Here are additional excuses/talking points pumped out by
pro-barkers, apologistas, and authorities.
Numbering scheme picks up where Part II left off.
11)
You are
anti-social. Dogs and their owners are
in your community and you have to learn to live with them. Their point being, that enduring endless loud
barking, having a yard full of dog crap, and being chased down the street by various
nasty dogs is simply the price we have to pay for civilization, like taxes or
some such. We should be forced to endure
all of that if we are going to live in a society.
Counterpoints. This fails on multiple levels. The dog owner next door has no right to
impose a “tax” on me! May I tax THEM to
get what I want? Moreover, I could say
the same thing about smokers, drunk drivers or child molesters: Hey, such people do exist, should we be
FORCED to endure THEIR “interests”? I
submit that THEY are anti-social and that THEY need to modify THEIR behavior in
order to fit in. One of the most basic
responsibilities any individual has in society is to NOT be an unreasonable
burden on others.
12)
You are not doing enough or helping me or my dog
enough. Their point being, their
entitlement status empowers them to demand that YOU take responsibility for
THEIR dog and socialize it, train it to stay quiet, refrain from eating the
mailman, etc...
Counterpoints. This is a fail. This is similar to the last point in that
they should not be demanding any such thing from you or I. How about they pick up my car payments or
clean my gutters? No? Well, then FORGET IT. CONTROL YOUR DOG OR GET RID OF IT.
13)
Get a life.
Their point being that you and I have absolutely nothing better to do
than endlessly deal with police and animal control, document offenses, file
lawsuits, write certified letters, etc…
Counterpoints. Listen, almost ANYTHING
would be preferable to all of that. I
have a full time job, perform volunteer work, have a home to keep up with, have
various social and leisure interests, etc… The problem is, you and your dog are
actively disrupting those interests. I’ve
had to perform at work EXHAUSTED because your useless pet dog was barking all
night. My volunteer work has been
impacted similar to my professional interests.
I have additional home maintenance duties given that your dog is
constantly in my yard crapping, knocking over trash cans, and digging
holes. I can’t have company over because
I never know when you are going to act up and force me to deal with police,
thus ruining my get together (and, yes, that has happened). If you want me to stop documenting and
reporting your offenses you should SIMPLY STOP OFFENDING. THEN I can and will get back to my normal
life.
14)
My dog is not barking. Their point being, even though my dog is standing
there barking in your direction it is in fact not barking.
Counterpoints. I think it was Goebbels who said something to
the effect that, the bigger the lie the more apt people are to believe it. Don’t.
15)
That is how dogs communicate. Their point being, their dog is in fact
trying to “say” something to me or you and that “speech” is protected.
Counterpoints. Fail.
Right of free speech is protected BY people FOR people. Moreover, screaming at ear-splitting volumes
for hours at a time is certainly NOT protected BY or FOR anyone and if you or I
did it we’d wind up in jail. If we don’t
tolerate it from other human beings why do we tolerate it from pets? Whatever right you have to make noise STOPS at the property line!
To your list of excuses, I would like to add the protection argument. As in, the dog is needed for protection from crime.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, the "protective" dog is seldom given the sort of training that actual crime-fighting dogs get. Have you ever seen a K9 that goes off at every little thing? No, because they're trained not to bark unless it's necessary.
Yes, that is a common "argument". I covered that in my first "countering" article. #2: "its a watchdog". The counter argument is that any alarm that goes off all the time for no reason is WORSE than useless. They are the proverbial "boys who cried" wolf. Again, if it was anything other than a dog the disruption would be ameliorated immediately with little fuss.
ReplyDeleteTrue story: I have a co-worker who is constantly disrupted by a neighbor's dog. The Dogs bark incessantly, cops have been called, citations written, but the dog owner in question is SUPER hard core. They are dug in and fightin' for their right to torment everyone for no reason. In any case, the dogs woke he and his family up one night, but they decided to just close all the windows, turn fans on and try to get back to sleep. In any case, it turned out that someone had been breaking into cars all up and down their street and NO ONE called the cops. Why? Well, because EVERYONE figured the dogs were barking uselessly, as they had been the other 99.999% of the time.
Recall the OJ Simpson case. Remember what the first sign of trouble was? It was an incessantly barking dog.
ReplyDeleteI don't recall reading whether the police were called, but the dog later led someone to the crime scene. At that point, the police were all over the case.
If that barking were called in earlier -- and promptly responded to -- history might have been very different. Nicole and Ronald might still be alive.
The "boy who cried wolf" allegory teaches us 2 things:
ReplyDelete1) No one believes a liar even when they are telling the truth, and...
2) When a liar is finally forced to tell the truth they are destroyed.
I harbor some doubt that the dog "led" anyone to the crime scene. Correlation is not causation. Even though the incident generally supports my point, it was probably embellished by pro-barkers or apologistas. IOW's, the fact that a barking dog was noted in the vicinity was picked up on by those that work to excuse nuisance barking.
Even if that part of the story is completely true, it again lends to the point that useless barking is a hazard that needs to be eliminated: If you want us to take the .001% of barking seriously, its imperative that the other 99.999% be eliminated.
Here a few other gems I've heard from Dog lovers
ReplyDelete"If you don't like it, move".
"You're just a dog hater"
"You must really have no life to complain about something so trivial".
"just learn to tune it out"
And the following which was said to me on a message forum, by a dog owner(no joke)
"Unless you own a dog yourself, then you have no right to complain about the barking of other dogs, your no better then people without children giving parents unsolicited advice about raising kids".
Hey LDL, thanks those are true GEMS!
ReplyDeleteHey, if you are not a bomb owner you have NO RIGHT to complain about being a bombing victim! YOU don't know what you are talking about! ROFL