I readily admit that I don’t see eye-to-eye with certain bloggers who often cover the same topics as this blog.
And if you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know who those bloggers are.
However, today, one of them happened to post something pretty provocative that I think is worth a discussion on this blog.
Over at Terriermandotcom, Patrick Burns has posted an e-mail that he received from border collie expert and novelist Donald McCaig. In the e-mail, McCaig calls for a lobby group that would represent dog owners and that this lobby could garner lots of support from the large numbers of Americans who happen to own dogs. Here’s what McCaig had to say:
I happened upon a Northern Virginia apartment rental ad which is typical. The $1000 a month renter can have one (25-pound) dog, must pay between $35 and $200 extra rent, and provide an (unspecified) non-refundable pet deposit.
The Dog Fancy and its tool the AKC, was and is devoted to the very rich who have no trouble keeping or transporting their dogs. Since, for generations, the Fancy sucked up all the air in the American dog room, their indifference to ordinary folk meant that nobody lobbied lawmakers to advocate for sensible dog ownership policies. Nobody.
Unlike silly old France, Americans can’t take mannerly dogs on trains or buses or into cafes. Unlike most of Europe, our dogs are viewed legislatively as public nuisances if not a threat to life and safety.
The American lower middle class and working poor must deal with onerous, expensive and trivial restrictions that make it far more difficult for them to keep the dogs they love.
A few figures. There are 25 million Latino voters 16 million African-American, 5 million financial services employees, 3 million farmers, 1.5 million auto industry workers, 400,000 doctors, and _ million LGBT.
Thirty-nine percent of American households own a dog. Assuming 2 eligible voters per household and 50% participation, that works out to 110 million voters with a dog. Discounting, say 30 million who wish they didn’t, that leaves 80 million Americans who care about their dog and would like to have better access and fewer nonrefundable deposits.
Yet, they have no political power – none.
We dog owners have no NRA, no American Medical Association, no US Chamber of Commerce, no Farm Bureau, no NAACP, no AARP.
The only dog organization promising to better the lot of American dogs and American dog owners is the God damned American Kennel Club which has done zip shit. Must have been too busy grooming.
Did Seamus ride the Romney roof in vain?
Now, aside from the attack on Mitt Romney at the end, which you know I’d never do, McCaig asks an important question.
I do disagree a bit with McCaig that the AKC has done nothing for dog owners. They have lobbied pretty hard against stupid regulations, including the recent proposed rule change that APHIS was proposing to the Animal Welfare Act, which may wind up harming so many breeders (not all of them puppy millers or dog show enthusiasts.)
The AKC may have selfish reasons for wanting to prevent this regulation, but my answer to that complaint is “So what?”
Politics always makes strange bedfellows, and sometimes, you have to fight with the allies you have, not the allies you wanted.
But that said, McCaig does raise a very important point.
In France, dogs are allowed in virtually every public space.
The same goes for Germany– indeed, nearly all of Western Europe.
The dog and the dog owner in those countries are given far more latitude than here.
Perhaps, there is an historical reason why dogs have never been given such freedom here.
After all, most of Europe hasn’t been as plagued with rabies as we have.
We have had severe rabies outbreaks within the past 30 years.
I can’t think of a single Western European country that has had a similar outbreak within that same time period.
Dogs were always being rounded up in the United States for fear of rabies. Even when vaccines became widely available, there were occasions when any free roaming dog could be collected and destroyed for roaming freely if it didn’t happen to be wearing a tag that indicated its vaccination status.
But still, if dog people had a lobby, these rules could be changed.
The problem is that there will never be such a lobby.
It’s very simple.
Dog owners and lovers might be a large constituency, but the size of the constituency is its biggest weakness.
Dog owners do not have common interests.
Let me explain:
There are so many different dogs in this country and so many different owners, with so many different uses and ideologies, that it would be next to impossible to get any consensus on issues.
I seriously doubt a single woman with three rescued mixed breed dogs, who believes in animal rights to the point of wanting to end selective dog breeding is going to have something in common with a married bear-hunter who lives in Pocahontas County, West Virginia, with a pack of Plott hounds chained up in his backyard?
The two people might as well be on different planets.
They probably couldn’t agree on what color the sky is, much less how someone should relate to a dog and what the laws regulating them ought to be.
Furthermore, McCaig knows very well that border collie people, who all own the same breed, can’t even agree on a common registry, and within border collies, there is a vast schism between trial border collie enthusiasts and those who keep AKC dogs.
Those people can’t get along for fifteen seconds– and that would be stretching it!
I don’t think there is ever going to be a dog lobby.
There’s just so much diversity of opinion and ideology among dog owners that it’s really asking a lot for everyone to get along.
It’s not going to happen.
But what is going to happen is that the status of dogs is going to continue to rise in the United States. More and more people will be owning dogs, and lawmakers will start to make things easier on dog owners.
However, I doubt that the hypothetical bear hunter with the Plott hounds is going to have as easy a time as other dog owners.
Hunting game with dogs is perhaps the most endangered activity that people do with them.
