YOU - the one with the ROBOBARKER

YOU, the Jerk who lets their dog bark NONSTOP

I hate you AND your dog and I've met you WAAAAY too many times.

First time I discovered I could hate a dog was because of you and the robobarker that you chained out in front of your yard, every day, for hours at a time, while it barked, barked, barked at nothing. 

Your stupid little dump of a house was low class in a working class neighborhood, two bedrooms, one bath, but you had a big yard.  Did you bother to fence that yard so your dog didn't have to be tied on a 5' chain right across from my Mom's bedroom window?  That damned dog was closer to my Mom's bed than I am to my current garage right now, the lots were so tiny and the street so small.  

Nope.  You chained your doberman out there every day, while my newly divorced Mom, who worked nights trying to support us kids, TRIED to sleep, so she wouldn't drive off the road on her 70 mile one way commute to work.

My Mom, who couldn't afford to move because in those days nurses didn't get paid squat, and the price of gas had just tripled, but the mortgage was low and there was nothing, nothing she could buy with no credit near her work.

And bark, bark, bark, bark went your dog, and you just ignored it.

Your neighbor two doors down, the crazy one who used to make money off of the military blackmarket while he was a supply clerk, used his connections to get supped up firecrackers to throw out into his yard, just to try to get your dog to shut up.  That worked for about ten minutes, then that stupid animal would bark, bark, bark again.

Nothing like a barking dog AND explosives to help an overworked divorced mother sleep so she could head out for the night shift.

and bark, bark, bark, bark went your dog, day after day, after day.  And you didn't give a flying fuck about your neighbors, or the fact that my Mom used to get severe headaches due to a previous car accident and your damned dog wasn't helping those any, let me tell you.  

No, you just stuck that damned dog out in front of your house and all your neighbors had to suffer.

Bark, bark, bark, bark, bark...

I can't tell you how many hours I spent in headphones trying to drown out your stupid dog while I was trying to do my homework.  

Bark, bark, bark, bark, bark...

Least I did, and graduated from school, with honors, got a good job, moved out of that dump, bought a farm, where I SOMETIMES can get some piece and quiet.

Now, everytime I hear a dog bark, bark,barking endlessly, stupidly, robotically, I think of you creeps and your totally lack of consideration of anyone around you.  

If you're dead, my darling former neighbors, I can only hope your hell is filled with stupid, bored dogs, chained by your bedside bark, bark, barking, so you get an eternity of hell after death, like the hell you made my Mom live in while you were alive.

I so hate you and your dog.

Let me introduce myself...

I hate your dog.

Oh, not EVERYONE's DOG, but YOUR dog, and I'm pretty sure you don't know who YOU are because you're too stupid and selfish to know that there are people out there who hate YOU and YOUR DOG for being stupid and selfish.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of YOU out there and I don't know all of you by name, so I can't tell all of you off face to face, so I'm going to describe you and your dogs one painful post at a time.