Information on working terriers, dogs, natural history, hunting, and the environment, with occasional political commentary as I see fit. This web log is associated with the Terrierman.com web site.
I'm off to Brooklyn this morning, so it seems fitting to post a little terrier history from that Great City. The last rat pit in New York City was owned by Christopher "Kit" Burns, and operated as "Sportsman's Hall" at 273 Water Street. The building still stands.
Burns was supposedly a tavern keeper, but in actuality, he was one of the last of the "Dead Rabbit" gang made famous in the Martin Scorcese movie, "The Gangs of New York." The Sportsman's Club was ostensibly a bar, but it derived a large portion of its revenue from rat killing spectacles, and the occasional dog fight.
"Rats are plentiful along the East River, and Burns has no difficulty in procuring as many as he desires. These and his dogs furnish the entertainment, in which he delights. The principal room of the house is arranged as an amphitheatre. The seats are rough wooden benches, and in the centre is a ring or pit, enclosed by a circular wooden fence, several feet high. A number of rats are turned into this pit, and a dog of the best feral stock is thrown in amongst them. The little creature at once falls to work to kill the rats, bets being made that she will destroy so many rats in a given time. The time is generally 'made' by the little animal. . . . "
Kit Burns had two of his favorite dogs stuffed and hanging over the bar. One was called Jack, and was a black and tan terrier that had killed 100 rats in 6 minutes and 40 seconds, an American record. The other dog was Hunky, a dog fighting dog that expired after his last "victory".
Kit Burns's last rat pit fight occurred on November 21, 1870 according to Robert Sullivan's book, Rats, on an occasion when 300 rats were "given away, free of charge, for gentlemen to try their dogs with." Henry Bergh, who founded the SPCA, raided the establishment that night, and Kit Burns was rounded up. Though everyone involved was acquitted, Kit Burns caught cold and died before trial, and the Sportsman's Club was permanently closed.
Kit Burns's widow told a reporter from The Sun newspaper that Mr. Bergh, the SPCA man, was invited to visit her at her new home in Brooklyn "provided the gentleman will have the kindness to bring his coffin with him." .
Thirteen years ago, the first Snakehead was found in the Potomac River, and we were told it was going to be the End of Everything. This was the fish that was going to decimate blue gill, perch, catfish and bass populations.
The NRA just produced this ad, which is a paranoid, apocalyptic open call to violence in order to protect "us" against "them" and "they".
The text, voiced by no-name college drop-out and wanna-be-famous right wing nut job Dana Loesch:
They use their media to assassinate real news. They use their schools to teach children that their president is another Hitler. They use their movie stars and singers and comedy shows and award shows to repeat their narrative over and over again. And then they use their ex-president to endorse “the resistance.”
All to make them march. Make them protest. Make them scream racism and sexism and xenophobia and homophobia. To smash windows, burn cars, shut down interstates and airports, bully and terrorize the law-abiding — until the only option left is for the police to do their jobs and stop the madness.
And when that happens, they’ll use it as an excuse for their outrage. The only way we stop this, the only way we save our country and our freedom, is to fight this violence of lies with the clenched fist of truth.
I’m the National Rifle Association of America. And I’m freedom’s safest place.
You know why I have guns?
Because fascism is real and it looks just like Dana Loesch.
Fascists have been banging the drum against they (Jews) and them (Blacks) and those people (immigrants), and you know (gays) for a hell of a long time. Women? Muslims? Catholics? Mormons? Yep, all them too. The worst.
The good news is that our Founders knew fascists were out there, and they wrote the Second Amendment for ALL Americans, same as the First.
What were our Founding Fathers thinking when they wrote the Second Amendment?
Well, they were not engaged in narrow partisan politics. They were not posturing for Fox News or trying to “make nice to soccer moms.”
These were serious men who came fresh from the white-hot forge of revolution. A war had just been fought to overthrow the yoke of an oppressive and unresponsive Government that invaded homes without warrant and which exposed the populace to "dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within."
In short, while it was a bit hotter back then, the issues we face today are not so completely different.
As left-wing, NPR-loving Virginia author Joe Bageant notes in his book Deer Hunting With Jesus:
”With Michael Savage and Ann Coulter openly calling for putting liberals in concentration camps, with the CIA now licensed to secretly detain American citizens indefinitely, and with the current administration effectively legalizing torture, the proper question to ask an NRA members these days may be 'What kind of assault rifle do you think I can get for three hundred bucks, and how many rounds of ammo does it take to stop a born-again Homeland Security zombie from putting me in a camp?'
