Puppy cams and the Phillipines

So, I've been watching a puppy cam. Cute little puppies squiggling about. They are adorable.

Yes, it is a breeder. Yes, I am more a proponet of rescue. All of my pets have been rescues, except the fish. It is hard to see new puppies and not think of all the dogs being euthanized at the shelters. But, you see, I don't want to wipe out dogs from the face of the earth, I want them bred well, responsibly, and healthily, so that our pets and canine partners have well adjusted, happy, healthy, treasured lives - not misery. Every dog has to have come from someone breeding their dog, so I still want dog breeders out there - just good ones.

This breeder knows where every puppy she has ever bred is. She breeds thoughtfully and responsibly. She raises the puppies with love and compassion. She selects homes carefully. She rejects homes she believes unsuitable, and she takes back and rehomes dogs that don't work out. She's a good one. But, people who's only information is googling a puppycam on the web keep throwing puppymill innuendos and accusations.

Look before you leap! If you keep crying "puppymill" on the good breeders, whose going to listen to you when you trip over a really bad one? You just loose crediblity with all the dog lovers who are watching, and turn your cause into a fringe weirdo thing. Don't do it! Don't throw accusations out to see if anything will stick; look, inquire, investigate and then speak up. Those people oooing and awwing and i-want-one-ing about the puppies are the ones you need to win to our cause, but you won't do it with bad facts and obvious misinformation. The cause is much too important to derail with that kind of stupidity.

Then there are the ones who keep trying to slip in videos and whatnot of the horrible dog miseries in other countries - the more shocking the better.

Again, stupid, stupid, stupid!

As has been proven over and and over and as your own websites will mention, seeing the horror of these situations doesn't raise people's compassion to it - it just hardens them against it and makes it easier to accept. You are being backwards. Instead of lowering the compassion level of those who have compassion and concern for dogs by repeatedly shocking them until they become blase to the abuse, raise the compassion level of the people who are lacking it by showing the videos of dogs as treasured, beloved, wonderful creatures to those who lack empathy. You need to build compassion, not destroy it.

By trying to horrify the puppycam viewers, you are working the wrong crowd. Showing shocking videos to people isn't "raising awareness," it's a self-indulgent ego trip to gloat over how much you can shock them. Get over it. You aren't a little brother chasing your sister with a worm or a fresh buger, and you are contributing to the continuation of the misery of those animals by raising the level of disempathy and apathy every single time you show one of those videos. Find ways to spread the love and appreciation for dogs instead. If you are going to go to the dog markets in the Phillipines, get the dog vendors and consumers into watching puppycams and such and you will have a much more profound effect! We don't need to know how bad what they are doing is, THEY DO! We have our own faults to work on.

Just my opinion.

Practice, Toenails, and Cockroaches

So, we had practice today. Many people weren't there, but some were. Enough to run a couple of teams, anyway. The dogs did reasonably well. Spoiled One was going for the tug, and tugging very enthusiastically. I used a tennis ball as a crutch, but he's definately improved on that. Also, he did not create any passing issues. In fact, the littlest dog on the team, who is still refining her passes, whipped right by him, even when I released him way too early and they passed on the jump. His box turn wasn't, but I hadn't been working that like I should. I may have to just keep working that in homework.

Weasel was running fast, because she was running first and right before her Idol Dog, so she was in flying ferret heaven. With her running first and the Idol dog running second, they timed at 8.1 seconds, which I thought was cool. Of course you have to factor in things like the timer starts when the first dog breaks the beam, while in tournaments it starts and you have to hit it right to minimize the delay between the timer start and the dog crossing the start line, but hopefully, I'll do okay with that. Other factors weigh in the other direction: we're practicing on grass and an uneven surface, the Idol Dog was 10 - 15 feet late on her pass (because Weasel is such a spaz, she's hard to judge where to pass). It might be kind of fun to run them in pairs at the next U-FLI tournament we go to. Of course, I would also love to run Spoiled One and Weasel in pairs. There are a number of obsticals to that goal. Weasel usually runs with the team, so it might be too many heats for her to run pairs as well. I can't run two different dogs in the same race. However, someone offered to work Weasel at practice a bit, and seemed to have fun, so maybe I could sucker someone into running her and I could run Spoiled One? Hmmmm. . . .

On the way home, they each got a plain Lottaburger. As they sprawled in the living room, sated and tired, I lopped the tippy tips off of their toenails. Because I keep them in when I am at work, now, they don't get the exercise of running the fence and discussing politics with the neighbor dogs. This is probably the first time Spoiled One's nails have been long enough to trim. FWIW, the drimmel sucks, use chopper type clippers. Just my opinion.

Weasel is always bringing me little gifts to play with. She finds rubber bands and sets them on my knee and gives me the pleading, hopeful look, trying to entice me into a game of tug o war. Or she drops the unopened mail at my feet, checking to see if it's permissible to chew it up. Bottle caps and bits of scraps of things are always appearing around my feet as potential items to be tossed and caught for doggie amusement. Lately, she's been finding the cat's toy mice and offering them up. It's so cute. Well, this morning, I let her in from her morning constitutional in the yard, and she presented me with a cockroach. A LIVE cockroach.

Flyball Practice and New Dog

Well, we had practice this week. It seemed to go reasonably well. Some of the puppies and newer dogs made some progress. There is a little red and white aussie that is so desperate to please her owner she pretty much can't do anything but appeasement behaviours. I think her confidence will really improve once she understands what he wants of her, and learns the concept of learning. It would be fun to try shaping with her, just to help draw her out and have her offer behaviours. It's painful and frustrating to hear him call her and see her run back to her crate and hide. She's a rescue, and I would kind of like to do painful things to whoever had her before.

Never never never call a dog to you to scold it. I don't know for certain, of course, that is what the previous owner did, but I am really suspicious that it is. It sets up an unfortunate dynamic, because, of course, when the current owner calls her, and she hesitates or starts to slink, he can't help being frustrated and even if you try to hide that frustration, a lot of dogs will pick up on your frustration and become even more distressed. She's doing better, though. He was taking her over jumps on leash, and she went from being unable to take her eyes off him enough to make it over the jump and submissively flattening herself to the ground to looking forward and going over the jumps and then sitting in anticipation of praise.

There was another new dog, named "Nacho" that I think will have a lot of fun. He did very well playing with the other dogs. He's a cute little yellow mixed breed dog that seems like he has a terrier body and and a malanois head. I'm prejudiced towards him because Z-dog and he were playing together and it was cute. It's nice to have dogs that play something other than "chase me" games.

I was kind of bad though and didn't really work my dogs. Z-dog did run in a line up being passed both ways and was fine. He still is very leery of Captain, but, he ran after him in line up fine. I should have whined and insisted on using props when my dogs ran, but I didn't. So, even though their boxturns were good during boxwork with the props, they degenerated during actual runs. It's probably the worst thing I could do in their training at this point, and I am frustrated with myself about it.

Weasel consistently dunked her frisbee in the water bowl after every run. Z-dog still overleaps the timer beam so we can't get a time on him, the blasted boinging bunny rabbit. We still need a practice space and I still want an RV.

Life goes on.

http://www/weaselpuppy.com