Dogs Are Not Weapons
Posted By Freelance Writers Date: 23/07 Posted Under: Dangerous Dogs, Social IssuesAn excellent item in the Guardian from Zoe Williams - who seems to like dogs and has written about them a lot - explaining what many of us (barring our own legislators, of course) have known since the time man domesticated the canine.
Author Detailspeople, on seeing a young man with a certain kind of dog, simply assume he means no good, neither to the dog nor to society. (I was particularly struck that when Miranda Richardson, asked “What makes you depressed?”, replied: “The state of the planet, boys with status dogs …” How do you tell a status dog from a best friend? By the class of the owner is how. She just means: “I get depressed when I see poor people being allowed pets. Only Princess Anne should be allowed pets.”)
Moving off the actor and towards the notion, all this talk is a radical overestimation of the backbone of your average young man. If you just picked up the pup of a happy accident between a pitbull and a mastiff, you’d have a tough-looking creature, but it might have a kittenish temperament. Even assuming you’ve got a tenacious, serious, intelligent dog, the training involved to generate a dog’s aggression, and then marshal it, is immense. You would be looking at a dog with perfect focus, obedience, total concentration on its owner. It’s a dog out of a Len Deighton novel. I’ve never even seen a dog like that that’s not attached to a blind person. And without all that, you might have one mean canine, but before it attacks any of your playground enemies it will take your mum’s hand off.
In summary, a well-trained dog in responsible hands will not bite you; and a dog in irresponsible hands will almost certainly not be well-trained. So if it bites you, it probably doesn’t have much to do with the owner. It’s more likely that you looked at it funny.
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Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008 at 3:59 am and is filed under Dangerous Dogs, Social Issues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
I don’t think the young lady has ever been on a drug raid where the druggie has 4 pit bulls as his defense. Nor do I think she has ever held a shield to stop the attack of said dogs while fellows officers cut the chain holding the door closed.
These dogs are “VERY WELL” trained. Not humanely, nor with love. But hung from chains by their necks to build up those necks. I can go into detail of the training and abuse these dogs suffer, but I will just say. Dogs are weapons in the minds of some folks. Not all, but some.
Agreed. Been there quite a few times.
The best bit though is when the door goes in and hard man releases the dog(s) and it/they run away and wait round the corner for you to say hello. That’s back street ‘training’ for you. Poor dog has never known normal affection.