"Which would you prefer, 40 million gun-owning Americans on your side or theirs?"
Bageant is not a new liberal, but an old liberal – the kind that once protested things and took to the streets in opposition to stupid wars, and which stood up to be counted when civil rights were being violated.
The old liberals know the value of guns.
They know that after the Civil War, southern whites denied blacks the right to own guns, because it was easier to lynch an unarmed black man than it was one who owned a deer rifle and 200 rounds of ammunition.
Some gay Americans have discovered this secret knowledge as well. As Jonathan Rauch wrote in Salon magazine back in March of 2000:
"Thirty-one states allow all qualified citizens to carry concealed weapons. In those states, homosexuals should embark on organized efforts to become comfortable with guns, learn to use them safely and carry them. They should set up Pink Pistols task forces, sponsor shooting courses and help homosexuals get licensed to carry. And they should do it in a way that gets as much publicity as possible."
If this sounds like Revolutionary talk, it is. It is the kind of language our revolutionary Founding Fathers might have used if they were gay, or black, or Hispanic, or Muslim, or Jewish and living in America today.
”Don’t Tread On Me,” was not a bumper sticker back then – it was a warning every bit as ominous as the shake of a rattlesnake’s tail.
The notion that our Founding Fathers contemplated armed insurrection inside the United States seems to surprise some people.
But it shouldn’t.
The Good Old Boys of Virginia -- Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington -- knew that power belonged to the people only so long as the power of the state could be met with an equal power organized by the populace at large working in tandem.
Guns were not to be used capriciously, but they were part of the long term plan crafted by our Founding Fathers to protect this great nation from powerful, cunning and patient forces of oppression -- whether those forces came from within or without.
To be clear, Dana Loesch, there are more of US than there are of you. More Americans believe in the right to vote than there are racists who support voter suppression.
More Americans believe in public schools than there are college dropouts who are home-schooling their children.
More Americans believe in E Pluribus Unum than there are folks reading KKK literature.
More Americans believe in family choice -- reproductive choice, marriage choice -- than those who believe in coercion and hate.
More Americans are environmentalists than there are polluters.
And yes, we are armed. Real guns. Hundreds of rounds.
We will defend America against fascists, and Russian communists too. Why does that terrify you so?
Dogs know things, but not always the right things.
My terriers are extremely calm and friendly everywhere, unless you come into our yard and they don't know you. They they get very territorial. It has nothing to do with who you are; it has a lot to do with WHERE you are.
I will be in New York City tomorrow and for the next few days.
In honor of that, let me offer up a free read from "Rats: Observations on the History & Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants" by Robert Sullivan.
This is a book about the rats of New York City, including profiles of rat catchers, rat biology, rat history, and other odd bits. A good read, if not quite a complete history of one the world's most important animals.
The first two chapters of the book can be read & here. This is a 12-page PDF.
Order the book new from amazon.comhere, or from www.abebooks.com if you are looking for a used edition.
Rachel Maddow Is Hook and Bullet
Yes, she owns guns and she loves to fish. That's how liberal democrats roll now -- we can defend our rights and survive the Trump apocalypse to come.
Prayers for a Giant Asteroid Answered!
If we get a good rocking motion going it could hit us in 2029.
A New Parrot Species?
Scientists say the Blue-winged Amazon parrot evolved from the White-fronted parrot about 120,000 years ago.
18 Eggs for 88 Cents?
That was last week's good news. This is this week's bad news. Lab-grown Meat by 2018?
A company says it will begin delivering lab-grown meat next year. If that happens, I expect someone will raise the question of why they are feeding cows inside a lab. The company making the claim, Hampton Creek has previously battled allegations of flim-flammery and hype.
At various time I have had three trail cams for the backyard. One died some time back, and then I lost track of things (too busy!) and left one out in the yard for a few months, and ants got in to it. It's dead too now, and it was "the good one" that took nice color pictures with a flash.
This is my last working camera, and it just takes infrared, which is not what I really want.
This is a country where racism is saluted and police are given the green light to gun down people (and dogs) for almost no reason whatsoever. It's sickening.
