Puppy on the Porch
A few days ago Eastjenn posted a thread on the BPO message boards about a problem she is having with her neighbor. I read the thread and made some random comment about problematic neighbors, and read the thread each day as things developed.
Last night as I was laying in bed, I kept thinking about this thread, in terms of the specific problem she is having, and about society in general. I have asked her permission to post her initial thread, and in the interest of brevity, I have summarized the rest of the thread for the reader.
Initial thread, Found in Groans, Gripes, Brags: Warning I May Have to Beat My Neighbors.
This might be long, so forgive me, but I’m kinda worked up. And maybe I should clarify — I may have to beat my neighbors, and then steal their puppy.
So, I was incredibly sick of the weekend. I’m feeling a lot better now, but still in that kinda sick want to sleep all the time funk. I was so worn out when I got home from work today that after I got the dogs out to potty, fed, spent some time with them and grabbed myself a snack I thought I would take a thirty minute nap. Sounds good, right?
Well, about ten minutes after I lay down, I start to hear this puppy SCREAMING. Anyone who has ever had a puppy dislike a crate KNOWS the kind of screaming I’m talking about. Its the “Please let me out of this crate so I can snuggle with you and play” pleading howl/bark/yowl/scream. The weird thing is, this scream sounds like it is outside, where a puppy in a crate should not be screaming.
I lay in the bed for a few more minutes, listening to said screaming puppy when I start hearing dogs all around the neighborhood start to bark. Then my dogs start to bark. Then Kizmet starts to whine, then howl, then nervously pace and pant and look troubled. So, I decide to see what is wrong with said puppy.
I go outside and can hear the puppy to my right … on the right there is a very old ladies house, another very old ladies house, a house with new neighbors, and then apartments. I’m figuring that the old ladies do not have new puppies, still, I can’t see a puppy anywhere through the trees and such in the yards. I finally decide to follow the screaming puppy noises two houses down to the new neighbors’ home. On their porch sits a small plastic crate. With a screaming puppy inside.
So, I decide to knock on their door. A man comes to the door and the conversation goes something like this:
Me: You know your puppy is screaming on your porch.
Idiot redneck man: Yeah, it was screaming in the house, so I put it out here.
Me: Why don’t you take it out of the crate, and inside.
Idiot redneck man: We’re crate training it.
Me: I’m pretty sure it doesn’t need to be crated when EVERYONE is home, its seven in the evening, and it is NOT happy.
Idiot redneck man: It will learn to get over it, or it won’t be allowed in the house at all.
Me: That’s good. Glad you got a dog … so that you could leave it outside, alone, and utterly miserable in 80 degree weather, all the time. Good for you.
Idiot redneck man: That’s really not any of your business. (Shuts door, with puppy still on porch.)
So, maybe its not my business, and maybe I’m just grumpy cause I’m tired. But this dog is STILL outside screaming its head off. Every dog in up and down the block is flipping out now. And the poor puppy in the crate certainly isn’t happy.
I hate people. People suxes.
Basically, in the thread, two main ideas were discussed: The issue of the puppy’s welfare was primarily important to everyone, as it turned out that the neighbors were not caring for even it’s basic needs, and secondarily, the fact that these people put the puppy outside to become a nuisance for the entire neighborhood in order to reduce their own discomfort at having to listen to a crated pup cry.
People commiserate in the thread about how people suck, and how it sucks when people abuse their pets. Jenn, the person who was having the problem, followed up with the neighbor, tried to do what she could to make sure the puppy had the minimum things it needed (water, shelter etc…) , and ultimately, when she couldn’t get the neighbors to make minimal accommodations for the pup’s safety, she called the humane society, and the local police.
The direction I am about to take with this blog is probably going to sound ridiculously tangential to some readers, but I think if you read it through to the end, you will see that my argument is the natural extension of this problem.
Long ago, people dealt with problems and issues on a personal, case by case basis. In the above referenced thread, Jenn went to her neighbor and dealt with the situation in the most personal appropriate way possible, starting with the least invasive approach, and escalating the situation only when necessary for the safety of the pup. This is similar to how things would have been dealt with say, in the 1800’s (I’m not talking about the initial issue, I’m talking about Jenn’s approach to rectifying a problem with a neighbor).
