Now They Want To Deprive Us of Man's Best Friend

 If you look at my side bar there is a blog entitled War on Guns which is written by gun writer David Codrea. It is called that because, despite the ownership and bearing of arms, including firearms, being a right protected in our Constitution, there is a constant drum beat to disarm the American people. Oh, if we just gave up those guns.  It ain't gonna happen.

Now it appears there is a similar drum beat to take away our pets, or rather, to so regulate the ownership of pets, particularly dogs, so onerous as to make it not worth keeping them. My first response is "for cryin' out loud. Leave us alone." But of course, our betters can never do that. They always believe they know better how we should live our lives.

I am the proud owner-not pet parent, mind you-owner of three dogs. Yes, they are little pains in the butt. They each have their own personality, and of course I love them. So it was with some consternation that I read at the Epoch Times There Is A Growing Plot Against Dogs by Jeffery A. Tucker. Note that Tucker is for dog ownership.

In August 2020, Anthony Fauci co-authored an article in Cell that broadly called for “radical changes that may take decades to achieve: rebuilding the infrastructures of human existence.” Among the specifics, the article obliquely targets pet ownership, urging that we must reduce “unsafe exposure to animals.”

I wondered about that line at the time. The whole theory of the article is that humans are everywhere surrounded by icky things that can infect us. We’ve neglected these threats for many thousands of years by traveling around, moving here and there, domesticating animals, and living too closely together. This must change, they opine, because bad pathogens are ever more leaping from the outside world into humans.

...snip...

Mother Jones has reprinted a piece from the Guardian which is a riff on a new journal article published in Australia, pointedly called “Bad Dog?: The Environmental Effects of Owned Dogs.” If you understand how this works, you don’t even need to read it. Dogs are polluters and wasteful. Feeding them requires too much in the way of resources. They threaten birds. They emit harmful gases. They sully the environment and spread diseases.

To quote from the breathless article: Dogs “are implicated in direct killing and disturbance of multiple species, particularly shore birds, but also their mere presence, even when leashed, can disturb birds and mammals, causing them to leave areas where dogs are exercised. Furthermore, scent traces and urine and faeces left by dogs can continue to have this effect even when dogs are not present. Faeces and urine can transfer zoonoses to wildlife and, when accumulated, can pollute waterways and impact plant growth. Owned dogs that enter waterways contribute to toxic pollution through wash-off of chemical ectoparasite treatment applications. Finally, the sheer number of dogs contributes to global carbon emissions and land and fresh water use via the pet food industry. We argue that the environmental impact of owned dogs is far greater, more insidious, and more concerning than is generally recognised.”

The solution seems obvious: get rid of them!

This is all hogwash, as are most of the proposals coming from these people. They want us to live sterile lives, where we will live in sterile little apartments and not own anything, but we will be happy serving the elite...or else. Meanwhile, whole books have been written on the amazing things dogs can do, that mankind needs. All of that is utilitarian, to be sure. But dogs and people have relationships. Oh, not the kind we have with each other, of course. One cannot have a discussion with a dog about, say, religion. But if you pay attention, dogs are constantly communicating with their owners.

The main way that dogs communicate with humans is through petting. Pet a dog, and you instantly relax. And dogs like getting pets. Mine come over several times a day to get a pet or two, or three. They would sit there all day and receive pets if you let them. And you can tell them anything. They make great sounding boards. A dog has been called "man's best friend." I think God created dogs specifically to help man in myriad ways. First as a hunting companion, then as a herding dog, but we keep finding out ways that the dog touches our lives for the better.