On Tuesday, Michael Brown’s parents, Lezley McSpadden and Michael Brown Sr., received a $1.5 million settlement after filing a wrongful death lawsuit against the city of Ferguson, former Police Chief Thomas Jackson and former police officer Darren Wilson. ...
The settlement was... on par with one particular shooting in Maryland ― except, in this case, the family was white and the victim was their pet dog.
In May, a jury awarded $1.26 million to a family whose pet was shot and killed by Anne Arundel County police Officer Rodney Price in February 2014. Price, who was confronted by the dog in the homeowner’s front yard, was investigating a burglary in the neighborhood and claimed he was attacked by the nearly 5-year-old Chesapeake Bay Retriever named Vern.
This bird is called an Ornate Hawk-eagle. I had never heard of the species before, but stumbled across a picture while looking for something quite different. It can raise a feather crest on it head.
This species hails from Central and South America.
This starving Sloughi won the St Petersburg Sighthound competition in Russia earlier this week. It's clearly emaciated and way, way under weight, even for a sighthound. How can you tell if a dog is too thin? Use this simple "hand gauge".
When your dog is too fat (and 40% of American dogs are obese!) you can feel a layer of fat over the ribs.
If you want to know what a FAT dog feels like, run your fingers over the underside of your knuckles with your hand open, palm up. Some dogs are actually so fat, their flesh feels like the padded base where the thumb meets the palm!
When your dog is the proper weight, you should be able to easily feel the ribs just under the skin, but there should be some muscling on top. To get an idea of what that feels like, run your fingertips over the top of the knuckles of your flattened hand.
When your dog is too thin, as in the pictured Sloughi, you can feel the ribs, which will be quite pronounced. On a smooth-coated dog, four or more ribs will be visible even when the dog is not breathing heavily. To get an idea of what a too thin dog feels like, run your fingertips over the knuckles of your fist. If you see a ridge like this -- and that's what we see in the Sloughi -- the dog is far too thin.
Most dogs should be run a little on the thin side, and most dogs deemed to be in proper weight are actually too fat. In my experience, veterinarians are part of the problem; they are so used to seeing profoundly obese dogs that they have forgotten what proper weight looks like (if they ever knew) and do not talk with their clients about canine weight when dogs are merely fat and out of tone and not yet morbidly obese. And, in this instance, we have the rare case of a dog being shown that is far too thin. This is deemed a winner in Russia? Anywhere else, it would get the gate, and its owner would likely be visited by animal control.
Photographer and conservationist Bruno D'Amicis set up a camera trap in a forest in the Apennine Mountains of Italy and trained it on one beech tree for an entire year. He then edited the tape down to include the charismatic megafauna.
The wolves pictured here are Italian wolves that weigh between 55–77 lb. There are between 500 and 1,000 wolves in Italy -- up from a population of less than 100 in the 1970s.
There is something vaguely ridiculous about European hunting with its dress-up clothes and potted birds.
Even some of the descriptions of terrier work can border on the absurd. Does every fox have to be described as a "lamb killer"? I suppose so in a country that has no coyote, wolf, bobcat, mountain lion, black bear, alligator, or grizzly! When your biggest game animal eats worms and bulbs, and your largest predator dines on mice, you may have to dress up your rationale for the hunt every bit as much you dress up yourself. Mere sport with dogs cannot do!
In America, of course, such a claim would be met with laughter. A red fox threatens your farm?A badger? Please!We have real predators from one end of this country to another. No need for tales of Beowulf here! A country full of bears and coyotes does not need to invent dragons.
To be clear, what makes America special is not some extra gene coursing through our blood. What makes American special is the land, and the fact that, unlike Europe, we have not killed off everything big enough to kill a cat.
No one ever said it better than Aldo Leopold who, back in 1925, wrote an essay called "Wilderness As a Form of Land Use," in which he reminded us of what we were (American), and warned us of what we might become (European):
The day is almost upon us when canoe travel will consist in paddling up the noisy wake of a motor launch and portaging through the back yard of a summer cottage. When that day comes canoe travel will be dead, and dead too will be a part of our Americanism. Joliet and LaSalle will be words in a book, Champlain will be a spot on a map, and canoes will be merely things of wood and canvas, with a connotation of white duck pants and bathing "beauties."