State after state has banned it in some form, and although I guarantee you that West Virginia would be the last to do so, it is not immune to pressures from the animal rights lobby.
So while I applaud Donald McCaig for making this point, I don’t think it’s going to happen.
I don’t think a lobby will every materialize, but over time, I do think that things will improve for most dog owners.
The problem is that dog owners don’t all have the same common interests, even if they are have close relationships with the same species.
It’s not just the ABCA vs. the AKC. Before the AKC came on to the scene, the Border Collie breed was represented by the AIBC (more trial focused), the NASD (more working dog focused) and a handful of other registries.
Think of the Revolutionary War… just because the North and South worked together to expel the British didn’t mean the underlying antagonism went away.
I laugh when I see “I own a dog and I vote” stickers. Yeh, we vote. Every which way.
Rabies doesn’t work as an explanation for the geographic differences. Australia, which is rabies free, is much like the US with respect to dog laws, with more BSL in most states.
I think the big difference is attitude. In the US and Oz dog ownership is regarded as a right. Europeans are more likely to see it as a privilege. Far fewer people have dogs, and those who have them tend to treat dog ownership very seriously. I’d guess it has more to do with urbanization and the fact that relatively few Europeans own a single family home with a yard.
Australia can be explained because of sheep.
Sheep can be a factor in the US, too.
We used to have a lot of sheep, and the stray dogs were the biggest threat to them.
Still are…once when I was ‘sitting’ a neighbor’s sheep, I had to take an injured sheep to the vet after a neighbor’s unleashed dog got into the sheep pen. In another local incident, three loose (not feral) dogs got into the sheep pen of a 4-H’er and killed all of her prize sheep. She discovered them still in the pen and shot all three. What a stink that raised.
In Nordic countries, dogs are kept in similar fashion to the way they are kept in Canada. Dogs are not allowed to roam outside of hunting season, must be on leash in cities and so on. So, it is not exactly true that every European countries are more liberal about dog-owning. You see this in North America as well where the legislation varies on a state-to-state or provincial-to-provincial level where the state or province is just as big as a country.
However, it is pointed out to me by a European that in western Europe, much of the land is already privately-owned and dogs can be shot if caught roaming outside of city-limit. Also, one would need a special permit to be able to hunt. Even using a dog to hunt require massive amount of paperworks. That is, if the said European country have not banned hunting yet.
Dogs have freedom in western Europe, yes; but only in urban areas. It is only in parts of Russia and in northern Europe dogs have more freedom in the country-side. And in those countries, hunters have strong lobbies and unions to ensure that their future are secured.
This would be along my line of reasoning. Comparing Western Europe to North America is comparing apples to oranges. Europeans for the most part are crammed into small abodes in high density areas. (There are agricultural areas, supporting agrarian lifestyles. Not many people.)
Acquiring and keeping a pet is a serious commitment to the types of resources that Americans take for granted. Hence, europeans’ greater commitment to their pets. There just are not that many areas where you have the space to throw a dog on a chain tied to a dog house. Low cost, low value, no respect = many American dog owners. As for pet lobbies, when more folks place a higher value on their pets, more pet owners will be voting for those interests. No money, no lobby. And, not to mention, the only thing two dog trainers will agree on is that the third one is doing it wrong.
I was shocked at how cheap bulldogs are here compared to the UK. They cost almost twice as much over here, just for the initial purchase.
Mark Derr has written a lot about the history of leash laws and animal control in A Dog’s History of America: http://www.amazon.com/Dogs-History-America-Conquered-Continent/dp/0865476314
He thinks it was rabies paranoia that initially got Americans into locking up all the dogs. In the nineteenth century, even a panting dog was thought to be in the process of going mad.
We also were a major sheep producing nation, and the stray dogs were a major issue to any society trying to become sheep producers. In Newfoundland, for example, sheep farming was very uncommon for much of its history. That’s because there was such a strong tradition of letting the those predatory water dogs roam and catch their own food.
Not just bulldogs. Northern Europeans buy pedigree dogs like mad when they hit Australia. I bred Labbies there. The Ozzies gripe about paying $1000 to $1500 for a dog. Immigrants from Europe (and Asia) regard that as cheap. It’s not unusual to have dog registration fees of a few hundred annually in European countries, and though the animal rights movement is very different than that in the US (and Oz), government requirements for care of pets are often demanding.
Sheep have have shaped the dog ethos in places, but I think Eli’s spot on that the more general landscape is ” Low cost, low value, no respect = many American dog owners.” The same applies to Australia.
Yep. Large ideological spread. But if somebody is talking up such a lobby, then some owners may become aware of their own unexamined convictions. Talking may lead to thinking!
What Donald McCaig omitted is that in western Europe, working dogs with actual employment are far and few. The so-called “working dogs” are used for recreational use; and some hobbies, such as hunting, are either banned or so strictly regulated, the average person does not participate. Virtually almost every dog is kept as pet in a highly urbanized environment and are nothing else. So, of course dogs have more rights as pets in an urbanized environment than in countries such as Norway, Sweden, Finland, Canada, United States and so on where people still regard hunting or farming as their ancestral rights.
