Meat

When I first got out of high school, I went to hear a Holy man speak. He talked about, how just by breathing, we killed tiny living things, that every step squashed tiny living things. I wanted to know how I could avoid killing these tiny living beings without dieing or being miserable.

He said "You can't, but you are automatically forgiven for killing them, because you must do so to survive." At the time, that seemed so wise and kind. But, as he pointed out, there was nothing I could do about it - so what was the point of his talking about it?

But I did know one thing that I could do, I could become a vegetarian. So I quit eating meat.

I never knew that I was an obligate carnivore until I actually tried giving up meat.

I had dieted to lose weight before, but this was nothing like that. It was a hunger that changed how I felt. Like a hungry hawk in yauk, I become more alert.

I could feel myself paying more attention to the physical world. Books did not hold my attention, walking and watching the world were the things that I felt like doing.

To just say "I became more alert" does not tell it like it really is. If you do not feed a lion, he does not become a sheep - what you get is a hungry lion.

And you can often see, just by looking, if an animal is hunting or when it is full and content. I did not feel content even when I ate extra potatoes and bread.

I felt restless, I felt like roaming, I felt a craving.

Not just like "Oh, I could go for an ice cream, or I'd really like Chinese Food." But a hunger with direction that I could not dismiss. The smell of a roast cooking - I just could not ignore it.

It was a very unpleasant feeling - unless you like going through life feeling hungry.

Some people have said that they gave up meat, and it never bothered them. But later, I read in a book on anthropology about a man who lived with a tribe in Africa, and wrote about it. He said they have two words for hunger, regular hunger for calories, and another word for craving meat. I decided that I was not alone.

I decided that, although I love animals, I was not made to be a vegetarian. You can not fault the tiger for needing meat to eat, no more than you can fault a deer for eating leaves. Each does what they can. Each lives as they were meant to.

I don't think I could have survived without meat. I think I would have become malnourished if I had not realized that I could not continue on the meatless path.

I do know this: Without meat I feel more like a carnivore, than I had with meat.

That may sound strange, but how many of you have tried giving up meat?

To both those who think that there is no such thing as a craving for protein, and those who think that a carnivore can be content without meat, I ask why so many Americans would not think of giving up meat? Is it because they have felt a touch of malnourishment before?

Other might say, that in their country there are people who do not eat meat. And I have a relative who was a vegetarian for years - but gave it up to get married. And another relative who was a vegetarian for much of her adult life.

But, for me it did not work out.

So am I less for having tried but failed, than what I would have been had I not tried at all?

Or am I less for having tried at all? Depends on your point of view doesn't it?

I respect the deer, but I respect the tiger too.

TRICKling through the Internet

Quite sometime back, I first heard about Germany banning pit bulls. Someone who had Internet service in her house had read about it on the Internet, but couldn't provide details as all her information was of the "somebody said that somebody said, that someone else told them" sort.

I did NOT have Internet where I lived, and had to go to a public place and use their computers. It was very time consuming and I was extremely inexperienced. But I was very persistent, because I had made this like a test, I would find this in German and I would get a German speaking person to tell me what it said (I did not know of computer translations, if they had them then).

I googled it/yahooed it and got a huge number of hits, but whenever I would click on a hit, it would have absolutely nothing to do with what I was looking for. I kept at it. I just kept slogging through. I would go home and complain about the worthlessness of computers because it was like "Trying to find a needle in a haystack".

I was really discouraged. But I knew the information had to be online somewhere. I didn't want secondhand information, I wanted a link to the actual German Law that I could have translated by someone who I know who speaks German.

I would google it, and get a list of 'hits' supposedly of what I wanted, but when I would click on them, all that would come up would be a photo of a little kid beside a pit bull.

What would you think?

After awhile it dawned on me that these lies probably had one source. That somewhere out there some one or some group was somehow placing this Internet filibuster in my path.

The photos were NOT of the same kid, or the same pit bull. I decided to study the photos for clues.