The time is almost upon us when a pack-train must wind it’s way up a graveled highway and turn it’s bell-mare in the pasture of a summer hotel. When that day comes, the pack-train will be dead, the diamond hitch will be merely rope, and Kit Carson and Jim Bridger will be names in a history lesson. And thenceforth the march of empire will be a matter of gasoline and four wheel brakes.
European outdoor recreation is largely devoid of the thing that wilderness areas would be the means of preserving in this country. Europeans do not camp, cook or pack in the woods for pleasure. They hunt and fish when they can afford to, but their hunting and fishing is merely hunting and fishing, staged in a set of ready-made hunting lodges, elaborate fare, and hired beaters. The whole thing carries the atmosphere of a picnic, rather than that of a pack trip. The test of skill is confined almost entirely to the act of killing, itself. Its value as a human experience is reduced accordingly.
There is a strong movement in this country to preserve the distinctive democracy of our field sports by preserving free hunting and fishing, as distinguished from the European condition of commercialized hunting and fishing privileges. Public shooting grounds and organized cooperative relations between sportsmen and landowners are the means proposed for keeping these sports within reach of the American of moderate means. Free hunting and fishing is a most worthy objective, but it deals with only one of the distinctive characteristics of American sport. The other characteristic is that our test of skill is primarily the act of living in the open, and only secondarily the act of killing game. It is to preserve this primary characteristic that public wilderness playgrounds are necessary."
Are we there yet? Is our land so gut-shot with people that we have lost the wild and become European?
Not quite.
The coyote population is growing, and so too is the population of mountain lion, wolf, black bear, grizzly, and alligator.
We are not yet European, thank God!
Yet we may get there if we do not do more to slow population growth, most of which is now fueled by unbridled legal and illegal immigration. We cannot take all of the world's displeased and dispossesed, and it's high time we stopped trying.
Above all, we need to remember that we need to fight to continue to preserve large blocks of wild lands, including wilderness.
Preserving wilderness and wild lands is about nothing less than preserving America's soul.
Save it now, or someday soon, it may be gone forever. .
Angeles Requiem from Tocho on Vimeo.The above video is not just amazing because the camere trap survived a forest fire, or because of what it else it got on tape (thanks Chaz!).
It's amazing because it was all filmed by a single camera trap in Angeles National Forest just a 30-minute drive from downtown Los Angeles. Thiry minutes from downtown L.A.!
This is still America as God intended, a country made by bear and lion, fire and rain, buffalo and deer.
This land is your land. This land was made for you and me.
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A perfume with notes of feather, sour meat, bird shit, old leather, bug spray, and sunscreen?
Nope. Pandering to the hyper-rich and falconry-besotted, a perfume vendor in Dubai has commissioned an Italian perfume maker to mix up scents for men and women made of Cassis, Lemon, Italian Bergamot, Patchouly, Sweet Orange, Lavender, Heliotrope, Pear, Black Currant, Sandal, Musk, and Vanilla. The various concoctions are sold as "Falconer".
Rumor has it that it's the official "new car smell" of the Bentley for falconry.
The attentive doe, above, had a pair of fawns with her.
This was the second set of twins I saw on Sunday. The doe and pair of fawns, seen below, were crossing the creek right next to me, and I almost missed them as I was paying attention to birds. They crossed and went up hill into the woods before I could refocus.
The wee dogs and I were rolling across the C & O Canal Aqueduct on Sunday when this enormous canoe carrying 26 people came down Seneca Creek and into the Potomac River. I assume it's a scout troop. This is at least six times more people than I have ever seen in a canoe before.
This thin old doe was all alone and grazing. She's very skinny, but there's plenty to eat so my guess is that she's lost teeth, has cancer, or is being eaten alive by parasites.
Deer get to age 7 or 8, if they are lucky, and that's about all they wrote. For animals in old age, the best they can hope for is a swift death from a hunters bullet. She will make it through the summer, but if she does not ad weight, I doubt she will make it though another winter.
Two wee working terriers fit on my folding bike (with fishing rod and gear), which folds down to a bag, which slides into the tiny hybrid, with room for two dog crates, and digging tools as well.
I found a Paw Paw tree between a marsh and the river. Pawpaw fruits are the largest edible fruit that is native to the United States. I'll be back in mid-September when they are ripe.
