Dangerous Dogs

[emmasi]

I don't know who Brian Stewart is and I don't care. I don't believe in true evil. Murder does not just happen. Abuse does not just happen. Someone makes a decision to do it, and it's my opinion that that decision needs to be investigated and understood for any good to come out of it. If we can understand WHY people kill, or why dogs kill, then maybe it can be prevented from happening again. I am not looking for excuses, I am not looking to justify it and say it's okay, I am looking for reasons as to why it happens.

I've been sitting here trying to go into examples and explain myself better, but I don't think there's any point.

EDIT (just to be a bitch because I'm pretty pissed off): If someone "literally" committed a murder in cold blood, they'd be a fish.

[Frankie]

The point I was trying to get across was that there is a section of society who have decided that animals are MORE important than children and people etc... I don't think they are less important in this world than we are, but I dont think they are MORE important either. If faced with the choice of saving a much loved pet and a much loved family member there is no contest. But there are people for whom this line has become blurred and they have elevated animals to something above us... a dog would choose to save its puppy above a human child, a mother should choose to save her child above a dog, but for some this has become dysfunctional as the animal has displaced the child in the natural order of things. Thats what I mean by priorities. There are people who pamper and care for animals as if they were gods and who abuse and neglect their own children, this is warped and distorted thinking in my view. Its not the animals fault, its the humans fault.

[Formerly Known as FKAJ]

EDIT (just to be a bitch because I'm pretty pissed off): If someone "literally" committed a murder in cold blood, they'd be a fish.

Or a reptile. But if you read this article on the case you'll get why I used that half-accurate pun. Admittedly, though, it's barely relevant and I shouldn't have brought it up. For some reason I have this fixation with his case, I guess because he scares me with his extreme callousness. In fact, he is the reason why I do believe there is such thing as true evil.

Incidentally, I agree with both of you: I believe parents who keep dogs bred for combat around their kids should be held responsible for the inevitable attack, but I also agree that in a case like the one Frankie described we have got our priorities wrong.

[emmasi]

It's taking forever for that article to load, and maybe it's for the best. I don't want to read it. I'll just assume that it's the most horrific, disgusting, senseless, sadistic thing I can think of, and stand by the fact that there is a reason it happened, even if people are too shocked and appalled to look for it. There have been studies that show that serial killers, for instance, have different brain functions to other people. Their capacity for empathy is diminished, if it exists at all. That is not an excuse, or a justification, and it is certainly not blaming the victim - that is just a reason; a biological predisposition that needs to be investigated. That is NOT to say that every one of their relatives have brains like that, and it is not to say that someone with that biology MUST commit a crime - it's simply a base reason as to why they would.

Locking a person up and throwing away the key stops them from committing a crime, but it doesn't stop people like them. It doesn't stop people who are likely to become like them. It doesn't save other victims from the same fate. All it does is take one person out of the scenario and pretends that everything will be okay after that.

This is my point about dogs. You can kill one dog after it has attacked, and that obviously stops that dog attacking again. You can kill every dog of the same breed, and that saves a few more people from being attacked by sheer statistics. You can kill every animal in the species, but that doesn't stop the kid who pokes at a hissing cat from getting his eyes scratched out. Then you kill that cat because it's dangerous. You kill every cat of it's breed, every animal of the species... then someone approaches a horse who's ears are back and is rearing up. The person gets kicked in the head, becomes disabled for life, and the horse gets put down because it's dangerous... the breed is dangerous, the species is dangerous... but horses are safe, as long as they can be bought, raced and sold for millions of dollars...

If a dog kills you can kill it right back, but that doesn't save a person from being ignorant. If they approach one growling dog and get bitten, and they never associate the act of growling with the message "STAY AWAY FROM ME!!!" then they're just going to get bitten again. Likewise, if they never learn to associate a wagging tail with "I just want to play," they're going to shoot a harmless dog dead just in case. Why should one dog - or thousands - die for the sins of another? If a man kills a child, do you ask that his whole family is sentenced to hang because they must ALL have bad blood? Or do you reason that he's the exception to the rule, because he's one person out of 100 that has actually done something wrong?

Education is the key, not frivolous murder.

[valli]

When I read about a dangerous dog and it was put down, what makes me the most angry is that it’s never the owners fault. It’s always the dog who is the problem and it was the best solution to put it down... Excuse me, but I don’t believe that a dog would ever harm a human "because it wanted to" A human might do that. A human might enjoy torturing and killing other humans and animals. There might be a reason that we hear about serial killers who are humans, but an animal has never been a threat to a lot of people and it has never enjoyed killing just for the sake of it. It’s always a reason behind a dog’s attack, even though it might be hard to find it. But now I went away from my point.

Owners should take responsibility for their dog. I once read about a couple and a rottweiler and that story actually made me laugh. The couple had bought a rottweiler, but when they got home, they didn’t show the dog who was in charge so the dog chased them so they had to sit on the kitchen bench for several hours before they manage to call for help. When help arrived they brought along a man who works with dogs and trains them for the police. What does he do? He says "Come on boy. I bet you want to go for a walk," What does the dog do? It does not attack him, it waves it’s tail and happily joins the man outside and the couple can come down from the kitchen bench. What does this tell us? That any dog can be trained and no dog is born evil. It’s not something they become either. We must remember that dogs are related to wolfs and follow the same instincts. A smile from a human we see as polite and nice. A dog sees it as a snarl (we show our teeths and dogs/wolfs do that when they snarl) and a threat.

And dogs are strong. If a dog wants to play with a kid, it might harm the kid because it’s unaware of it’s strenght. And if a dog bites, the dog is dangerous and must be put down, the sooner the better. If a cat bites, it was only playing and is just normal and cute. It’s patethic!