All the pit bulls looked clean, many of them fresh washed - sign of a breeder - breeders photo fresh washed dogs, regular people photo their dogs when company comes or for some event or on a nice day or when they go somewhere. Not that regular people don't photo their dog right after a bath too - but not like breeders do.

For a breeder, the dog is the focus of the photo, for pet people, the dog is only part of the photo. Often the photos had the dog in the center of the photo, the child would sometimes have an arm or part of the head cropped out of the photo - the pit bull was what the photo was about.

After awhile, I noticed something else, almost all of the kids were preschool aged. And most of them were girls. The girls were dressed in summer clothes, but often the clothes were wrinkled and the girl's hair uncombed. The dogs were clearly (to me then) the focus of the photos.

These were not your usual false hits. The title would read like "Exact words of German Pit Bull Ban Here." but it would just be a photo - the same kind of photo: a preschool age girl and a pit bull.

What would you think? I figured that I was being deliberately misled. Finally, I thought "What would these people call their club?" And I found it. Not under "pitbull" but under one of the gussy upped purebred names of the breed.

There it was, a post by a pit bull club asking its members to each put a kid & dog photo under the title of the German Pitbull Ban so as to swamp google so that Americans would not find it, read it, and try to get a pit bull ban here.

So I knew who was filibustering the Internet, and why, but I still had to find the German law. I kept thinking what would they say, trying to see it as they would, and I found a bunch of posts with the German name of the law on it , all with only a photo of a little girl and a pit bull, but now I knew the German words for it.

Finally, I found where someone (not a pit bull person) had posted it in German, and in translation. It didn't say that much - just that they were banning fighting dog breeds , and a list of the banned breeds, including pit bulls.

It might be unreasonable, feelings usually are, but I just can't ever feel good about anything posted by pit bull people since.

The Goal

Most puppies are sold as pets.

What does a family need in a pet puppy?

A person who wants a working dog is looking for an extreme in behavior - that is a large part of what made the types of dogs what they are.

If you want a greyhound, you want a sprinting dog. If you want a tracking hound - you want a dog that will follow his nose for hours.

If you want a herding dog, you want a dog with such ingrained behavioral traits that he lives to herd sheep - and he does it right.

But if you want to produce good pet dogs from a collection of working and hunting breeds, what you want is to delete those genes that code for extreme behaviors.

You don't want to breed huskies that want to run all day.

You don't want to breed dogs that obsess over birds or sheep.

But you want to produce healthy puppies. No fair breeding flat faced dog who aren't hyper because they have to work just to breathe. NO fair getting nice lap dogs who seem so sweet just because they are too in pain to be active.

You want to breed out the hunting, herding, fighting, competing genes. Work to produce dogs who have good social skills with other dogs and people.

Produce dogs who are not startled or upset by noises, or activity, but who are responsive to people.

Produce dogs who can be left alone, loose in the house, are easy to housebreak, who don't bark often, and who really are good with people.

Finally!

Yes, that is the whole idea.

The way we are breeding dogs needs to change with the times - to modernise.

It doesn't make sense for a person in an apartment, who never herds sheep, who has only seen sheep out of a car window, or at a fair, to work at producing dogs that herd sheep.

Such a person, lacks the knowledge about sheep, which they need to be able to properly control the future of sheep herding dogs. That is best left to sheep ranchers.

Ditto with coonhounds. They can be great pets, but if you sell them as pets, breed them to be good healthy pets. If you sell them as coon hunting dogs, then breed them to be good at hunting raccoons.

One of the problems, is what to do with the puppies who are not good at what they were bred to be?

When you mate 2 dogs that do the same type of work, and who are from dogs that have all been good at that type of work for several generations, than most all of the puppies will be good at that type of work - with some training.

This is because you are only insisting that the dogs be able to do the work well.

When dogs are bred for competition, then looking like a show dog, or just doing the event well, is NOT good enough - people who want dogs that win, want dogs that win.

So only the most likely to win puppies are needed - the others aren't wanted for the use they were bred for.