A New York City possum vendor, just 100 years ago.
Steve Case (of AOL fame) posted a link to this article by Morgan Housel, which I found illuminating:
Tell someone that everything will be great and they’re likely to either shrug you off or offer a skeptical eye. Tell someone they’re in danger and you have their undivided attention.
Hearing that the world is going to hell is more interesting than forecasting that things will gradually get better over time, even if the latter is accurate for most people most of the time. Pessimism can be hard to distinguish from critical thinking and is often taken more seriously than optimism, which can be hard to distinguish from salesmanship and aloofness.
Y2K got more media attention than any individual tech company.
SARS got more attention than the massive decline in HIV mortality.
Forecasting $250 a barrel oil in 2008 sparked immediate congressional hearings. Forecasting the bankruptcy of oil giants as electric cars proliferate sparks immediate giggles
I am a demographer by training, and have spent a few decades studying long data sets. As a consequence I am pretty optimistic about most things dealing with the human condition.
Specifically, I bet that 10 years into the future five indices of global human welfare (Food, Water, Health, Education and Quality of Life, and Energy) will ALL show improvement. If any of the metrics had gone south, I would have lost the whole bet, and I let my opponent pick the data sets..
The good news, for the world, is that I won this bet. And yet, if you go around and ask folks how the world is doing, they invariably say "to hell in a hand basket."
But follow up and ask these same folks if they want 1980 heart surgery or dentistry, and they recoil. Never!
What about 1980 life expectancy? 1980 fruit and vegetable choice? 1936 gas prices? The more they know, the happier they are with what we have now.
It's not that people are stupid; it's that we are amnesiacs.
The difference between pessimism and optimism often comes down to time horizon. If a recession or downturn is the end of your show, you should be pessimistic. If it’s a bad commercial during an otherwise great episode, you should be optimistic.
Since short-term shocks are more frequent and recent than long-term gains, pessimism usually sounds smarter than optimism because it’s easier to recall.
Optimists are often ridiculed as being oblivious to how risky the world is. I’ve found this to be a bad reading. They’re often quite aware of risks, but equally aware of risks being the soil optimism eventually grows out of.
The basic point of the piece is that pessimism is seductive. Or, as I like to remind folks, we actually pay money to be scared at amusement parks.
Preachers of Armageddon screaming Jeremiads get attention, collect money, and feel important.
Terror and trouble gives life meaning.
Folks who claim to have "secret knowledge" can both gain and give power by sharing that "knowledge," and what follows is a kind of cult-like following in which folks who have invested so much time and energy into believing their constructed fear, that they are loathe to accept fact or engage in critical thinking.
Back in 1995, Carl Sagan wrote The Demon-Haunted World, a book designed to encourage people to engage in critical thinking. He even provided what he called a "baloney detection kit," but he realized he was pushing skepticism uphill in sand, because the low-information gullible are always loathe to accept that they have been duped:
One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.
Tomorrow is the 733rd anniversary (June 26, 1284) of the missing children from Hamelin a small city in what is today the German state of Lower Saxony.
According to the Brothers Grimm, writing in 1817, Hamelin was hit by a plague of rats and a hero-like figure shows up, dressed like a court jester. He told the townsfolk he could can get rid of the rats, but at a price. The townspeople agreed, the Pied Piper played a strange tune on his pipe, and all the rats were lured into the Weser River, where they promptly drowned.
But the townspeople refuse to pay their debt. `
What's the Pied Piper to do? He cannot fight an entire town!
And so he plots his revenge, returning to Hamelin wearing the attire of a hunter. This time he plays a melody that hypnotizes the town's 130 children, who follow him into the mountains, never to be seen again.
That something horrible happened in Hamelin is almost assured. What it was is still being debated.
Some speculate that it might have been a plague, borne by the rats, but the plague would not just impact children, and the rats seem to been a much-later addition to the story which, initially had no mention of rats at all; just of children being "piped" into the woods and disappearing.
A more likely explanation is that the story is a corrupted and expanded story of what happened to Hamelin children recruited for a Children’s Crusade that took place about 70 years earlier than the date given.
The first Children’s Crusade was led by a child shepherd by the name of Nicholas, who hailed from near Cologne, Germany. Nicholas preached that the purity of children would allow them to conquer the Holy Land. Scores of thousands of children joined up with him and followed him west. Many ending up sick and starving, or were captured and sold into slavery into North Africa, or abandoned the pilgrimage and settled in towns and cities and countries along the way.
