Nothing Says Compassion Like Bloody Kids And Dead Dogs
I recently discussed the modern rescue dog fallacy and also had an episode discussing veterinarian’s giving terrible training advice. Well both of things impacted my family directly last week. Take a listen.
Transcript:
Today is going to be a heavy one. Yeah, this one really strikes a nerve with me. And actually I’ve done a couple of episodes recently that kind of focus on the same issue. But this one’s a big deal because there were recent events in my own life impacting my own family. And we’re gonna talk about that today. So I’ve got some choice words, about what happened, and I wanna talk about the damage that the prevailing ideology on dogs and dog behavior is doing. ’cause boy, is it bad. It is just bad.
So I recently did an episode on the rescue dog fallacy, and I talked about how the stories behind the quote unquote rescue dogs, and where they came from and what their history is, and what they’ve experienced and how they’re feeling. How that really just doesn’t help, and it gets in people’s way. And that’s true, but it’s more than that. It’s more than that. It does real harm. People get hurt, dogs die because of this. I also did an episode talking about how vets are not equipped to be giving training advice in most situations, and they give terrible advice. And both of those episodes tie into this one.
So my husband and I, we talk a lot about this, of course, when we’re going back and forth in the evening, talking about our day and the stuff we see and, and all of that. And we, we kind of had a nice quote come out of one of our conversations one night. Compassion, nothing says compassion like bloody kids and dead dogs. And it really stuck with me,, and I say that now quite a bit, um, because it’s true. So by today’s standards, what we call compassion is really just enabling or virtue signaling, or both. But we tend to coddle dogs a lot and feel bad for them a lot.
And, you know, sometimes that’s just kind of human nature and maybe a result of somebody’s particular personality, right? They’re kind of a softie. And sometimes it’s worse than that. Sometimes it’s virtue signaling. It’s, you know, look at me. I have a rescue dog. I saved this dog. Oh, my poor baby, right? The fur, fur moms. And so it’s important, the story is important to make them feel good, to make them look good. But it doesn’t matter in the end because the result is the same. Like, rather you want to consider this malevolent and malicious and evil or just stupid, right? Or weak. They’re all bad. None of those are good, okay? And people get hurt because of it.
I have a specific example? And I could give you a thousand because I hear the stories all the time, right? I’m in the field. But this particular incident happened to my husband this week, so a couple of days ago, and he’s, he goes into people’s houses regularly. He’s also a, a business owner, and his line of work requires him to go into people’s homes. And of course, they often have dogs. So he meets a lot of dogs. He’s very adept at reading and interacting with dogs. Obviously he sees a lot of dogs at our house. So, and a lot of dogs with problems. Problems. So that’s good. And I think that that’s, uh, been helpful to him along the way. But in this particular case, he had a house to go into, uh, where they have two dogs, both quote unquote rescue dogs. The owner is a veterinarian. You can see this, you can see this coming together already. And one of the dogs has behaved rather aggressively, uh, toward him. At least that was his perception, and I believe it to be accurate. Like I said, he is very adept, uh, with reading dogs most of the time.
So he knew that there was a questionable dog in this house. And for that reason, he did not just walk into the house, um, or even through the gate into the yard or onto the porch. So there was a small gate, not real tall, but you have to open the gate to walk up onto the porch, uh, to the front door. And he did not do that because he knows there’s a questionable dog here. So he stayed on the other side of the gate. Despite that, he didn’t see his customer anywhere around. So he yelled, hello. And after he yelled, hello, the dog came bolting through the open front door and over the gate and him in the face removing his upper left lip. Let me say that again. Removing his upper left lip took a big chunk out of his face. He is missing facial tissue. He can’t hold liquids in with his lips anymore. He’s missing a lip.
