Sunday, January 17, 2010

Stupid. On a Stick.



Suppose you had no pressing issue to complain about, no message, and no money.

Would you ask people to send you money so that you could find an issue to complain about, and also ask them to the write the message so you could put it on a bulletin board?

Believe it or not, that's the latest pitch from the "National Animal Interest Alliance," the organization that was last seen asking us all to help raise money because they were spending "$10,00 a month" to help defend Wendy Willard's extremely poor treatment of her "Murder Hollow" basset hounds.

Willard, of course, has now permanently lost 10 of her dogs, the judge has ordered her to clean up her kennels and allow for open inspection by the PSPCA, and criminal animal abuse charges are still swinging over her head.

It seems the NAIA got it all wrong, and so too did everyone else fanning the fires of hysteria on this case.

Any apologies forthcoming to the PSPCA? Nope.

And guess what? There's also no accounting for the money raised!

How much was it, and what was it spent on?

No one is saying.

Dog owners, of course, are ripe for flim-flam profiteers with contrived crisis. This is the bread-and-butter of the Humane Society of the U.S. and it's also the bread and butter of folks who always seem to spring up to to pluck off a few hundred dollars from dog clubs and other unsophisticated donors.

Dog people give to breed clubs through memberships and donations, and the clubs always seem to end up having a few hundred (or a few thousand) dollars lying around doing nothing.

What happens next is that a few reactionaries at the top of the club hierarchy write a check "to help the cause" (always vaguely defined and the facts never quite gotten together or reported out to the membership).

Later, everyone forgets to check on exactly what happened with that donation, same as they were previously "too busy" (and the need "too urgent") to actually do due diligence before the donation went out.

The folks at the top of the Club, who may or may not know what has has actually happened with their donation, are generally not too eager to report out that it was all a waste.

Bottom line: The question remains. How much money was raised for the Murder Hollow bassets by Bulldog Breeder Julian Prager's email notices across the Internet?

And where did the money go?

As for the the rest of us in the world of dogs, before anyone starts contributing to any billboards for an urgent crisis (not yet named) to support words not yet written, we might want to find out what happened to the last raft of checks given, and what it had to do with the welfare of dogs.

And for us in the hunting community, before we start saluting similar nonsense from purported hunters, we might want to check to see if any hunting is actually going on here.

The pitch of the Basset Hound folks, after all, is that you can be a vegan bunny hugger and "hunt" with these dogs because it's really not hunting.

Nice! Perfect. The canine equivalent of skeet shooting.

PETA would surely approve.
.

6 comments:

Cat and Daisy Lynn Rudert said...

Bravo, TM....

I just spent about an hour reading all of the links in this post. What a great posting. I put the link on my forum to this. It should be required reading for those with dogs.

I have asked the Basset Hound Club of America for a statement regarding Murder Hollow regarding the donations they begged for.

I am expecting exactly what you said, "The folks at the top of the club, who may or may not know what has actually happened with their donation, are generally not to eager to report out that it was all a waste."

Yep, all a waste.

Cat

PBurns said...

Thanks Cat --

I wouldn'y expect much from the Basset Hound Club of America. The truth here is that they did not do the research and did not give too much thought to their actions. Wendy Willard is not even a member of the BHCA, and yet they not only wasted Club money on this, but also managed to sully the BHCA by unnecessarily affiliating themselves with someone who was not doing right by the dogs. As the saying goes, "you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas." This was entirely avoidable.

Of course not everyone jumped into bed with the fleas.

Can you post a link, below, to the page where the Silver Eagle Bassets who (I understand) posted a statment (or else post their statement entire). I think it makes for interesting reading ... It reminds us all that not EVERYONE was a hysteric, that the PSPCA is not hard to deal with (provided you are taking care of the dogs), and that while the BHCA of America waded ito the ugly, some in the Basset chose to hold their fire until the facts were gathered -- what I have advised all along.

Patrick

HTTrainer said...

Say what word has there been from that dude who said you knew nothing about this matter?

Cat and Daisy Lynn Rudert said...

Patrick -

I found that statement on FaceBook. This is the link. The statement they made is at the very bottom.

http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=60535434659&topic=9417

I was very impressed with SEB statement.

You hit the nail on the head about the BHCA. The facts were not even an issue.

Cat - proudly without fleas!

PBurns said...

I see Bob Kane at the Virginia Hunting Dog Owners Association is also asking for an accounting of the money. Apparently he smelled nonsense early on as well.

Of course getting an accounting is about as likely as getting Dick Cheney to admit there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

P.

Unknown said...

Interesting update to the case:
http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/pets/Philly-breeder-lawsuit-tossed-victory-for-humane-law-enforcement.html