Where’s my spots?

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babyfied wolves.

These are stages of arrested development in dogs, resulting in basic forms of dogs like:

1. MOLOSSERS: flockbonders, bulldogs, pit bulls.

Cusp breed: draw terriers, rocky terriers.

2. TERRIERS: bolt terriers.

Cusp breed: dash terriers, rat terriers, feist.

3. SPRINTHUNDS: all whippets, greyhounds, etc.

Cusp breed: staghund, wolfhunds, boarhunds.

4. TRACKING HOUNDS: tree hounds, pack hounds, water hounds

5. BIRD DOGS: water dogs, spaniels, retrievers, pointing dogs.

Cusp breed: duck tollers

6. TOLLERS: all tollers

7. HERDING DOGS: heelers, herders.

8. SNOWDOGS: northern hunting dogs, northern sled dogs.

9. NATURAL DOGS: dingos, pariah dogs, etc

10. NATURE’S DOGS: wolves, coyotes, jackals, etc.

****
These are biological differences, not like separating, setters by color or country of origin, or separating them from other pointing breeds.

Many “breeds” are really varieties of dogs for one task, separating them hurts the gene pool.

Today were need to group dogs by their professions, like: child’s pet, sniffer dog, police dog, guide dog, etc, not by historical use, and have open registries.

Most dogs bought today in America are bought as pets, it makes no sense to breed dogs for task we don’t use them for.

Turnspitz dogs went extinct when people did not need them anymore. It is like hanging onto every piece of clothing you ever wore, every car you have ever had, and keeping every unuseable piece of equipment you ever had. Soon you have 1 lawn mower that works and 3 that don’t, 2 TVs that work and 4 that don’t, and so on.

The breeds NEED to evolve, not be preserved!
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Dance granny?

Don’t incestuously breed dogs.

Write the name of your female dog, both her parents’ names, and all 4 of her grandparents’ names – you now have a list with the names of 7 dogs.

Do this for any male dog you are considering using as a stud; if any of the 7 names on his list match any of the 7 names on the female dog’s list, then the mating would be incest.

How much is that to ask? That breeders be able to find the names of their dog’s parents and grandparents and compare them, and that they insist that other breeders give them at least this short of a pedigree before mating dogs?

Or is it not that that would be too much of a bother, but that some breeders want to use incest in their breeding programs?

There are other basics to breeding, like:

Don’t allow a dog with an inherited disease, or who carries an inherited disease, to mate and produce puppies.

Test your dogs for health problems that are found in their breed.

Don’t breed young dogs.

One vet told me that more than half of the inherited health problems he sees in his office, could be eliminated if breeders would simply not breed their dogs until after they were 2 years old, because so many diseases show up after puberty, but before 2 years old.

He said he tells breeders to wait until the dog is 2 and he can find some of the problems better, but breeders keep breeding dogs on their 1st, or 2ND heat, and using young sires.

Don’t just choose dogs by their form. Insist that all the dogs you breed or borrow to breed, have passed some useful training or work.

Train your dogs for obedience, and only use those for breeding who are fit, trainable, and who have passed a training test.

Or enter your dog in hunting or herding or coursing – something that shows the dog is not an idiot, a psycho attack dog, or untrainable.

That’s a start down a better path.

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Dalmatian Dog.

Which should be judged as the worst fault?

a) the Dalmatian dog who is genetically deaf?

b) the Dalmatian dog with defective genes who forms bladder sludge and bladder stones?

c) the Dalmatain dog whose black spots touch?

Answer: only “c” shows when the dog trots in the show ring.

The dog show judge usually is NOT a veterinarian.

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QUIZ Gotta pee, but can’t?

Message #129 of 148

Have you heard about the trouble in Dalmatian dogs?

Dalmatians get an inherited disease called hyperuricemia. One dalmatian breeder told me that the disease makes the dog’s urine stink worse than most dog urine. Actually, it has a much worse of an effect on the dog’s health.

Back in the 1970s one brave man, Robert Schaible, decided to fix the problem by crossing the Dalmatian with the breed most like it, the (English) pointer. He made a line of Dalmatians that looked like other dalmatians, but who didn’t have the gene for hyperuricemia.

The American Kennel Club, accepted his Dalmatians.

But the AKC’s structure is what is sometimes called a “club of clubs” – that is, the AKC has clubs for members, not people.

The AKC “recognizes” various clubs. There is a club for each breed. One of these clubs is a dalmatian club.