There’s a hole in his face, um, despite the fact that he didn’t even go through the gate. Now, if this dog hadn’t had the history that it did, and there genuinely was no sign that something like this could happen, one might feel compelled to say, wow, that’s awful. That’s really unlucky for both parties. Who would’ve ever thought, and maybe that’s, that, maybe no one is at fault, right? Because you can’t predict everything. Behavior is somewhat unpredictable, but that’s not the case. That isn’t the case at all. Here’s the problem. Number one, this person says their dog has no history of aggression toward humans, which from his perception might be true. Maybe he hasn’t perceived that, but that would be difficult to believe. My husband has experienced aggressive behavior from this dog every time he has been in the house. Regardless, the dog clearly has not had the proper training.
The dog was also not being properly managed. Now, why do you think that is? Well, I can tell you that my husband has gotten a long backstory on the rescue dog, right? How scared he is, what his history might have been. So he is gotten that spiel, and he gets it for most of his customers, okay? Super common. Now that he knows it is a thing, um, he seems to notice it more. And he tells me regularly that he, he gets these stories multiple times a week from people about their poor rescue docs. And I mean, it, it just gets to the point where you’re like, oh, spare me. Okay, just spare me. Nobody cares. You didn’t rescue your dog. You bought your dog from an organization that maybe calls themselves a rescue organization, which is just bull crap for the most part. So he’s gotten backstory on this dog probably every time he is gone to the house. And clearly the guy’s been to trainers, he says, which he probably has, right? But he is going to trainers where all they do is use cookies. All they do is reward. All they do is praise. This dog has never seen punishment in its life, at least not from the humans in regard to its behavior. I’m sure it’s experienced punishment from the environment because the environment doesn’t care. But in terms of untoward behavior, barking, growling, et cetera, the dog has never been punished. The behaviors have never been punished, which is absolutely inexcusable.
Absolutely inexcusable. What if that had been a child, kid’s bad enough? It shouldn’t happen to anybody. What if that had been my daughter? She didn’t even go through the gate, and she gets her face ripped off. Wow. And we as a society, we defend this. So there are people that will look at this and feel bad for the dog, which in a sense, maybe they should, right? Because this was preventable. And there are people that will feel bad for the owner because the dog was behind the gate. But it’s not, it’s not excusable, it’s not okay. Proper training almost certainly would’ve prevented this from happening. If this dog had had any level of accountability, experienced any kind of punishment coming from humans in regard to its behavior, this wouldn’t have happened. Okay? We wouldn’t have had to spend our day in the emergency room and the plastic surgeon’s office. If someone had bothered to tell this dog that behavior wasn’t okay, but nobody did.
Nobody did because the poor rescue dog, the poor rescue dog, and whatever their sob story was, and the dog is so scared. The dog, by the way, is not fucking scared. That is not scared behavior. That is, this is my territory. Who are you? Go away behavior. The dog didn’t run and hide. The dog didn’t try to avoid, the dog wasn’t cornered. The dog came flying out of the house, leapt over the gate, and bit my husband in the face simply because he was there and he wanted to, and he could. And no one’s ever going to tell him that that’s not okay. That looking at humans that way, that growling at them, that way, that barking at them is not okay. So now they pay the ultimate price, most likely. And even if you’re willing to overlook not getting proper training, if you’re not going to get proper training for your dog, you at least have to manage them, which I do not condone because management fails. That is a very poor plan. Management will fail at some point.
So proper management would not be, well, I have an appointment with a service person today coming into my home. So I think I’ll leave my front door open and give my dogs full access to the door and the porch and the yard with a three-foot gate. That’s not proper management. But you know, when we have a, a poor little rescue dog, we have to give them free run of the property at all times. It’s very important. It’s very important that they’re always having fun and doing whatever they want to do. And that we never inconvenience them in any way or stress them out. We don’t wanna stress out the poor rescue dogs. And so the price that this dog will pay may very well be with its life. And by the way, it should be, it should be. This was a completely unprovoked tack. It did serious damage. And frankly, if it had been a few inches lower, it could have been his throat. And where would we be now? Where would we be Now, if that was the case, by the grace of God, the tum, the dog tumbled back down onto the other side of the gate and kind of sauntered away once my husband was doubled over with blood gushing from his face. But if he had tumbled down onto the side of the gate, he was on, who knows what would’ve happened.
