GreNME
Philosopher
- Joined
- Sep 16, 2007
- Messages
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Considering the PETA attention whoring made fun of in the other thread, I figured I would contrast it with an example of where real animal welfare is taken into account with beneficial results. This AP article describes how dogs have been rescued for use at the Idaho State Correctional Institution, and the story is pretty interesting.
These are dogs that would have otherwise been put down for being too dangerous themselves, were it not for the program in the article that gives the dogs a job and a purpose. Considering it's a program that's been going strong for 20 years is pretty darned cool in my opinion. The program is obviously not aimed at making the dogs less 'dangerous', but it's giving the dogs a way to manage getting through life despite their aggression and learning to perform a 'job' in the process-- a whole lot closer to rehabilitation than dogs like this usually get.
What should be obvious here is that these dogs are extremely good at what they do here. The same traits that make dogs aggressive are often what make them good for sentry work, and a high prey drive can be redirected with enough practice to have a dog that's very obedient and good with its handlers while still being aggressive toward prisoners or 'intruders' to their space. Most people who train in schutzhund know how to work with these dogs very well, since (many of) the same types of training that works for making a well-trained schutzhund competitor works for dogs who are aggressive or have an aggressive history.
Of course, one of the animal rights groups has to chime in with their nonsense:
What the HSUS spokesperson gets ridiculously wrong is in trying to misrepresent what's actually taking place. The "kind of life" that the dogs get is actually rather nice in terms of how dogs see the world-- they get food, shelter, and interaction with handlers on a regular basis. There's no living in fear for when the next meal will come, no searching for shelter, and no anxiety from danger. What the HSUS spokesperson gets wrong is something common among animal rights groups-- anthropomorphizing is what harms dogs, because it sets people up with unrealistic expectations about the behavior of dogs, which results in poor treatment of dogs and eventually turns out contributing to the types of behavior from those same dogs that isn't tolerated by society. That just gets more dogs killed.
Over the last 25-30 years the number of dogs being euthanized regularly has dropped from 20 million a year to about 2 million a year, and programs like the one in the article above can help to keep that number going down while improving the quality of life for unwanted (or unadoptable) dogs. For the price tag on the program ($100k a year), I'd say it's money well-spent that could quite possibly be a model for many prisons across the country looking to improve their security with minimal budget increases.
AP article said:
These are dogs that would have otherwise been put down for being too dangerous themselves, were it not for the program in the article that gives the dogs a job and a purpose. Considering it's a program that's been going strong for 20 years is pretty darned cool in my opinion. The program is obviously not aimed at making the dogs less 'dangerous', but it's giving the dogs a way to manage getting through life despite their aggression and learning to perform a 'job' in the process-- a whole lot closer to rehabilitation than dogs like this usually get.
What should be obvious here is that these dogs are extremely good at what they do here. The same traits that make dogs aggressive are often what make them good for sentry work, and a high prey drive can be redirected with enough practice to have a dog that's very obedient and good with its handlers while still being aggressive toward prisoners or 'intruders' to their space. Most people who train in schutzhund know how to work with these dogs very well, since (many of) the same types of training that works for making a well-trained schutzhund competitor works for dogs who are aggressive or have an aggressive history.
Of course, one of the animal rights groups has to chime in with their nonsense:
the article said:
What the HSUS spokesperson gets ridiculously wrong is in trying to misrepresent what's actually taking place. The "kind of life" that the dogs get is actually rather nice in terms of how dogs see the world-- they get food, shelter, and interaction with handlers on a regular basis. There's no living in fear for when the next meal will come, no searching for shelter, and no anxiety from danger. What the HSUS spokesperson gets wrong is something common among animal rights groups-- anthropomorphizing is what harms dogs, because it sets people up with unrealistic expectations about the behavior of dogs, which results in poor treatment of dogs and eventually turns out contributing to the types of behavior from those same dogs that isn't tolerated by society. That just gets more dogs killed.
Over the last 25-30 years the number of dogs being euthanized regularly has dropped from 20 million a year to about 2 million a year, and programs like the one in the article above can help to keep that number going down while improving the quality of life for unwanted (or unadoptable) dogs. For the price tag on the program ($100k a year), I'd say it's money well-spent that could quite possibly be a model for many prisons across the country looking to improve their security with minimal budget increases.