Dave, the only thing about what you say that puzzles me, is that I don’t see urban vs rural as the same as Western Europe vs the USA . I won’t speak to Canada and the Northern European countries you speak of, but regarding the USA, there may be an NRA and some hunting lobbies but strictly speaking, the vast majority of people live in urban areas.
Are there numbers showing that more dogs live in rural areas in the USA even though most people live in cities? Honestly I have no idea. I have not researched it.
It does not have to do with who is the majority, but who hold the economic power.
Virtually no one lives in the rural area in western Europe.
One major reason dogs in America aren’t allowed the privileges they are in the UK at least, is that so many Americans fail to teach their dogs the most basic training and mannerliness, or to keep them properly under control. Which spoils things for the people whose dogs are well-trained and controlled.
Privileges have to be earned.
That could be a chicken and egg question, though. Because we don’t have a culture where dogs are welcome in public places, there’s not as much pressure or opportunity to properly train and socialize dogs to behave in public places.
I see this every. Single. Day. I posted a link to Cyanoarchist’s blog about the APHIS regulations on the local dog park website and proceeded to get flamed into oblivion.
I think a great schism exists between people who own dogs as pets or do volunteer based activities and people who own dogs in ANY kind of capacity that work, either in sports, shows, trials, or breed specific activities. I think that schism exists in idealism – the pet-only people don’t actually understand that dogs are animals and instead indulge in dire anthropomorphism that causes them to behave in a manner diametrically opposite those that work dogs.
Even the rest of the fine details (do you use PR or NR or PP or blah blah, trial vs. show, agility versus obedience) fall to the wayside of this deep difference.
This is why most Americans have unmannered, aggressive, destructive, out of control dogs and why our freedoms with dogs are limited. They don’t actually understand them to be animals, and therefore fail to provide them with any kind of structure.
I don’t have a solution to this problem, unfortunately. I don’t think it’s going to be resolved, possibly at all.
I agree with M.R.S., Mary, and Jessica. Just wanted to add that I think part of the problem is cultural and quite unconscious, so that people can argue without understanding how their underlying beliefs differ.
2 stories:
Story #1:
About 1920 my father’s mother (Anglo-American) got a “fine”, gray, Rin-tin-tin era GSD. When Manuke was 6 months old, my father left home to take a job out of town. When he returned for a visit a year and a half later he got off the train late at night and proceeded to his mother’s house down the alley behind the houses. Manuke, hearing his approach, tore out from under the back porch and flew down the alley to jump up on my father and give his face a good licking. The family marveled; had Manuke not remembered my Dad, Dad would have been torn to shreds.
Story #2:
About 1920, again, in another city, our neighbor (Anglo/German) bet his best GSD against a fine horse. He stacked the dog on the sidewalk at a busy intersection at rush hour and walked away. The dog stood, unmoving, for 1 hour, while everyone in the neighborhood gathered and watched. Thus he won the horse. The man in this story bred and trained dogs. He owned attack dogs that really could hurt somebody, but never did. He taught us that dogs are automatons. They do just what they are trained to do, no more, no less. To a dog, attack is a game a lot like tug o’ war. He’s trained to grab the right arm and hold on. He doesn’t think about the possibility of damage. He doesn’t think.
Point is that in the first story the dog is an autonomous being. He sleeps under the porch; we trust he knows who to attack. In the second, the dog is the responsibility of his owner; he can’t be allowed to exercise independent judgment.
I hear these ideas everywhere even in the same post, as when someone contrasted the attack GR with dogs bred for aggression. (What I think of dogs “bred for aggression” I don’t know.) A few years ago a woman was murdered in a park near here. Folks wanted to know what was wrong with the 2 Rottweilers she was walking. I suggested they were not so trained and may not have even perceived that she was being attacked. I got hostile looks for my unorthodox ideas. People want to believe that dogs understand. (I believe they do understand, but they mis-understand much of the time.)
The second story occurred in the German-American neighborhood where I was raised. (My dog-fearing parents were the only non-Germans around.) Lots of people owned dogs. They were all properly housed and under control. Some were trained watch-dogs, some were attack dogs. But in 22 years there, there were zero dog bites and zero incidents of dogs pooping on neighbor’s lawns. I believe I was living, in effect, in Western Europe. BTW, there was no vandalism, either. I believe the underlying idea has to do with respect for the neighbors. It’s the same “they is us” idea that allows western Europeans to have socialized medicine, while we argue about whether “we” want to pay for “them”. But I digress.
So there you have it – 2 currents of thought – in one, dog is autonomous, by nature beyond our control, and hysteria is justified. In the other, dog is automaton; just hold the owner responsible.
What about a dog lobby that concentrates solely on safety. Take for instance all the cops shooting dogs. Said Lobby could push federal law to do what is known to work. The ASPCA already has the blueprint, we just need to force all police departments into implementing the training program. Most have no loose dog training at all. NONE. Surely we can band together to do this. Research the subject, this is a brilliant solution. Just need help getting it done.