And that is a problem. Pit bull puppies bred to fight, but who lack what it takes to fight, are sold as pets. Border Collies who lack what it takes to find a rancher to buy them to work his sheep, are sold as pets.

And in even larger numbers, puppies bred to be show dogs are sold as pets.

Dog Nazis?

If you are going to be a control freak, first make sure that the ideas that you insist upon, are correct.

Like, if dog breeders are suppose to kill all the German Shepherd puppies that are born white - then you should be able to show that white puppies are not as good as tan puppies - and plenty of people have kept and bred the white German Shepherd puppies, and they say that their white puppies are just like the tan colored puppies.

Or like Pedigree Dogs Exposed said: the Rhodesian Ridgebacks that DON'T have the hair growing the wrong way are killed - so the normal puppies are the ones being killed. And only the Rhodesian Ridgebacks with the mutation are being shown.

But of course, if the point is to have a fr--k show, then normal dogs aren't allowed.

Why not allow all of the dogs? Breed nice healthy friendly dogs that like people and other pets, or who have some useful work to do.

Stop the silly dog shows. Or transform them into useful events.

Designer Dog or ...

The subject of cross-breeding dogs really gets some purebred dog breeder's leashes all in a snarl.

Show Breeders:

If it is about doing what YOU want to do - then I guess you can just keep breeding dogs the way you have, although you might want to check out some of the newer ideas, and read about how other people feel about some of the established methods of dog breeding.

As the farmer in one of James Heriott's books said "You're never to old to learn something new."

Many of the "breeds" of dogs have become inbred and unhealthy - especially in some countries, with rare breeds, and in very common breeds that come from a small group of breeding dogs.

People who buy a 'pet quality' puppy, want a healthy puppy, not a sickly puppy, or one who dies young.

Most all of the people who buy a puppy for a pet, don't know much of anything about show dog judging, and can't tell a tenth place dog from a BIS winner.

If your line of dogs, or your breed, is suffering problems, you might want to try something new, to help create a better puppy.

One way to produce a puppy, generally free of doubled up recessives, is to buy a stud dog of a different, but compatable breed (one who doesn't have any of the same unhealthy genes that your dogs have).

The hybrid puppies might carry one copy of several defects, but so long as you choose breeding stock carefully, the puppies shouldl be healthy.

These first generation hybrid puppies are called "designer dogs" as are the 3 breed hybrids - like a snoodle X Maltese. But two hybrids, that have a breed in common, like two Labradoodles - do NOT produce a hybrid. More later.

I know it is hard, but try to read, and understand the view points of pet owners, the public, and rescue peoples - but be warned, these view points are presented to inform and motivate change, not as praise and brag sessions.

If your emotions get to hot, or if your feelings start to rule you, then go find a site that sings the praises you want to hear, and let the information trickle down to you at a rate that you are more comfortable with.

the ANSWER

Hoarding is only one of the problems.

Our society has changed from one where the average person was free to let their dog have a litter of puppies, and where most people got their pet puppy from a mother dog who was a pet, to a society where dog breeding has largely become a business.

To keep it a business, people in the business often think they have to prevent the people who buy one of their puppies from becoming dog breeders.

There are 4 laws which I believe would fix a great many of the problems in dogs, or at least open the door for those problems to be fixed:

1) FED. End the loophole that allows dog raising to be an IRS tax shelter.

2) FED. End the USDA exemption for direct sales of puppies. Sell more than 25 dogs/cats in a year, and you need a USDA license NO EXCEPTIONS. Don't blow it like last time by adding exemptions. If the USDA can't do the inspections, then don't bother. Talk about a conflict of interest!

3) Local. Set a maximum number on how many adult UNFIXED cats/dogs a person can own (include co-ownerships in the total).

If you can't get a state law for a 12 dog/cat limit, go for a 50 dog/cat limit, but don't do nothing.

If you can't get a city or county law for 4 UNFIXED (not neutered/not spayed, ie fertile) dogs/cats, then go for 12 or 20, or 100, but set some limit.