One thing seems clear: Hamelin never saw its children again.
The Wife took me to see an Ethan Hawke movie called "Maudie". The review in the paper said:
Marrying Maude in 1938 -- several weeks after hiring her as his live-in housekeeper for 25 cents a week – this boorish, barely verbal fish peddler expects his wife to know, and to keep, her place: As he puts it, oh so romantically, that place comes right after him, his two dogs and his chickens
That sounded promising.And it was.
This is a terrific movie. It's a love story between an asshole (Ethan Hawke) and a simple saint, Maude Lewis, with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis who does primitive paintings that she sells by the road.
It's a true story, and a masterpiece of acting in both lead rolls. My bet is that Sally Hawkins will be getting an Academy Award. Even the music (by the Cowboy Junkies) is terrific.
The great Ambrose Bierce, soldier and war hero, journalist, adventurer, fraud-fighter, and short story writer was born on this day in 1842. Bierce's book, The Devil's Dictionary, was named as one of "The 100 Greatest Masterpieces of American Literature," and his short story An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge has been described as "one of the most famous and frequently anthologized in American literature.
For purpose of this blog, however, Bierce gets a mention for his story, entitled Oil of Dog, which begins with this amazing paragraph:
My name is Boffer Bings. I was born of honest parents in one of the humbler walks of life, my father being a manufacturer of dog-oil and my mother having a small studio in the shadow of the village church, where she disposed of unwelcome babes. In my boyhood I was trained to habits of industry; I not only assisted my father in procuring dogs for his vats, but was frequently employed by my mother to carry away the debris of her work in the studio. In performance of this duty I sometimes had need of all my natural intelligence for all the law officers of the vicinity were opposed to my mother's business. They were not elected on an opposition ticket, and the matter had never been made a political issue; it just happened so. My father's business of making dog-oil was, naturally, less unpopular, though the owners of missing dogs sometimes regarded him with suspicion, which was reflected, to some extent, upon me. My father had, as silent partners, all the physicians of the town, who seldom wrote a prescription which did not contain what they were pleased to designate as "Ol. can". It is really the most valuable medicine ever discovered. But most persons are unwilling to make personal sacrifices for the afflicted, and it was evident that many of the fattest dogs in town had been forbidden to play with me -- a fact which pained my young sensibilities, and at one time came near driving me to become a pirate.
Dogs that had had the tip of their tails docked were far less likely to sustain injury.
While other parts of the UK have a ban on docking, there are exemptions for working dogs including spaniels, hunt point retrievers and terriers. Back in 2007 I addressed the issue of tail docking in a post entitled Nannying Idiots Continue to Ignore Real Problems:
Tail docking is a very minor procedure and does no harm to the dog. It is largely aesthetic and historical with certain breeds. That said, some terriers and other breeds have long thin tails that can be damaged when whipped in brush, worked in rock, etc. so they may benefit, medically, if they are docked. How often an over-thin and fragile tail is a real medical problem depends on the breed, the dog, how it works, where it works (and if it is worked at all).
A terrier's tail, of course, is an essential part of the dog, and I consider it a very stupid thing to dock a terrier tail too short. I always advise people to err on the side of leaving the tail too long. You do not want to lose a good handle on the rear end of a working terrier by being too quick or aggressive with a pair of tail nippers....
People circumcise their children, women get themselves nipped for child birth (it's called an episiotomy), and every third teenager has a pierced tongue, nipple, eyebrow or navel.
Whole TV shows are devoted to full-body tattoos.
Women are getting breast implants or breast reductions, and men are getting hair transplants and scalp reductions.
Noses are bobbed, fat is sucked out, teeth are capped, botox is injected, and ears are being pierced, ringed, barbelled, and pinned.
Ever been to a PETA rally? If you look around, you will see a lot of metal hanging out of nostrils, off of eye brows, or rammed through tongues. Every other girl will be showing off her "tramp stamp" tattoo on the small of her back. God only knows what you might find ringed, belled and pierced if you were foolish enough to ever see one of these PETA lunatics standing before you naked. The mind shudders.