QUIZ:
How did the AKC’s dalmatian club react to Schaible creating a line of healthy dalmatians?

1. They made him president of their club.

2. They gave him prize money.

3. They held a banquet in his honor.

4. They named their biggest club after him.

5. All of the above.

6. They asked the AKC to un-register the healthy dalmatians.

If you answered with any of the nice smiley answers, you don’t know the world of purebred dogs.

Of course, they un-registered his dogs!

Why? Only they know why.

Maybe because a few of the healthy dalmatians had solid black ears instead of spotted ears?

Dalmatians also often have deafness. I’ve read that deafness is associated with white coloring, especially white around the base of the ears.

Maybe his healthy dogs made some breeders of deaf and sick dogs look bad?

Maybe the show breeders felt breeding sick dogs would improve the breed?

Maybe the purebred dog breeders had some notion about letting a dog breed with any dog that didn’t look like them? But English pointers do look a lot like dalmatians.

Maybe some of the purebred dalmatian breeders had a thing about making a little group of dogs and calling them “pure” and not letting them breed with any other dog, even if it was necessary to do to produce healthy puppies?

Maybe some of the dalmatian breeders wanted to breed unhealthy dogs with a genetic disease? Who knows?

QUIZ:
What did the AKC do?

1. They said “We are glad you brought this to our attention, there is a conflict between the kind of dalmatian you want and the healthy kind Mr.. Schaible has produced. We like his healthy kind better.” So the AKC, un-recognized the old dalmatian club, and recognized a new dalmatian club started by Mr. Schaible.

2. They said “We are glad that Mr. Schaible made this new kind of dalmatian that looks like the other dalmatians, but is healthy. We are going to have both kinds in the breed. If the public wants to buy your unhealthy dogs, they can. If the public wants to buy Mr. Schaible’s healthy dalmatians, they can.”

3. They said “We want to make both clubs happy. We will have two breeds of dalmatians, the “dalmatian”, and “American Dalmatians” – which will be those from Mr. Schaible’s line.

4. They said “We recognized his dogs, they are in the breed, get over it. We have spoken.”

5. They said “We will un-recognize Mr Schaible’s healthy dalmatians, and remove them from our registry.”

Let me give you a hint: despite this being over 25 years ago, dalmatians are still suffering from hyperuricemia.

That’s the world of purebred dogs that we daren’t say anything detrimental about, even when it is true.

The AKC un-recognized the healthy dalmatians.

Across the pond, in England, in 2008, the brave Margaret Carter, spoke out about the problem in her breed, Cavalier King Charles Spaniels.

These spaniels often suffer terribly from a horrid genetic disease which makes the little spaniels have terrible pain. They also often suffer and die from heart disease.

QUIZ:
How did the the Cavalier’s dog club over there re-act to Margaret Carter’s words?

1. They did nice things.

2. They ignored it.

3. They promised to work on removing unhealthy Cavaliers from breeding.

4. They took a vote, and by a huge majority voted out all the people who knowingly bred unhealthy dogs.

5. They took a vote, and by a huge majority voted Margaret Carter out of the Cavalier dog club.

Would I have called her “brave” if this was easy?

Of course she was voted out by a huge majority.

Can’t have anyone telling the truth about club members or their unhealthy suffering dogs, can they?

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DUH Duh duh

Message #147 of 148

Many of us dog people agree, dog shows are detrimental to the future of dogs.

Inbreeding has long been known for its detrimental effect on plants and animals. That is well documented. Many show breeds of dogs are inbred.

In some breeds all the dogs can trace back to the same few founding dogs of that breed. After WW2, some breeds were reduced to a very small number of dogs.

Dog breeds can become inbred through the over-use of popular sires. Breeders often use a polygamous method of breeding dogs. That’s a keystone of eugenics – the male judged “best” gets to be the mate of many females, while males judged as of a lesser quality, seldom or never get to have be the father of any puppies.

Female dogs rated superior may be forced to have litter after litter, while female dogs rated as of lesser quality may never have any puppies. Sometimes females who are judged lesser quality, might be bred, but their puppies are killed at birth, so the ‘lesser’ female will have milk, and will nurse more puppies from the female rated as superior.

Feelings aside, there are real problems with this system, AND WE NEED TO WORK ON FIXING THE PROBLEMS IN DOG BREEDING.

First: the animals rated superior might not be superior at all. Talent may not even be judged, and cuteness is not the same as good health.

