@caitlinburke - Humiliation is a pretty harsh accusation here. Throwing a goofy hat on a dog and taking his picture is miles apart from the folks that airbrush poodles to look like Ninja Turtles.
I don't have all of the answers to your question, other than to say that passing and enforcing inhumane laws that require good people to choose between destroying/rehoming their dogs or moving while letting folks that would mistreat, abuse and raise vicious animals move from breed-to-breed with little more than a minor inconvenience does nothing to address the problem. It's a horrible, unjust and cruel pseudo-solution that, frankly, shouldn't be tolerated.
Patrick
Yeah, that lady who does the "extreme grooming" is a menace.
I'm not defending breed-specific legislation. If anything, I'd LOVE to see more punishment of people who mistreat animals. Animal abuse is nauseating and exceptionally antisocial, and cruelty laws should be as strong as they can be.
But the last line of that copy just underscores for me that the problem here is, yeah, people. People are really bad news! Until you can do something about that (and the sad truth is that I think you probably can't), you're going to have some communities playing the odds by doing everything they can to discourage ownership of the kind of dogs that hostile people - who shouldn't have pets (or for that matter working animals) at all - tend to want.
I'm not defending breed-specific legislation. If anything, I'd LOVE to see more punishment of people who mistreat animals. Animal abuse is nauseating and exceptionally antisocial, and cruelty laws should be as strong as they can be.
But the last line of that copy just underscores for me that the problem here is, yeah, people. People are really bad news! Until you can do something about that (and the sad truth is that I think you probably can't), you're going to have some communities playing the odds by doing everything they can to discourage ownership of the kind of dogs that hostile people - who shouldn't have pets (or for that matter working animals) at all - tend to want.
(And yes I do understand the "move from breed to breed" aspect. It's a complexly awful situation, since as a society we don't seem to be very good at protecting animals. Or children, really, for that matter.)
Oh, the extreme grooming thing is more than a few menacing people. It's a full-fledged industry. We don't offer any grooming at the clinic where I work (just bathing, nail clips and whatever else that may be medically necessary/convenient) but we get the catalogs. So many catalogs.
And yeah, humans are obviously the problem (with damn near every issue in the modern world) but I'll never buy the communities playing the odds line when the numbers don't back them up and it's reactionary legislation that only results in heartbreak and unnecessary death of good animals. The city of Denver has been at the "forefront" (for lack of a better word) on this shit for nearly 2/3rds of my life and are so hellbent on this two decades later that the City Council is willing to fight the Americans with Disabilities Act (and the Feds as a whole) about it. (yes, really: http://www.denverpost.com/news... )
I know you and I are coming to the same frustrating conclusion from slightly different angles, but this is a thorn in my side that I take rather close to heart, and sadly I can see things getting far worse before they get any better.
And yeah, humans are obviously the problem (with damn near every issue in the modern world) but I'll never buy the communities playing the odds line when the numbers don't back them up and it's reactionary legislation that only results in heartbreak and unnecessary death of good animals. The city of Denver has been at the "forefront" (for lack of a better word) on this shit for nearly 2/3rds of my life and are so hellbent on this two decades later that the City Council is willing to fight the Americans with Disabilities Act (and the Feds as a whole) about it. (yes, really: http://www.denverpost.com/news... )
I know you and I are coming to the same frustrating conclusion from slightly different angles, but this is a thorn in my side that I take rather close to heart, and sadly I can see things getting far worse before they get any better.
Anyway, the problem with this is: dogs reflect their owners. So if you're going with the argument that humans are more vicious than dogs, well, we still got a problem. And particularly vicious humans are still more likely to be attracted to dogs "with a reputation" than they are to, I dunno, golden retrievers. So where do we go from here, exactly?