Who knows, I have never felt more validated than I did on Monday morning. Now, I would much rather that my husband had gotten to keep his whole face and didn’t have to pay this kind of price. But the exact thing that I am always talking about is 110%. What caused this 110%. My husband got his lip ripped off from his face when he was doing nothing wrong because of the rescue dog fallacy. And because vets think their authorities on training wrong and wrong. So this dog may very well be put down now. And the reason that it should be is that I know this is not a person that is going to get effective training for their dog. They’re not going to do it. E colors are bad prong colors are bad. Structure is bad. Consequences are bad. Negative consequences are bad punishment’s, bad, bad, bad, bad. Everything is about having fun and reward, having fun and reward. And all you can do is increase behaviors and increase chaos with that system. There will be no order, there will be no modification, there will be no resisting impulses.
And if he’s not going to train the dog effectively, then the dog should be put down because it will do this. Again. It’s not a matter of if it’s when, and like I said, it could be a child and I’m not okay with that. So I will push to have this dog euthanized a hundred percent, a hundred percent. And it was avoidable. Most likely this was totally avoidable. A few corrections for untoward behavior. This dog could have been a completely different animal. We’ll never know. We’ll never know ’cause he didn’t do it. And even if he gets the chance, he won’t do it. Most likely, most likely. And then I have to think about the fact that this is a person who works in the dog field, right? They’re a respected authority in the dog field. They are probably, and I don’t know this for a fact, but it stands to reason if his philosophy on training is that we don’t use punishment and we only use reward, and we give the dogs freedom even when they haven’t earned it, even when they are exhibiting untoward behavior and people are coming to the house. I mean, if you’re going to do that, then that exhibits that indicates that your philosophy on training.
Is, uh, a bad one. And they have their clients asking them about training because their clients trust them. So what does he tell people when they’re coming into his office, asking them, asking him what they should do because their dog is, uh, aggressive toward people or afraid of people or however they’re going to put it. What does he tell them? Probably, uh, let’s put him on some Xanax, right? Which doesn’t do anything most of the time, or it’s, uh, go see so-and-So who will teach you how to shove cookies down your dog’s throat, so he can get worse and worse? Right? And I’m not okay with this. This terrifies me, and it upsets me, and it should upset you. Which brings me to my next point. You know, I have a lot of clients who worry about judgment. And, and I’m here to tell you, man, like it is time to stand up and take your public beating because it’s becoming more and more clear that you’re either part of the solution here or you are part of the problem. And there really is no middle ground.
And you have to question if you’re really, if you really have a strong moral compass, if you’re not willing to wear it on your sleeve, to wear your principles on your sleeve, if you’re hiding your prong collar, or you’re lying about your prong collar and your E-Collar, Which side of the fence does that fall on? You can’t possibly be part of the solution if you’re doing that. So you are enabling this ideology to flourish. Fear is not your friend. People do terrible things out of fear. It doesn’t make you admirable, and it certainly doesn’t make you strong, and it doesn’t make you feel better about yourself. So I’m not saying you have to be like me. I’m not saying you have to start a podcast and go on there and start yelling about how people need to use punishment.
But you do have to be willing to say, no, you are wrong. Punishment is necessary and healthy. And without it, people get hurt. Dogs get hurt, they pay the price. You get to go on feeling like a saint and other people get hurt, and it’s not okay. You have to be willing to say, no, actually, this is what’s best for my dog. This keeps my dog safe, and the people around him safe. And if you’re not willing to do that, well then what hope do we really have? That’s it for today’s episode, guys. Thanks for listening. This was a really heavy one. I’m probably not done. I’m probably going to be back. I’m probably going to have more.
But thanks for listening, and I look forward to next time.
