I don’t know how much I have spent. He’ll probably get the house too if he outlasts me.

Thanks for the congrats.

Having trouble with the older cat being very mad at me, for he is giving me dirty looks, like I betrayed him.

I needed another cat to love, I tell him. He tells me (by his expression) you got ME.

No one’s breathing down your neck about why you’ve chosen $6,000 of radiation after wafting in with $300 sunglasses and a $400 dye job.

Mainstream media trots out these stories every few months it seems, likely because we always respond to them and never mind how. But what never ceases to amaze me is how readily they find folks willing to appropriate the mantle of moral authority and then bloviate at length about it.

Perhaps the amount of time and money someone would spend to rehab and protect a potentially untrustworthy dog is similar to spending thousands on medical treatments.

Not a perfect analogy because there is the threat to other people and animals in that case which makes a much more persuasive argument against it…

I wanted another cat but Thistle has been there a year because she was a black cat. She is sweet, though.

I wonder what Jon Katz would say about me wasting my money. Hahaha.

Comment by Sheyna — July 23, 2008 @ 7:29 am

I didn’t tar and feather him for putting down his dog. It may well have been that was, in the end, the only option he had. But of course, all we have are his words making the case for that.

I tarred and feathered him for repeatedly making the point that anyone who spends much money on a pet is clearly the kind of person who believes her dogs are her children and who has the inability to make good decisions regarding the animals in her care because of a psychological problem with understanding that a dog is not a person in a fur coat.

In other words, that anyone who makes decisions different from his own is a nutcase.

As for your larger point …

Yes, I believe and have written that euthanasia may be the only responsible choice for a dog who has bitten or is likely to bite a person (prey aggression or dog-dog aggression is another matter entirely). But I also advocate a complete physical work-up by a good veterinarian to rule out potential physical issues and a referral to a veterinary behaviorist or trainer with experience in canine aggression for evaluation and advice before euthanasia is even considered.

That said, I believe relatively few people are able to “manage” a dog who has bitten someone (really bitten because the dog meant to bite and did, not a nip or a tooth catching in play, or a bite wound as a result of breaking up a fight, etc.). I do know more than a few people with high-level dog skills,time and dedication who have and do manage such dogs, and even a few with an even higher level of training skills and committment who have managed over time to recondition such animals.

But that’s not something that most people can do. In those cases with a dog who theoretically could be reconditioned but is in a home where that’s not possible — or one with children who will be put at high risk — well, there aren’t many options.

You can:

1) Keep the dog, try to avoid problems, hope for the best, and euthanize AFTER the animal bites again;
2) Lie about the animal and rehome him (you have to lie, because no one will take a dangerous dog as a pet), setting up a likely attack on someone else, statistically likely to be a child, after which the dog will be euthanized;
3) Euthanize.

As I’ve written before, I’ve had the unfortunate experience of knowing a child whose face was torn off by her family’s dog. Over the years, that child endured many surgeries and turned from an outgoing little girl to a shy, sad child who cried when forced to play with children she didn’t know because she knew they would taunt her for her scars.

I’m sorry, but I would never take a chance of being responsible for a person’s life to be ruined as this child’s was. Nor can I in good conscience suggest to readers that they take such a course of action.

***

And by the way … although the turn Katz has taken lately is beyond comprehension to me, considering he’s a smart fellow and a fabulous writer who surely has been around lots of really incredible dog-owners/trainers, etc., I do think he has turned out some fabulous, thought-provoking work. Most notably: This piece from Slate, one of my all-time favorite pieces of writing on dogs ever.