When people rated animals by how well they did a task, the system seemed to make sense. But more than a hundred years ago, dog shows started having dogs enter a ring and trot in a circle, the judge would watch them all trot, look at them as they stood in a line, then briefly look at each dog as it stood on a bench or table.

Then the judge would announce which dog was the best of it’s kind of terrier, spaniel, hound dog, herding dog, greyhound, or small pet dog, etc.

“How” you might ask, “Can anyone judge which dog would be the best dog with children, the best at herding sheep, the best at fetching dead ducks, the best at holding onto a bull’s nose, or best at anything – by watching a dog stand and trot around a little ring?”

I will let you in on the open secret “Nobody can.”

If people could, would the English Bulldog, whose job is to catch and hold onto a bull’s nose, look like it does? Can you show me video of even one show champion English bulldog catching and holding a bull? Out of the whole world can you find me one (ONE!), breed typical English bulldog catching and holding a bull?

The terrierman (terrierman.com) who actually uses his terriers to get rid of groundhogs (a large American rodent), on his farm, says that many of the show terriers are bred too large to fit into the burrows of the animals they were bred to go after.

What good at getting rid of foxes are purebred fox terriers that can’t fit into a foxhole?

Bird dogs are suppose to have the talent of pointing to birds on the ground, spooking birds on the ground into flight, and/or fetching shot birds. Before, bird dogs were judged on this talent.

Most dog shows now have no talent part. Dogs with no talent can win, because no talent is needed to get a show championship.

My own complaint is breeders producing the type of puppies they think will win at dog shows, then selling the puppies that the show breeders don’t want as “pet quality”.

For example, inherited blindness in collies. I have hung around show breeders of show collies who know that their female has the faulty gene, and when they choose a male to breed her to, they choose a blind male, with two copies of the same blindness gene.

And don’t get me started on Dalmatian breeders. Their breed has a problem where they get (bladder) stones. One person, with permission from the overall club, out-crossed and produced healthy puppies that looked purebred, bred true for looks, yet didn’t have the faulty gene. The breed club had his dogs de-listed. I understand his dogs are accepted with a different registry.

Rainmaker, do you know how many people have bought Dalmatian puppies only to have the dogs come down with this inherited disease???? If this isn’t a fraud on the public, what is?

Documentation is there.

So can the dog show judge pick the best greyhound from a bunch of greyhounds in a ring? If so would the judge like to be my date while we go to a greyhound racing park, because with that talent, we should win our bets.

I have never actually inquired into the matter, but I doubt that dog show judges get rich at the greyhound parks, because I have found no signs that a dog’s talents can be rated by watching him stand and trot in a ring.

And if you still believe that the show winning bloodhound tracks better than other bloodhounds – that the judge can look at these dogs and select the best tracker – then let me let you in on another open secret – the dogs entered in the show ring in America do not need I.D. – no microchip, no ear tattoo.

It is suppose to be an honor system. I got news for you – people cheat.

Second: not only are the dogs judged to be superior, not necessarily any better, the over breeding of the top show winners has increased the inbreeding co-efficient in dog breeds, and caused a complete loss of many genes, the genetic diversity lost can never be regained.

And on a practical level: the showing of purebred dogs has not increased their health or their usefulness. Plenty of people have been arguing the reverse for more than 40 years, and probably from the first dogs show, because it should have been obvious from the first bench show, that you can’t judge the talents of dogs by looking at them.

Spoof Parody:Do you remember the Star Trek episode that they made into a movie? “Nomad, your prime directive is to destroy that which is detrimental to dog breeding. YOU are detrimental to dog breeding.” Quick, Lt. Rainmaker, get him into the transporter. “Nomad, you are detrimental to dog breeding, execute your prime directive!”

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So we are facing the problems,
now how are we going to fix the problems,
before lemon laws pup some whole breeds out of existance?

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SHAR PEI

Albinos often have trouble seeing, and they sunburn VERY easily. Unless you are a vampire, and so will never be taking your dog out into the sunshine, you and your dog will be happier if you both have some color pigment in your eyes and skin.

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CRAZY BAD TEMPER

You might have a 75% chance of getting a good puppy, and think the breeder good, but if you are one of the 25% who get a sick puppy or a neurotic puppy, then you might have a bad opinion of the breeder.

Some breeders produce dogs where nearly all of the puppies grow up to have problems, like chronic, non-stop yapping, or being hard to housebreak.

