I am addicted to the various “animal cop” type shows on Animal Planet. I am not sure why. Because nothing gives you that unsatisfying sucker punch to the diaphram quite like ANOTHER “the da office decided not to prosecute due to lack of evidence” story in which some dog was tortured to death with cigarette burns and sulphuric acid by stupid punk ghetto kids who will grop up to be serial killers and rapists, and there NOTHING to be done about it because there is NO ACTUAL VIDEO COVERAGE OF IT HAPPENING, JUST THE EYEWITNESS STATEMENT OF A DOZEN RESIDENTS.
Sometimes I just want to go ahead and kick people so hard their mamma dies.
Anyway, my rant is not about these people. It’s about the vets and staff they have at the various humane societies featured in these shows. I will start out by saying that these people are awesome. they volunteer, or work for very little pay, at a job that must be so depressing 6 days out of 7, bearing witness to the deepest, darkest evil of human nature that would abuse perfectly innocent animals in the name of fun, or boredom, or total lack of interest and concern.
these people are fucking heros to me.
But…I have a beef.
If you watch these shows, there is the point in every episode, after the dirty, starving, thin, beat up dog is finally rescued from the horror of its life, brought to the shelter, cleaned up, wounds bandaged, and hunger satisfied. After all this…they always do a “test” to determine if this dog is able to be adopted out.
One of these tests is always the “food aggression” test, where they give the dog a bowl of food, and then take a fake arm and touch the food, pull away the bowl, and touch the dog.
Sometimes the dog totally ignores the hand.
But sometimes it growls and snaps. Because it’s a dog. That’s been beated and starved. And then “ohhhhh…what a shame. He’ll have to be put to sleep because we would just not be comfortable putting him in a home where he could bite someone. Or injure a child.”
wtf?
First off, it’s a dog’s instinct to try to bite a hand that messes with his food. Alot of dogs are fine with it, but this is why EVERYBODY knows (or SHOULD know) that you don’t mess with a dog’s food while they’re eating.
“oh ESC! what if the dog bit A CHILD!!!! OHHHH NOOOOO!!!”
And that is why:
1. you NEVER leave your child unsupervised with a dog
2. as soon as that kid is old enough to comprehend the word “no,” you teach them to NEVER EVER EVEY TOUCH DOGGY’S FOOD BOWL. the same way you teach them to not touch the oven, or mommy’s ugly glass birds of the world collection. You smack their hands and say NO.
But no, instead of expecting people to have a speck of intelligence, they put the dog to sleep. I understand if the dog viciously attacks that fake hand, ripps it off it’s wooden dowel and shreds it to bits. Maybe that is not the dog you want to take on family picnics. But a dog that growls and snaps at you…THAT dog is NORMAL!
Dude, if you try to fuck with my food if I’ve been starved for months, I will EAT THAT HAND!
Also…Sadie would fail that test.
She doesn’t mind so much if you touch her food bowl while she’s eating. But if you touch HER…she freezes, every muscle in her body tenses, and she lets out a string of growls to scare the evil out of Satan himself.
“rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrragagagagagagaaaaaaaoouww
wwwwwwllllllrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeooooooooooowww
wwwwwwwgggggggggggggggggggggggggrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr”
how do I know this? It’s how Kev and I find entertainment.
“hey sadie! gimmie that!”
“rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr”
she has never bit either of us. I don’t think she ever would - it’s not in her nature to bite. Oh, but she puts on a scary enough show.
And if we have kids one day, and I catch THEM pulling that same stunt, you better BELIEVE their ass is getting beat for it.
If the atlanta humane society had done that same test on Sadie, she would never have passed. She would have been put to sleep, and I would have ended up with some lame, totally less cool and unwonderful dog.
thank god for the incompetance and uncaring of southern humane societies.
anyway…that’s the end of my “out of nowhere” rant.
back to work
