BSL collapse V0.0

There was a rather brutal takedown of Dogsbite.org the other day.  Here is a link to that article.

Here is a visual to go with the article under consideration:

 

While I take many issues with the BSL movement, I find this "takedown" unfair.  Colleen as a Nazi... Really?  Go for the Godwin Fail much?   Look, you can take anything or anyone and do a Reductio Ad Hitlerum on it, but that does not necessarily make any sense.  Hitler sat in chairs, so anyone who ever sat in a chair must be a Nazi, correct?   Hitler slept in a bed, so all of you bed sleepers must belong to an evil Gestapo, and oven babies day and night!  Mick Heil!

That said, the BSL movement does deserve some critique.  A constructive critique.  As I have noted many times, BSL is a perfectly legitimate arrangement.  Pre-emption laws are stupid and hypocritical.  Look, if I can't own chickens or goats, why the HELL do my neighbors get to keep a backyard full of 150 pound game bred fight dogs?  OH, that would be because they are DOGS and everyone has to kiss their ass day and night.  

So, what is wrong with the BSL movement?  Quite frankly, your movement is a mess.  The 2 cent version is, it lacks integrity.  I say this generally and not categorically.  Personally, I think that Colleen is the very best that the BSL movement has to offer.

I am going to write a series of articles on this, but leave off with a discussion document for now.  

SO, how is the BSL movement a mess?  Here is the short list of reasons.  Longer explanations to follow.

1)  The movement is DOGmatic and unflexible.  Most of you will not consider any reforms other than a ban.   You ignore all statistics that might indicate that a ban does NOT improve public safety.

2)  You ally yourselves with PETA and other radical groups.  Great way to alienate the 99% of the population that is not completely crazy.  For starters, the Pit Bulls Awareness Day symposium on October 24 has aligned itself with PETA.  Why not grab an endorsement from ISIS while you are at it?

3)  You refuse to acknowledge the connection to the greater dog culture.  Look, pit bulls are dogs and thus under the protection of The 10 Commandments.  What are you going to do about THAT?

4)  You conflate the means with the end.   The GOAL should be enhanced public health and safety.  Instead, it seems that a pit bull ban has become an end onto itself.  ALL dog bites are serious, folks!

5)  Focus entirely on a handful of spectacular events, while ignoring or excusing away the overall social harm related to dogs.  Being mauled to death has lottery odds.  You want to know what the NUMBER ONE page on this site is?   This one.   Barking is a scourge that destroys the health and quality of life of millions.  Nary a peep from the BSL folks... how about we ban the top 5 barkers by breed?  What do you think of that?

Enjoy your evening and feel free to comment.  I will follow up with articles on all 5 above.

 

Facebook Group - PADBAN

Interesting perspective on dog noise pollution:  Facebook page People Against Dog Breeding and Noise.

From the archives:  (copied without permission)

"I feel the need to keep re-posting this so it does go too far down this page. It is, after all the main reason I started this page. Can't find a quiet place to live, in any suburban neighborhood. 

Why Exposure to Chronic Barking is So Profoundly Debilitating

Introduction
People who have never suffered through extensive exposure to chronic barking often find it difficult to understand why it should be such an incredibly upsetting, debilitating ordeal. This section tells you why that is, beginning with a discussion of how our bodies react to exposure to chronic noise.

The Physiology of the Upset Victim

The various organs of your body are connected in a way you may not have thought of before. Your eyes, heart, lungs, digestive system, and the smooth muscles of your vascular system (among other organs) are all connected to your brain by nerve cells, which are also called neurons.
Picture the way telephone lines run across the country connecting one city to another. The telephone line running from Los Angeles to San Francisco is not one continuous wire. It is many wires, each connected to the next. When an electronic signal goes from one city to another over the phone line, it travels in relay fashion from wire to wire until it reaches its destination. These particular types of neurons are like that. They carry electrical impulses from the brain in relay fashion, only instead of running from city to city, they run from the brain to the other organs of the body.

Because the brain is wired up to these particular organs through the same relay system of neurons, it can simultaneously create changes in all the connected organs at once by sending electrical impulses traveling along the neural pathway.

If your brain sends electrical impulses along the neural pathway telling the connected organs to speed up, the pupils of your eyes will open wider. Your heart will begin beating faster and your breathing will increase as your lungs begin to work harder. Also, the smooth muscles of your vascular system will react in a way that reduces the blood flow to your hands and feet and channels more blood deep into your body to the major organs. The one exception is your digestive system. When the speed-up message is sent, everything speeds up except your digestion, which slows down. The more things speed up, the greater the sense of tension we feel. When you feel emotionally upset in an excited, high energy sort of way, you are in a state of autonomic speed up.

If your brain sends electrical impulses along the neural pathway telling the connected organs to slow down, your pupils return to normal size and your heart rate and breathing slow. At the same time, the smooth muscles of your vascular system channel more blood into your hands and feet and less to the major organs. As you might expect, when the slow-down message is sent, your digestive system reacts by speeding up. That's why digestion is a more pleasant process when you're relaxed than when you're tense.
The more things slow down, the more relaxed we are likely to feel.

The Autonomic Nervous System & the Endocrine System

The organs of the body that are beyond our conscious control, like those listed above, together with the nerve cells that connect them, are known as the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS).
Notice that when you hear the sharp report of a barking dog, it gives you a start. Physically you feel yourself give a little jump and you experience a sudden sense of tension. That feeling is the autonomic nervous system speeding up the inner workings of your body. As the barking continues on, the neurons continue firing and you become increasingly tense.