Or you could have a problem like one breeder told me about:

She branched out into a newly accepted breed and loved them because the puppies newspaper trained themselves before their eyes were open. The puppies would crawl out of the box to go to the bathroom on the newspapers beside it, and as soon as they could walk, they followed the mother dogs out of the kitchen thru the doggie door, and she never had a mess to clean up.

She was so happy with this breed, that after she sold the first litter, she bred the mother dog again. Then she decided to started buying into the breed, buying another adult of this breed, and looking for another unrelated female.

Then she started to get phone calls.

The first litter was about 6 months old when a woman called and said the puppy was growling at her kids. The breeder went over and re-claimed the growler and was going to keep it for breeding because she assumed the fault was with the childrens’ behavior.

Later, she got another call. One of the dogs had bit the owners child badly. The family said the dog had been growling, but they didn’t think it would attack their child until it did.

So the breeder called all the other people who had bought a pup from that litter. It was a large litter, and most of the people said the puppy, now nearly grown, was growling.

So the breeder arranged to drive to each home to “see how the puppy had turned out, so to know if the mother was worthy of another litter”.

All of the dogs she saw had serious crazy mean temperament problems, but the ignorant owners wanted to kept the dogs. (Duh, if you get a puppy who turns crazy mean -get rid of it BEFORE it rips parts off you or your kid!).

She said she wrote out checks for each dog, mostly taking the dogs straight to the vet to be put down.

A few owners said their dog was growling or lunging at people, but when the breeder got there the dog seemed fine. The breeder brought these two dogs home (on separate days) but both had episodes of rage, and the last one nearly nailed the breeder.

A few people insisted the puppy they had bought turned out fine. One of these had the breeder convinced. The breeder was determined to find out why this puppy had grown up okay – had the buyer just got lucky and got a good one, or had it been raised better?

But the buyer would not invite the breeder over. Finally the breeder went over to the buyers home and said “I have to see this dog.”

The dog threw itself at the screen trying to get the breeder. The dog was so barking mad it was nearly having fits trying to get to the breeder.

I don’t know if the breeder had good morals and a strong fear of lawsuits, or if it was, as she had said, that she felt so bad seeing the ripped up kid from the one dog from this litter, but instead of leaving and calling and advising the owner to get rid of the dog, she asked the owner to bring the dog out front on a leash.

Then she began the task of convincing the buyer (owner of the dog), to see the need to hand over her pet for destruction. Arg, that’s not a task I’d want.

The owner did not want to see the reality of the situation.

The breeder explained about there being something wrong with the litter.

The owner did not want to believe that the dog would only get worse, and that this was not something it was wise to ignore.

The owner refused to give up this dog who clearly was dangerous.

The breeder asked the owner why she had said such wonderful things about the dog on the phone.

The woman said that she had not known that the breeder was calling all the people who bought from that litter, she had assumed that somebody had contacted the breeder specifically about this one dog – her dog.

It came out that this dog, whose owner sang praises about, was the worse one from the litter.

It had started turning bad the earliest, and had seriously bit the owner twice, but she had refused to get treatment for fear that someone would take the dog away from her.

Finally, the owner gave in, accepted a refund.

The breeder told me the dog stared at her the whole time, and growled, and tried to get her a few times (while they were talking). So the breeder had to have the owner put the dog in the car (which is harder on the owner, than just seeing the dog be led off on the leash).

The dog was so bad, the owner called the vet out to meet her, and had him inject the dog, through the gap in the window, (breeders often have bars installed behind the front seats so dogs can be loose in the back of the car to travel to shows), which was down a ways for air.

(I presume they either tranquized the dog first, or pulled a front leg thru the window opening). She only said the vet could not open the car door because the dog was so mean.

She did say it wasn’t hard to do because the dog was “right there” at the window, and never backed away from the window or tried to back off, it just kept trying to get at them the whole time.

Just recounting it, the breeder looked sick from remembering it.

She must have been tough, determined, or just desperate, because she went right out to the house of the other person who had told her that his puppy had turned out fine, even though it was late at night.

The lights were on, a man answered the door. This puppy wasn’t fine either. The man said that after the call where he said the dog was fine, he had problems with it.

The breeder told me she thought it had probably had the same progression of problems and that the man maybe didn’t notice it, or wasn’t home much, or didn’t want to talk to her about it at first.

He agreed to a refund, he put her leash on the dog she took it home, crated it, and took the dog to the vet in the morning.