Consider PETA spokes-idiot Pamela Anderson, who not only married the walking Erector Set known as Tommy Lee, but who also got her own body repeatedly tucked, sucked, injected, lifted, dyed, bobbed, and implanted. And these people are worried about a ten-second tail nip? What on earth for?
There are real problems in the world, and this is NOT one of them.
The anti-tail docking people have no sensible rationale to oppose tail docking -- it is a ten-second thing done when the dog is one or two days old, and it is over with very little fuss or pain. People who love dogs more than their own lives have been doing it for generations -- proof alone that it is a small thing and does no damage to the dog while sometimes serving a health function in the field.
Here are some real things to worry about with dogs:
Closed genetic registries which mean that the genetic diversity of dogs is dramatically reduced in time, and with it the health of every breed with a closed registry (i.e. all Kennel Club breeds);
Fat dogs which do not see exercise and which have sad and shortened lives (about 1/3 of all dogs);
Slick floors in kitchens which increases the chance of hip dysplasia for all large canines (a serious and sad thing);
Poor fencing, poor obedience training, and the complete absence of tags and microchipping which means dogs are easily lost and frequently struck by cars.
These are REAL dog problems. Tail docking does not even come close to making the list of things to be concerned about -- in the world of working dogs or otherwise.
Not everything in the world needs to be legislated, and this is something that fits under the umbrella of "leave it alone and let freedom ring."
If a breeder of nonworking dogs wants to leave the tails on their dog long, so what? If a breeder wants a sensible working dog with a properly docked tail, so what?
What interest, business or concern is it of society?
None.
The tail docking debate is really about a very small but vocal sector of society wanting to be nannies to the rest of us.
As a general rule these people know very little about dogs, know nothing about working dogs, and do not give a rat's behind about honest animal welfare -- if they did, they would pick a real issue to take action on.
And there are a LOT of real animal welfare issues. How about habitat protection? How about disease control in wild animal populations (rabies, distemper, mange, tuberculosis, chronic wasting disease, West Nile)? How about pushing to lower the price of veterinary care and improving access to it as well? These are real issues.
Fair warning, however -- making a change in these arenas might involve actually going out into the environment with mud, bugs, rain, and cold (Ugh!).
In addition, a real problem might be inconveniently complex and serious (God forbid!), and actually involve something more involved than self-righteous bullying of ignorant legislators and dog owners.
But of course, the tail-docking debate is not really about dogs, is it? It's about people who want to feel smarter and superior to others. These people will always be with us and I suggest they simply find something new to feel smarter and superior about.
If, faced with all the issues and problems in the world (hunger, violence, hurricanes, disease, lack of health insurance, war, poverty, illiteracy, racism, deforestation, violence against women, animal extinctions, loss of global fisheries, pollution, child abuse, etc.), someone thinks tail docking of well-loved pets and working dogs is a major concern worthy of time and energy, they are idiots.
The State Health Department rat gang of Queensland, Australia, fighting the Plague in Queensland from 1900 to 1909. Picture from the State Library of Queensland.
The Richmond Golf Club in Surrey, England, drafted an interim set of rules explaining the proper code of conduct should Nazi aircraft bomb the greens mid-game.
From Henry Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor, we get a nice description of the rat catchers of his day who supplied the rat pits where small dogs competed based on weight:
The number of Vermin-Destroyers and Rat-Catchers who ply their avocation in London has of late years become greatly diminished. One cause which I heard assigned for this was that many ruinous old buildings and old streets had been removed, and whole colonies of rats had been thereby extirpated. Another was that the race of rat-catchers had become distrusted, and had either sought some other mode of subsistence, or had resorted to other fields for the exercise of their professional labours.