4) Local. Set a maximum for the number of unfixed adult dogs/cats allowed to be kept on a property. This is also to keep dog breeder from cheating by saying "Yes I have 50 cats in my garage and 75 dog in my basement but I don't legally own them, the cats are strays, and the dog belong to friends.

In short, taking the production of pets away from puppy mills, and hand it back to pet owners.

A good breeder, who doesn't inbreed and who ships seamen or sends her female to be bred, and who only breeds her best dogs, is only breeding her best dogs. 4 top unfixed dogs make for a better kennel,

than 40 unfixed poor show dogs with few legit wins, who produce 100 puppies a year so that the dog breeder can sort through them searching for one who is showable.

Good dogs

What's a good temperament for a pet dog?

Well if the breeder has to keep her dogs each in a separate cage or kennel, then her dogs don't have it.

He bites.

There are many things that need to be improved in several sections of dog breeding, I know that, but the one thing that seem to me to be such a no-brainer, that I just can't understand why everybody isn't working on it is - good temperament.

Okay, if you want fighting dogs, then you want nasty dogs.

But for all the other people out there, health & temperament are it. And temperament is numero uno. If you get a nice dog that gets sick and dies, that's bad.

But if you get a nasty bad tempered but healthy dog, who lives until somebody kills him, then you never did have a good dog, not even for a few months.

Well, maybe when he was a puppy he was okay. But how does that feel, raise a nice puppy, then he gets too bull headed to deal with, tears stuff up if you turn your back on him, turns on your other pets with you standing right there, growls at the kids.

Like watching the degeneration of somebody you love. At least with a good tempered but unhealthy dog, he dies, or you have him put to sleep for his own good. With a healthy but bull headed mean dog, you have to decide to get rid of him for you or your family's safety.

I have discussed this with a a few dog breeders.
Pretty much people who breed healthy but ill-tempered or crazy dogs, say health is most important.

People who sell nice but sickly dogs say the fact that the dogs are nice, is more important than health - at least the dogs don't try to mess up anybody.

But is it really to much to ask? To get a nice dog that is also healthy?

People have had nice healthy mutts for ages, seems like somehow the system went astray.

Internationally Bred

How many breeds of bird dogs do we need, if each breed has several varieties?

Suppose we use the pdkc method of grouping field bred bird dogs? What would we have?

BIRD DOGS:
1) Curly water dogs
2) Spaniels or Rushers
3) Pointing dogs
4) Retrievers
5) Bird Tollers

You can change the breed names, a rose by any other name is still a rose.

Why the Curly Water Dogs in their own breed? Why not put the Curly Coated Retriever in with the other Retrievers? Ditto, the Curly Spaniel types?

Because they are so rare in the US they would be swamped with straight coat genes if they were out-crossed to any dog except another curly coat.

Also, because the genes are NOT simple Mendelian inherited genes, look what happens when you cross a poodle with a Labrador - the puppies aren't truly curly or flat - not good to keeping out water.

How do you know which breed to put you bird dog into? You take it out into the field, if it can't hunt in a useful manner, or if it's coat is a joke in the field - it ain't a bird dog, no matter what was written on the receipt you got when you bought the dog.

Bird dogging is a profession, best done by dogs whose ancestor's were bred to naturally do the job - but it is still a profession, not a breed.

A Labrador Retriever who can't hardly swim isn't a retriever. A pointer who takes off and runs in a straight line for 3 miles before he looks around, isn't a useful bird dog. Sorry.

A Toller who chases birds away instead of luring them in might as well be a house cat.

Pet 'bird dogs' and show 'bird dogs' have their place, but it is NOT in with field bred bird dogs.

I believe that it is better for a person who is going to be selling the puppies to hunters, to cross an his field bred English setter with a field bred English pointer than with show bred English Setter.

I find no reason the have more than these 5 division of bird dogs - the are based on function, not which country the dogs came from.

But, of course, nobody would have to cross different varieties.

If you have Irish setters that hunt, and you don't want to cross them with English setters that hunt, you don't have to. But if someone else feels that this cross is what their line of dogs need, then, why not?