That left one puppy from the litter, a woman whose address on the papers did not seem to match up.

Finally the breeder located the owner.

She was a little old lady and she did not want a refund.

Last I heard, the breeder had vistied the old lady, saw the dog was horribly mean, could not get the old lady to give up the dog, but had visited twice more.

My understanding was that the old lady said she wanted a good guard dog.

I guess she was stupid about dogs, and thought that a crazy mean dog was a good guard dog.

Loyal, loving dogs, who will side with you in a fight are good guard dog.

True a yard dog kept to prevent intruders, can be crazy and mean and might work out okay, so long as you don’t care if tresspassers, of any age get eaten, the dog never jumps the fence, digs out, or escapes thru an open gate or door, and you don’t mind the fact that you are in much more danger of being badly hurt from the crazy dog than what you would be from your neighbors.

If that sounds good to you, then I guess a crazy dog might be what you want, but I wonder if that’s not a case of a person choosing a dog like themselves, because most people who have met a crazy mean dog don’t want one, because the dog isn’t protective, it just reacts to something in its head and goes for the nearest thing that moves.

The last I heard the breeder had not yet talked the old lady into returning the dog, and was considering asking the county pound for help, but the old lady’s dog hadn’t done anything but growl and stare, yet, so what could she tell the pound?

The breeder had gotton rid of all of the dogs of this breed, returning the nice mother dog to the person she bought her from who said he had not had a problem with her. But, the mother dog had had a second litter, before the first litter had been old enough for the problems to show up.

The FIRST puppy from the first litter had been returned when there were still some puppies unsold from the SECOND litter, but, at that time, the breeder had assumed the child had been at fault, not the dog, and the dog was growling, but not biting, snapping, or lounging (yet).

All of the SECOND litter was sold before the badly bitten child had sparked the recall of the whole FIRST litter.

The breeder said she was keeping in touch with all the buyers of puppies from the second litter, and letting them know that she needed to know if there were any problems, but so far all was well.

Although it sounds like a ticking time bomb, where the second litter will go off like the first, I don’t know. I have NOT stayed in conact with the breeder.

PS – they were bully breed, but NOT pit bulls.

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BABY & BULLDOG.

The credits call this a pit bull. “Pit Bull” is a general term for a type of dog, which includes several breeds. I would call this dog a bulldog, but certainly not like today’s English Bulldogs! If you know anyone with bulldog type dogs, send them this photo in an e-mail. For a bulldog, this one rocks!

(Not sure how good of an idea it is to put a dog wearing a spiked collar next to a little baby.)

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FULL TILT

You’d guess that choosing the faster whippets to use as breeding stock would result in healthier dogs. But it has been found, that the fastest whippets are the ones who carry one copy of a mutant muscle gene. I will write a post on it later, after I find some good photos.

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Chest Bumpers

One thing that show breeders pride themselves on is conformation – breeding good bone angles.
But do they all really improve on nature?

More extreme angles does NOT mean better angles.

******
Years and years ago, someone started having lure courses. So, I went to some.

Most of the breeds ran more or less the way I expected dogs to run. Technically, the running gait of sprinting dogs is very different than that of heavier breeds, but not enough that a novice would say “wow, what’s with that dog?”, except one breed. Never seen anything like it. (No, I won’t mention the breed by name.)

One breed ran different from the others. Most of these stood straight until they were released, then the ran with their chest so low to the ground, their chest hair swept the ground, but their rump was high up in the air as they ran.

Why would dogs run like that? I’d never seen dogs run like that, although I remember an drawing of a brace of greyhounds running like that.

My best guess (now that I look back on it) is that their hind quarter conformation was typical for sprinting dogs, but their shoulder lay back was extreme, so they ran with their chest to the ground, but their rear in the air.

You find the reverse in typical dogs, the shoulder is straighter, but the hind legs more crooked (angulated).

One smaller female was fun to watch, I figured she moved like the breed was meant to.

Her front legs ran in front of her, and her hind legs ran in back of her. She cornered like a little sportscar. Her whole body was close to the ground even though she was of a large breed of dog. She would lean into the turns, like a barrel racer dragging a stirrup on the inside of a turn, or a bike racer laying into the turns.

It was fun to watch her run, because I’d never seen anything run like her. Then I started to get over the emotional re-action to her gait, and started to get analytical about it. How efficient was her gait?

She ran with her front legs so far in front of her that they came nowhere near getting under her body.