The rat-catcher's dress is usually a velveteen jacket, strong corduroy trousers, and laced boots. Round his shoulder he wears an oil-skin belt, on which are painted the figures of huge rats, with fierce-looking eyes and formidable whiskers. His hat is usually glazed and sometimes painted after the manner of his belt. Occasionally — and in the country far more than in town — he carries in his hand an iron cage in which are ferrets, while two or three crop-eared terriers dog his footsteps. Sometimes a tamed rat runs about his shoulders and arms, or nestles in his bosom or in the large pockets of his coat. When a rat-catcher is thus accompanied, there is generally a strong aromatic odour about him, far from agreeable; this is owing to his clothes being rubbed with oil of thyme and oil of aniseed, mixed together. This composition is said to be so attractive to the sense of the rats (when used by a man who understands its due apportionment and proper application) that the vermin have left their holes and crawled to the master of the powerful spell. I heard of one man (not a rat-catcher professionally) who had in this way tamed a rat so effectually that the animal would eat out of his mouth, crawl upon his shoulder to be fed, and then 'smuggle into his bosom' (the words of my informant) 'and sleep there for hours.' The rat-catchers have many wonderful stories of the sagacity of the rat, and though in reciting their own feats, these men may not be the most trustworthy of narrators, any work on natural history will avouch that rats are sagacious may be trained to be very docile, and are naturally animals of great resources in all straits and difficulties.
One great source of the rat-catcher's employment and emolument thirty years ago, or even to a later period, is now comparatively a nonentity. At that time the rat-catcher or killer sometimes received a yearly or quarterly stipend to keep a London granary clear of rats. I was told by a man who has for twenty-eight years been employed about London granaries, that he had never known a rat-catcher employed in one except about twenty or twenty-two years ago, and that was in a granary by the river-side. The professional man, he told me, certainly poisoned many rats, 'which stunk so,' continued my informant — but then all evil odours in old buildings are attributed to dead rats — 'that it was enough to infect the corn.
He poisoned two fine cats as well. But I believe he was a young hand and a bungler.' The rats, after these measures had been taken, seem to have deserted the place for three weeks or a month, when they returned in as great numbers as ever; nor were their ravages and annoyances checked until the drains were altered and rebuilt. It is in the better disposition of the drains of a corn-magazine, I am assured, that the great check upon the inroads of these 'varmint' is attained — by strong mason work and by such a series and arrangement of grates, as defy even the perseverance of a rat. Otherwise the hordes which prey upon the garbage in the common sewers, are certain to find their way into the granary along the drains and channels communicating with those sewers, and will increase rapidly despite the measures of the rat-catcher.
The same man told me that he had been five or six times applied to by rat-catchers, and with liberal offers of beer, to allow them to try and capture the black rats in the granary. One of these traders declared he wanted them 'for a gent as vas curous in them there hinteresting warmint'; but from the representations of the other applicants, my informant was convinced that they were wanted for rat-hunts, the Dog Billy being backed for 100 pounds. to kill so many rats in so many minutes. 'You see, sir,' the corn merchant's man continued, 'ours is an old concern, and there's black rats in it, great big fellows; some of 'em must be old, for they're as white about the muzzle as is the Duke of Wellington, and they have the character of being very strong and very fierce. One of the catchers asked me if I knew what a stunning big black rat would weigh, as if I weighed rats! I always told them that I cared nothing about rat-hunts and that I knew our people wouldn't like to be bothered; and they was gentlemen that didn't admire sporting characters.'
The rat-catchers are also rat-killers. They destroy the animals I sometimes by giving them what is called in the trade 'an alluring poison.' Every professional destroyer, or capturer, of rats will pretend that as to poison he has his own particular method — his
secret — his discovery. But there is no doubt that arsenic is the basis of all their poisons.
If the rats have to be taken alive, they are either trapped, so as not to injure them for a rat-hunt (or the procedure in the pit would be accounted 'foul'), or if driven out of their holes by ferrets, they can only run into some cask, or other contrivance, where they can be secured for the 'sportman's' purposes.
The grand consumption of rats, is in Bunhill-row, at a public-house kept by a pugilist. A rat-seller told me that from 200 to 500 rats were killed there weekly, the weekly average being, however, only the former number; while at Easter and other holidays, it is not uncommon to see bills posted announcing the destruction of 500 rats on the same day and in a given time. Dogs are matched at these and similar places, as to which kills the greatest number of these animals in the shortest time. I am told that there are forty such places in London, but in some only the holiday times are celebrated in this small imitation of the beast combats of the ancients.
To show the nature of the sport of rat- catching, I print the following bill, of which I procured two copies. The words and type are precisely the same in each, but one bill is printed on good and the other on very indifferent paper, as if for distribution among distinct classes. The concluding announcement, as to the precise moment at which killing will commence, reads supremely business-like:
RATTING FOR THE MILLION!
A Sporting Gentleman,
Who is a Staunch Supporter of the destruction of these Vermin will GIVE A