There is a blog, titled “Chinese Year of the Dog Brings Death to 50,000 Dogs” in which it is reported that as a result of three people getting rabies from dog bites, the Chinese government ordered the mass killings of 50,000 dogs.
Since when did we, as human beings lose the ability to deal with a problem, without 1) blowing it HUGELY out of proportion, and 2) recognizing that a government is using a proportionately small problem (proportionate to the subsequent overreaction) to justify making public policy which is: not necessary, evil, inhumane, violating people’s rights…….
Jenn didn’t call up her local neighborhood association (Which by the way is also odd and another indicator of our increasing need to control. People who go around measuring other people’s grass to make sure it isn’t longer than the requirements in the local cc&r’s scare the devil out of me) and insist that puppies be banned. Jenn didn’t call her local legislature and try to get someone to outlaw the ownership of puppies.
On a related but somewhat tangential note, there are times when communities must band together to fight oppression, and people have done that successfully since the first people formed ’communities’.
Sorry for that sidebar, but I thought it should be noted.
Back to the subject at hand. If the Chinese government had handled things like Jenn did, here is how things would have happened. The three people who were bit would have been asked, ’What dog bit you’? If those people didn’t know the dogs, the issue would have been investigated to try and find the biting rabid dogs. Those biting dogs would have been euthanized.
Instead, 50,000 INNOCENT dogs were murdered. They weren’t murdered because they did anything wrong, or because they posed a threat to anyone. They were murdered because somewhere along the line, we have lost our collective common sense. Someone in the Chinese government probably also had an agenda against dogs, and used this as an excuse to kill them…either which way, it takes a BUNCH of people being idiots to go along with this sort of agenda. One person didn’t kill those dogs, against the wishes of the whole group.
I could list hundreds of examples of this kind of thinking. Of course, anyone who watches CNN could come up with plenty of examples themselves. One example is war. Wars are NEVER about what we are all told they are about. We get fed the ’reason’ (3 people got rabies, therefore we are all in danger), then, since we have no easy source of information other than what we are told by our news/government, and since we are pretty impotent to change anything anyway, we keep going to our jobs and root for our side.
Somewhere along the line, we, as a species, have lost our ability to see clearly. We have lost our rights, because of the actions of a few bad people, rather than dealing with those bad people on a case by case basis.
We have all seen Breed Specific Legislation which is ALWAYS based on the actions of a tiny minority of bad dog owners. How many thousands of Rotties, Dobermans, etc have done heroic acts? How many are therapy dogs, carting dogs, seeing eye dogs, police dogs? How many attack someone because their sadistic owner tied them to a tree and beat them to make them ’good guard dogs’? Yet, instead of throwing the sadistic owner in jail for a ridiculous amount of time if his dog attacks someone, we ban them all.
I could go on and on. Anyone reading this could go on and on. I don’t know what the solution is but, if any of us want to retain ANY human freedom at all: the right to own whatever kind of dog you want, the right to not have the government come in and slaughter your dog, the right to not have your phones tapped (which the nsa has done for a very long time, to all American citizens), the right to have your freedom of speech, the right to arm yourself for the protection of you and your family….we ALL have to start standing up for these things. We all have to scream our heads off when our government takes our rights away from us based on some flimsy excuse. We all have to fight for “Pershing Square” (see blog on Pershing Square for details) and for all the other things we hold dear.
This whole blog/rant is pretty pointless. I realize that. In some ways the world has just gotten too big for us to make sense out of it anymore. We work too hard, for too many hours. Most of us put any outrage energy we might muster into trying to pay our bills and feed our kids.
It’s just such a sad commentary on human beings when 50,000 dogs are killed. It’s a sad example of lack of personal responsibility when someone sticks their puppy outside for the entire neighborhood to have to listen to, rather than enduring the screams themselves.
I need to go drink some coffee, I’m obviously in a foul mood.
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