But unlike the others of her breed that ran with their rears in the air, her pelvic angle must have matched better to her extreme shoulder lay back, because she ran with her hind legs camped out behind her.

Neither her hind legs nor her fore legs, were ever swung down far enough down from the horizontal to get any of her legs under her body.

It was funny to watch her run, because her unusual conformation caused her to run with her front legs stretched out in front or her, and her hind legs stretched out behind her, which left her chest so close to the ground that her chest hairs swept the dirt as she ran.

The conformation of racing greyhounds is so different. Greyhounds reach so far forward with their hind feet, that the hind paws on the reach forward, are in front of the front paws on their backswing.

I was wondering about all of this, when the little hairy female I liked to watch run, yelped and quit running.

Her person ran out to her and looked at her chest, and said “It must have been a rock”.

Huh? a rock? Did somebody throw a rock at her?

No, with her chest only an inch off the ground, she ran into a two inch high rock.

I figured they had to be kidding me, seriously, why would anyone breed running dogs that got hurt on pebbles?

Nah, I’m a people, and people aren’t that stupid, are we?

We are.

Someone asked what did I think the guys were doing walking around the field before the lure course?

Well, they were talking, picking up rocks.

And who did this?

The guys who owned the dogs who ran with their chest to the ground.

One guy said that some dogs of the breed could not be coursed because they tripped over their own chest. They’d run full tilt, their chest would hit the ground jarring them to a stop. Then after a few times they wouldn’t run anymore.

He said one dog hit his chest against the ground so hard he went head over heels. I did not see this myself, but another guy said they saw it too. I guess it could happen.

Years later, I went to watch lure courses again. The dogs of that breed ran more or less like other sprinting dogs.

Had the breed changed or were the funny runners just one line of dogs where the breeder manage to achieve a very well laid back shoulder?

I don’t know, I only know that they didn’t run like before.

I kind of missed watching the funny running dogs, yet, I felt bad about it, because I had learned that it’s like fainting goats, not funny but sad.

I guess now, that the breed was meant to corner and turn, and length of stride was traded for a lower center of gravity.

The breeder of chest bumpers probably took a breed meant to have lots of shoulder lay back, and, in breeding for an upright neck, got extreme shoulder lay back, which caused chest bumping.

Then, instead of changing their line of dogs from chest bumpers back into moderately low runners, breeders changed something to keep the more upright neck, without getting an extreme forward reach.

I don’t know what they changed, but some of the dogs high step.

Does it matter? If a dog is going to live in an apartment and walk on a leash, does angulation matter much? So long as the angulation is not so extreme as to harm the dog, I don’t think it matters, but if it gets extreme enough that the dog suffers, changes need to be made – and this extreme shoulder conformation prevents the dog from safely running.

****
So you may ask: “How could show breeders not know?”

Well, in the show ring, the judge only sees the dogs when they are standing still, and when the dogs are trotted around the ring while on a leash. The judge doesn’t see the dogs run full tilt – or full tilt, bump, and crash.

You might ask: “But isn’t that the whole idea of conformation judging, that you can see the faults in the dog’s structure even at a trot?”

Yeah, that’s the idea. BUT there are a couple of problems:
1) the judge has to know what to look for, the judge can’t be faking it.
2) the judge has to care.
3) the judge has to value physical health and functional conformation.

It is not only the breeds of dogs with obvious deformities who suffer, sometimes the beautiful dogs, from what one would expect to be an athletic breed, are handicapped too, even if you can’t notice it at a glance.

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HORSE GAITS

Horses run on their hooves (toenails), but dogs run on the balls of their feet. So you can only learn so much about dogs from studying horses. But gait is very important in horses. People use to ride horses -they were our cars.

Early dog show judges judged dogs a lot like they did horses. But we did (and still should) breed dogs for their talents. Horses are bred for their gaits.

It is ignorant to judge dogs for their gaits, when what we want are the right talents and instincts. A dog is not a horse, and we don’t ride dogs.

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Even Dogs Want Friends.

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Sharing Our Food.

Is the woman in the photo happy? Yes.
Is she happier than the hunter out trudging through the woods? Maybe.

Nobody says that most hunters hunt in order to prevent animals from starving, but our culture has taught them that hunting is fun. Why? Because somebody has to do it.

I don’t fault the coyote for hunting, nor the bobcat. Should I fault the man who hunts, even though animals would suffer worse without him?