When a dog barks, he creates sound waves. Sound waves are real physical entities that have a real physical effect on our bodies. We can't see them, but they are there and they carry the output of the barking dog to the sensory hair cells of our ears, which then carry the report of the sound into our brains. The brain, in turn, stimulates the ANS, which makes us feel tense.

Hormones are chemicals manufactured within our bodies. Under certain conditions, those hormones are released into our blood streams by our body's various glands. Different hormones do different things. They regulate our growth, our metabolism, our sexual desires and our sense of well being and distress. While the ANS makes us feel tense, it is the endocrine system that makes us feel anxious when we are in close proximity to a barking dog. That's not surprising really. The hormonal (endocrine) system is regulated by a primitive part of the human brain that seems to respond instantly to the primitive threats and messages of desperation that are implicit in the voice of a chronically barking dog. That's part of why barking drives people wild.

To really appreciate the impact that chronic barking has on your autonomic and endocrine systems and, thus, your emotional state, you must also factor-in the length of time required for our bodies to return to normal after an acoustic shock like that which we receive when a nearby dog releases a loud, sudden, percussive burst of barking. If it happens only once, you may return to normal in a matter of seconds. However, with each additional episode of barking, your systems fire-up more quickly, and it takes a little longer to return to baseline. If it happens frequently enough, you will still be wound-up from the last outburst when the next one hits, with the result that you will be forever tense, and at no point will you ever be able to become truly relaxed in your own home.

Some people have an autonomic nervous system that works like greased lightening, while others have a relatively sluggish function of the ANS. The more readily your ANS fires up, the faster your endocrine system will kick in, and the longer it will take your body to return to a relaxed state after you are exposed to a flurry of barking."

I'm not sure if the above is 100% scientifically accurate, so take it with a grain of salt.  With that said, the World Health organization and USA EPA have long recognized that percussive, loud noises such as dog barking pose a real human health hazard.

QUIET YOUR DOGS.

The next step down

Dog fanatics have been VERY successful in protecting the interests of dangerous dogs and their owners.  They have effectively neutered ANY intervention by authorities.

Barking laws?   Place the burden on the victim!
Biting laws?  Refer to barking laws!
BSL?  In the past year or so, we have had TWO DBRF's in Miami where PIT BULLS ARE BANNED!  Skeptical?  Consider this and this.

Consider that law is downstream from culture.   Our culture demands that the interests of dogs and dog owners is the overriding priority in all situations.  Fido's interests take precedence over all governing laws as well as the rights, interests and needs of any animal in his vicinity (and that includes us 2 legged "animals").   As long as the culture is completely dog-centric, our laws and law enforcement will be as well.

So, law enforcement is completely owned by dogger interests.  Is there any remaining territory for them to conquer?

Political agitators being what they are, they are working on the last bastion of defense that we have.  Self defense.

Consider this from the Watch Mickey Beat Cancer Page:

I wonder what their definition of "cruelty" is?   The mother beating a pit bull to get it to let go of her 2 year old child.  YUP!   Again, read the FaceBook page and consider the benefactors.  These folks think it is completely legitimate for a dog to rip the face off a toddler at the slightest provocation.  These miscreants do not care about any "cruelty" or "abuse" aimed at anything else.  This is a Pit Bull Protection Symposium and nothing else.

Nirvana

I, like most of you, crave a place free of nuisances.  More specifically, free from PET nuisances!   Dog owners are permitted to steal our peace, our health, even our very lives due to societies' Canine Superiority Complex (CSC).

Anyhoo, the other week I was travelling in my RV ("caravan" for you non-USA folks) and I happened to stumble on a DOG FREE CAMPING AREA!   Yes, THERE IS A DOG!   Er... I mean GOD.

Dog worshipers are probably reading this and, after scraping their brains off the ceiling and walls, demanding "HOW CAN SUCH AN OUTRAGE EXIST!  DO NOT THESE PEONS KNOW THAT THIS IS PURE EVIL RACISM!  DOGS MAKE EVERYTHING BETTER, WHY ARE THEY CREATING THIS HELL ON EARTH!"

Apparently, the policy under consideration has to do with the fact that the area in question has a very sensitive ecology.  There are a multitude of protected animal species in the vicinity.  Due to frequent observations of PET DOGS harassing and terrorizing said wildlife, no DOGS are allowed in the area.  These wild animals have enough problems without Fido making their lives a living hell.  The state stepped in and banned dogs completely over a wide area.  And, yes... these government environmental interests have a LOT of "juice".  I know, I used to be networked into that scene when I was a hike leader.  In a political battle, they would crush you like a bug.   They sent the dog foamers packing!

Now, while it is unfortunate that PEOPLE do not get the same considerations as wildlife (in this scenario, at least), I will take any advantage I can get!

At the time, I was staying in a state park about 20 miles away that was under no such restriction.  The Florida park rangers do a very good job of keeping canine visitors under control.  Note that I said "Very Good" and not "Perfect".   There was some yapping to be heard. 

This newly discovered destination will be my #1 go-to spot from now on.  Think about how great it would be to sit out and NOT WORRY about the peace being destroyed by some useless yard barker?   How wonderful would it be to be able to actually RELAX and not worry about someone else's useless, out-of-control, mutt?   Literally, I almost want to cry with relief.  

Note to dog owners, a word to the wise:  If you do not stop blaming everyone else for the problems you cause, and start taking responsibility, there are going to be more and more places like this.  AND, you will have no one to blame but yourselves.   Going forward, you are going to meet your match more and more often.  Just wait until the EPA gets on your shit.... your lives are going to be pure living HELL.