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Sashadroogie · Posted: Sat Nov 24, 2012 7:05 am Post subject: Dog-hunters

All this humanitarian fuss and bother over Trotskyite dogs.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-20392327

johnslat · Posted: Sat Nov 24, 2012 5:35 pm Post subject:

Dear Sasha,

Unworthy of you, I'd say. For me, at any rate, killing dogs isn't in any way a humorous topic.

But then, I have two and have had many others.

Regards,
Doglover John

Sashadroogie · Posted: Sat Nov 24, 2012 5:48 pm Post subject:

Dear Johnslat

If you've ever been bitten by a potentially rabid stray when away from home, then I'd say that your sympathy may shift from the canines to the humans. Even dogs with an owner attached by leash have a tendency to nip unsuspecting passers-by in Moscow - not that the owners seem to care too much. Very often, their animals are even unleashed for a good old run around, young children be damned.

Personally, I'd have the owners all horse-whipped and shipped east. But the dogs remain a menace and have to be liquidated as a class.

Faithful Sasha

johnslat · Posted: Sat Nov 24, 2012 6:05 pm Post subject:

Dear Sasha,

I think I may have had more experience with aggressive stray dogs than even you. Back in the 70s, I worked for a time as a delivery person for a private postal system and had to go through neighborhoods such as Hialeah, FL, a place where the residents keep cars up on blocks in their front yards and where German Shepherds roaming loose need pit bulls as bodyguards.

In addition, when I first arrived in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia in 1980, packs of wild dogs roamed the streets.

I carried a steel construction bar and the only time I was bitten was in Hialeah, by a chihuahua.

At least some of these "vigilantes" are purely sadists.

"An alleged dog hunter from St Petersburg interviewed by MR7 admits she derives pleasure from "cleansing the area of trash" and admits that she has killed pets as well as strays. "I use various means - I just enjoy the process itself," "Svetlana" says."

If a dog with an owner attached to the leash were to nip me, I would sock the owner (or if it was a female, slap her.) The owners are the ones who should be blamed.

Sorry, Sasha - we are going to have to agree to disagree about this one.

Regards,
John

spiral78 · Joined: 05 Apr 2004 Posts: 11534 Location: On a Short Leash

The feral dogs of Moscow are a legitimate hazard, to some degree, guys. Speaking from personal experience... and as very much a dog-person. Ask the schnauzer if he hasn't got a full-time person; I've got serious street creds here. Cool

The thing is that the many feral dogs of Moscow are territorial, staking out a park, usually one with a heated and food-stocked metro entrance nearby, and defending it against all resource threats, including small pets (or even children) in many cases.

The danger is compounded by the fact that these are true feral animals, being quite a few generations removed from domestic animals who were answerable to humans on any level.

The schnauzer and I were very wary during our stint in the city, and we still were seriously attached twice (in a four-month period) by german-shephard style ferals, both times in small packs of 3-5 animals. They clearly were out to kill the schnauzer; no nonsense about polite warnings, and they had no fear of or response to anything I could do; they simply aren't answerable to humans.

I was basically trying to lift the schnauzer by the leash and kick and shout off the attackers, but frankly without the swift assistance of several adult male humans, the outcome would not have been positive. We simply overwhelmed them with numbers; they really have no fear at all of humans.

I am not in favour of killing them all, but a dog that's attacked a human (keep in mind that children are killed every year by these dogs in Moscow) or a pet really isn't trustworthy.

Ship em off to the tundra? They've gone back quite a few steps towards wolf-hood anyway.

Qaaolchoura · Posted: Sat Nov 24, 2012 10:16 pm Post subject:

Cool Teacher · Posted: Sun Nov 25, 2012 12:41 am Post subject:

Their reporting that peopel's pets are being poissoned which is different from just putting down the strays. Confused

johnslat · Posted: Sun Nov 25, 2012 1:36 am Post subject:

A little perspective:

Currently the mosquito kills more people every year than any other animal.

Here are some numbers:

over 5,000,000 people worldwide died every year at the height of the Black Death in 1349 (probably bubonic plague bacterium carried by rat fleas in turn carried by black rats), eventually killing 30% to 60% of all humans in Europe.
1,200,000 people worldwide died in motor vehicle traffic accidents in 2004, as estimated by the WHO. 41,900 people in the US died in motor vehicle traffic accidents in 2007, according to the CDC.
781,000 people worldwide die each year from malaria (from single-celled Plasmodium protists carried by mosquitoes) according to the WHO.
20,000 to 94,000 people worldwide die each year from snakebites, according to Kasturiratne et. al.
52,495 people in the US die from influenza (a virus) and pneumonia (most often caused by pneumococcus bacteria) in 2007, according to the CDC.
34,598 people died from suicide in the US, and 18,009 people died from homicide in the US, in 2007 according to the CDC.

However, other animals kill far fewer people than you might think from popular stories and news coverage:

(?) Hippopotamus
150 people in the US die each year from deer-vehicle collisions, according to a 2006 CNN report.
34 people in the US died from dog attacks in 2010.
3 people in North America per year were killed in bear attacks, on average, in the years 2000-2009.
2 people worldwide per year were killed in wolf attacks, on average, in the years 2000-2009.

Maybe we should eradicate snakes deer - or motor vehicles. Very Happy

Regards,
John

Sashadroogie · Posted: Sun Nov 25, 2012 5:58 am Post subject:

Dear Johnslat

Armed with just your stats, I dare you to walk through a park in Moscow. With a young 'un.

Sasha

spiral78 · Joined: 05 Apr 2004 Posts: 11534 Location: On a Short Leash

Sashadroogie · Posted: Sun Nov 25, 2012 9:01 am Post subject:

An interesting aside from Johnslat's statistics - no one objects to the massive liquidation programmes undertaken to combat deaths by mosquitoes, fleas and flu viruses etc, yet people go all gooey about cats and dogs. Are we suggesting that cats and dogs have more of a right to life than the others, and if so why? What moral grounds, or scientific evidence can be provided to show that it is acceptable to slaughter one type of animal for public safety, but not another?

Sounds more like something suspiciously akin to 'survival of the cuddliest' to me.

spiral78 · Joined: 05 Apr 2004 Posts: 11534 Location: On a Short Leash

Sashadroogie · Posted: Sun Nov 25, 2012 10:42 am Post subject:

Yes, that's true. But cows and sheep provide even more benefits to us, yet we not only slaughter them, we eat them too!

spiral78 · Joined: 05 Apr 2004 Posts: 11534 Location: On a Short Leash

The major benefit cows and sheep provide is the meat! Well, and wool, in the case of the sheep.
There's not that much in the way of companionship on offer there, though that may be the fault of the human side more than the fauna in this case.

Sashadroogie · Posted: Sun Nov 25, 2012 10:52 am Post subject:

Hmmm. A few corrections there. Milk, cheese, fertiliser and leather come from moo-cows, as well as meat. Similarly for sheepy-sheeps. Yet, rather than be thankful for the by-products, we consume the whole... hog... as it were.

And as for companionship... there are so many ethnic jokes about that field, snigger, of animal husbandry that I need not add any here snigger snigger.