Sometimes life can’t give you nice answers. Until a better way of animal control is found, hunting is the way people thin the herds.

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Too Much of a Good Thing.

Did you ever sit down tally up the uses purebred dogs are said to be bred for? I have, and I found mostly hunting uses.

There are dogs who track animals, sprint after animals, fight animals in a burrow, and wrestle wild hogs. There are even dogs who are bred to specialize in hunting birds. And retrievers who fetch shot birds. When did rifles become accurate enough to shoot birds?

From ancient sprinting dogs carved on Egyptian tombs to duck retrievers, people have been using dogs to get meat, and to kill wild animals who eat our crops.

Hunting is bloody, it hurts and kills animals, and it ruins the woods for hiking because of all the bullets.

But deer would reproduce to the point that they were starving, and would kill the trees, and make roads unsafe to drive on in some areas. I have driven roads with deer running across them and the animals run right out on the road. A car crash into a deer can kill people. If deer were starving, there would be even more on the roads and in towns.

Yes they are beautiful, and I love seeing them with their little fawns, but I like seeing them alive, not starving, and not laying dead by the road where they have been hit by a car.

Until there is an inject able or edible sterilizer, mice, rats, rabbits, raccoons, and deer will keep reproducing.

At the end of winter, the number of animals is the number that the land can support in winter.

Then spring comes, and plants grow and there is more food for the animals. They have babies, and they eat up all the extra food in the summer and fall, (including wheat, corn, and vegetables) and then in the winter, food levels return to winter level and animals starve.

It’s sad. But hunters kill some of the over population, maybe that’s quicker than starving. It is sad. But I can find no answer that I like.

There is a difference between killing an animal and enjoying killing on animal. Like I have swatted flies and mosquitoes, and squashed roaches, but I don’t enjoy it. I would find it a bit gross if someone really enjoyed killing bugs.

I think that’s a problem I have with hunting. I can’t find a replacement for it, coyotes, foxes, lynx maybe? Wolves and mountain lion for deer? But people don’t want animals big enough to kill deer near their homes.

And we can’t get rid of all the deer, because bushes would grow, die, and become tinder for fires, which would kill our wood industry, ruin the woods, and kill more animals. Bushes would grow where the trees were and without deer, we would be facing problems each year.

And if there were less deer in the woods, there would be more food for mice, rats, and rabbits – we would just be trading one problem for another.

Life doesn’t always give us easy choices. For now, all I can think of is managing the situation as best we can.

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Mouse x

They may be small, but they carry disease, and they over-produce.

How do you tell a mouse that he needs to wear a condom?

I like cats too, but you can have too many cats, just like you can have too many mice.

Video Link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1J6zbqOLtc

interview with woman with 136 cats:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASG6r9rhwcE&NR=1

What many people don’t understand is that just as people in houses can have too many pets, an imbalance in nature causes too many animals of one species – except that in nature, many of the animals will starve, or die migrating to find food – like where bears or coyotes come into towns looking for food.

Link: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:House_mouse.jpg

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Rabbit Video.

1) This first video clip shows the factual problem in Austrailia with rabbits. The thickest part is almost 60 seconds into it. Eagles are near the end. Once the land reaches it’s carring capacity, animals start to migrate and then starve, or force other kinds of animals to starve.
Link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgPhn4tYxJQ

2) This is an animation, but it shows the problem with rabbits that, well, breed like rabbits.
Link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK0PxEzk1hI

3)Famous clip: fast food place infested with rats. Best footage startes 55 seconds into clip
Link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=su0U37w2tws

I do NOT know any of these people – I only found their videos.

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And 1 4 the Camera Man.

.

Watch this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOkYu04R_kQ

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old deer hunt

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More NOT Merrier.

Message #46 of 148
Pest control:

I have come to terms with the fact that if someone doesn’t thin out the herds of deer, rabbits, rats, mice, other rodents, hogs, and flocks of birds, we would soon have no farm crops for ourselves, our friends, and our families.

I like wildlife, but I need food too, and so do you.

I’ve looked at this from every angle, and the only thing that would work, is for people worldwide to have smaller families. The wildlife can’t compete with humans destroying their forests to make houses and fields for more of us. Nothing else will protect animals.

As every bit of usable land becomes used, even cats & dogs will be seen as a threat to somebody’s food. It is possible that starving countries could seek to destroy pets in agricultural countries to make more food for their growing number of people. Worldwide food shortage, or high food prices due to high demand, is a strong motivator for war, especially more modern forms of warfare.

