Some year back, I wrote a piece that openly laughed at folks who bought terriers from countries they had never been to, and from people they had never met in person. Now there's a plan!
Well, it seems, I am not the only one laughing.
According to The London Times the folks in the U.K. are laughing too. One Mick Sheed, who seems to be a dog dealer who talks a great deal, said he had sent 26 Patterdale terrier puppies to America.
“The fellas in America have loads of money. They seem to pay mad for what they want. I have sent 26 over to them. I sent one bitch and she didn’t work, because they tried her too young. But I could say nothing, so I said ‘kill her’, and I sent them another one instead. That’s the story with them.”
Eh? Who is "them?"
No one I know is wrecking dogs by working them too young, nor are they killing dogs that don't work out, nor are they baiting animals of any kind.
Anyone who knows their ass from a turnip seed knows how to start a terrier off slowly and how to start it off right. No one I know is baiting animals.
Nor is anyone with a lick of common sense paying any more for a working terrier than they would for any other kind of hunting dog.
But of course, not everyone has sense, do they? If we are to believe The London Times (and I am not saying I do):
One dog, called Booth’s Bruiser 2, was sold for €10,000 in January to Barnburner Patterdales Kennels in Iowa, America.
It was? Really? You mean this battered old dog was sold to someone in America for €10,000 ($14,000)?
Well, I have no direct knowledge, but I have a hard time believing anyone would be silly enough to pay that amount of money for a working terrier.
Surely that is a typo? Or perhaps Mick Sheed -- the man selling the dogs in Ireland -- is so full of crap he is spouting it for breakfast? That must be it. After all, perfectly good Patterdales and Jack Russells can be had from good breeders right here in America -- genuine earth dogs with good drive, excellent noses, and common sense with real field experience.
If you want to go overseas for a dog, go right ahead, but for €10,000 or even $10,000 you could go to England and Ireland for a month, get everyone you meet dead drunk, and buy a box full of good dogs for souvenirs. And if you did it that way, you might even know what you had bought and who you had bought it from!
Of course, if you did it that way, you also might not get laughed at in the London Times by the very dog dealers you were frequenting. Nor would you have to post pictures on your own web site of six dogs (six!) mauling a live raccoon on a barn floor.
That's terrier work? Really? Not where I come from.
That's something entirely different I think, and it's the kind of ugly stuff that imperils real terrier work where ever (and whenever) it is done.
And here's the most incredible thing: Someone thought this was such a great representation of their dogs in action that they featured it on their web site. Wooeeeee!
Fence up people! Does this really need to be said at this late date?
Do we really need a weatherman to tell us which way the wind blows?
5 comments:
Perhaps in another 15-20 years terriers will be the new 'vicious breed' after the media is done with pit bulls. After all, look at the vicious stuff they're being bred for! =P
Nevermind that it's not true or the norm. Dog fighting isn't the norm for Pit Bulls either, and that doesn't stop the stereotyping of them.
I notice that dog is chained to something in every single photo.
This is a convention I associate primarily with the photo albums of dogfighters.
I don't know anyone with any kind of working or hunting dog who can't get a picture of the dog working or hunting (even coonhounds, who hunt at night) -- or at least without a backtie to a cinder block or whatever.
The photo of the terriers chewing at the raccoon should be sufficient evidence to at least start an animal cruelty prosecution.
I am not trying to get anyone prosecuted for anything. Mother Nature is cruel, and few wild animals die on morphine drips with soft waltz music playing in the background. The water ditches of every country road are littered with the bones of animals that died very cruel vehicle-impact deaths.
That said, the strength of honest terrier work is that, done right, by someone who knows what they are doing, a competent terrierman can relocate an animal or terminate it with the speed and certainty we would wish for ourselves on our last day.
But that is not what is going on here. Whatever this is, it is not honest or competent terrier work. I do not know if this photo speaks to tragic inexperience at handling wildlife and dogs, or the naked get-rich-quick greed of a dog dealer, or the simple barbarism of a wannabe dog fighting man. All I know for sure is that it reflects very poorly on terrier work, and my sincere and simple hope is that this picture will be taken down.
P.
My sincere hope is that the actions depicted in that photo are terminated and in the perfect world, some shame is felt by those who allowed such a travesty. Anyone who would send their bitch to a kennel run by the mutton brains who think their photos, to include the sad photos of their mega-stud what's-his-name part deux, shine on them an enviable light, deserve, at the very least, to have their pockets picked by these dumbasses.
My word verification, appropriately, is "iress", as in "I ress my case."
Seahorse ;)
Pai is right. Other breeds are used for this as well.
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