If we had one tenth or even one fourth of the people we now have to feed, we could be tolerant of animals eating some crops. I remember reading somewhere long ago about planting 3 plants for every plant you want: one for the bugs, one for the birds, and one for yourself (author unknown).

We haven’t been that tolerant in a long time, we have pesticides for the bugs, which one way or the other hurts the number of birds. But poisons that kill rodents can kill us, dead rodents in our fields of crops decomposing with a belly full of chemicals that are harmful us, doesn’t sound like a good idea to me, but what other choice is there?

Do you have any idea how much it would cost to pay people to kill rats? And deer? deer are so good at hiding, it might take one person 2 days to get one deer.

Deer are pretty, and graceful, and I love them, but when they over multiply they starve, and starving deer get desperate, they roam looking for food, they cause car wreaks because they run in front of cars, and in hunger, the deer kill trees and plants, and get sick and spread disease and parasites, like Lyme’s disease.

How can we keep the numbers of wild animals down, without spending massive amounts of money or loosing our food?

There is no additive we can leave out to sterilize them, and it is not possible to spay/ neuter all the wild rabbits and rodents.

Maybe you would like to help give these wild animals a quick death instead of a slow one? A large number of wild animals die every year, because they have so many young.

If a patch of land will support 100 deer in the winter, but in the spring the 50 female deer have a total of 75 young, then there are 175 deer in the spring, on a patch of land which will only hold 100 deer in the winter. 75 deer must die before winter.

Either they roam and starve, damaging the trees and plants the other animals need too, endanger traffic, and eat our crops, or somebody has to go out and give them a quick death.

Without predators, rodents would eat everything edible.

If you can think of a better way to convince people that it is fun to go out and get rid of rodents and rabbits who invade our crops, great, but until you can get your method of controlling rodent numbers to work, the current plan is to call it “hunting” and get people to spend their free time out in the areas near farmlands and woodlands shooting wild animals who don’t shy away from people.

Myself? I would rather play on a computer than sit quietly in a deer stand for the weekend.

And I don’t like shoveling snow (which is light weight), so I know that I would not want to dig rodents out of holes, and you can have all the dead rats you want, I wouldn’t eat them, and I certainly wouldn’t clean them and cook them.

And I have no intention of buying a catch dog, loving the dog then risking it hunting hogs. Hogs grow big. But if you want to get rid of the feral hogs, I guess that’s okay, maybe even good. A hog is a hog. The ones sold in the store maybe never got to run free, maybe the feral ones were luckier, maybe they weren’t. If the feral ones were hungry and diseased, maybe the ones at the hog farm were happier, maybe they weren’t, I don’t know.

But I do know that female hogs have litters before they are full grown, and keep having more litters. The only way to keep the quality of life up for feral hogs, is to keep their numbers down. Nobody has found a better way to do that than hunting.

Maybe someone wants to go out and castrate feral boars, and implant IUD in feral sows? You don’t get just how big, aggressive, and strong jawed hogs are? That’s not safe. And fat hogs tend to absorb the anesthesia.

If you have a better idea, type away, because nobody else has found one.

Except maybe this: instead of us going out and thinning the herds, let’s convince other people that building a little platform on a tree, and sitting there without moving, no radio, no phone, no talking, no smoking, no noise, no moving around for two days is so much fun that they will lug guns, ammo, and hunting stands for hours to get to a place with less people so they will have a chance to shoot a deer.

Let’s convince people, not to get a nice friendly dog, but a pack of hyper active hunting dogs, and let them get up before dawn and drive to the farm edges and chase rabbits, hares, and rodents?

Let’s see if terrier people will spend their day having their dog corner a rodent underground, and then have the person dig down to the rodent to destroy it. I like that better than rat turds in what’s left of our food, because we can’t get rid of enough rats. Rodent droppings and hairs are in human food. Not enough people are convinced that rat hunting is fun.

What can I say? Breed more Rat Terriers and Feists, and get their owners to kill more feral rats.

Did you see that video of rats in the fast food place? Have you ever seen films of rats and rabbits when they have a good year? – there are videos of vast swarms of rodents in Australia, which have been shown on TV occasionally.

That’s what happens when an animal has so many young so often, and nothing slows them down, they form herds that eat their way forward across the land.Permission to crosspost.

Link:

http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/pet-treaty/message/46

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