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Obama admin moves to keep protection for wolves
By Gina Spadafori
January 22, 2009
Damn it, Terrierman, quit scooping us:
Yes, we are going to have to shoot some problem wolves to keep things under control in some areas, but NO we are not going back to wholesale extermination of the wolf, thank you very much.
Huzzah.
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Oh, Terrierman just wants wolves so his lurcher-owning friends can engage in THEIR blood sport with wolves as they do with coyotes. And as he himself does with various small critters. It baffles me that you all think Terrierman is such a great guy. Someone needs to tell me why HIS blood sport is so much superior to dogfighting.
Comment by EmilyS — January 22, 2009 @ 2:24 pm
Emily … just trying to get context here: Are you a vegan? Or, do you buy humanely and sustainably raised meat?
I ask because I’m always particularly curious how people who pick up shrink-wrapped bits of factory-farm tortured birds and mammals are so quick to bash hunters.
If I had to choose, I’d rather live free and die flying than be a chicken in a “concentrated animal feeding operation.” I’d also rather be a coyote pulled down by a lurcher than a lifelong production unit in a shit-filled cage in a puppy mill.
I think conservation-minded hunters are better to animals and the land, and to the need for the responsible managing of both, than are industrial/corporate agri-systems.
And I think “blood sport” is as loaded a term as the word “breeder” spat out with contempt by an animal-rights extremist. There is good hunting, and there is bad hunting. Just as there are good breeders and bad breeders.
We need to start fresh from a philosphical framework that first determines our own view on our relations to animals. Animal-rights activists believe we do not have primacy, that our species is no better or entitled than any other.
.I believe we do have primacy, but that with primacy comes the responsbility of stewardship and compassion. I know many hunters who have a keen sense of both, and an entire food system that has no clue about either.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — January 22, 2009 @ 2:35 pm
As a grower, I would do the transport myself to bring wolves to Valley Forge National Park.
Too many white-tailed deer, not enough predators.
It’s really pathetic when your Border Collie has never worked sheep, but she can gather white-tailed deer and push them off “her territory” (ie, the community garden) or drive them by my husband “off-site” (ie, anyplace not the community garden) when she wants a bit of fun.
Comment by Dorene — January 22, 2009 @ 2:44 pm
Dorene, do you have photos of your BC workin’ the deer? Hmm, I may have to re-think not wanting to live with a BC* in the future. Never thought of a garden protector!
*nothing against BCs! Just didn’t think I was much of a herding dog type gal ;)
Comment by straybaby — January 22, 2009 @ 4:13 pm
EmilyS is simply a gas bag and a fool.
For one, no one in this country hunts wolves with lurchers. Wolves are pack animals and a lurcher against a pack of wolves is “maladaptive” for the dog. But of course, Emily S. does not know that because she does not know anything about wolves or lurchers (and not too much about dogs from what little I can tell).
Which brings me to why she is so bitter.
EmilyS is pissed off because she routinely spouts nonsense, and when I ask her for ANY authority to back up her nonsense, her answer is that she is too lazy to look it up.
Too lazy, too hazy, too crazy. Got it.
EmilyS., for the record, my dogs do not kill anything; I DO. It is not hard to kill. I do it with my bare hands, same as the guys who put beef and chicken on your table (assuming you are not a vegan). It’s called “dispatch” and I am very good at it, and I do not use a gun and I do not use a knife. It is not hard to kill. Hunting takes skill, but killing does not. But you do not know that, because you do not hunt, you do not have terriers, and you do not have lurchers. No doubt much of life on farms and fields is entirely mysterious to you. Your expertise is in the rich world of fantasy and resentment. Well, good luck with both of those. I have never seen anyone make a happy life from the marriage of those two, but who knows; you may be the first.
PBurns
http://www.terrierman.com
Comment by PBurns — January 22, 2009 @ 5:21 pm
Heck, I’d love a pack of wolves to keep the deer from partying at my poor abused crab apple tree, out from under the bird feeder, and from nibbling the lower buds from my biggest maple tree. Unfortunately where I live is too settled for wolves to live comfortably and manage the deer herd. Instead, they suffer parasitism and a dwindling food supply and ever increasing No Hunting from property owners.
I am all in favor of blood sports. Coursing dogs bringing down prey or terriers going to earth strikes me as being much more in balance than sending feed lot cattle down a chute to be gunned, be slung on a hook and have their trachea ripped out. Just MHO.
Comment by Anne T — January 22, 2009 @ 5:31 pm
I’m a commercial fisherman’s daughter, a hunter’s granddaughter and niece, a cattle rancher’s niece, and I’ve participated in slaughter and butchery. I’m also a Yosemite climber’s stepdaughter, and I spent a fair bit of my childhood in the back of beyond. I’m no expert on any of it, but I reckon I know more than most folks who, like me, spend most of their days in suburban gardens.
Nonetheless, I consider hunting and fishing solely for sport to be repugnant. I’ve thought long and hard about it, too, this isn’t some snap decision made after catching Bambi on the tube. I thought about it, I weighed it, and I decided that killing or — in the case of angling — torturing animals for just for fun was not something I was going to condone, no matter how much I loved or liked or respected the person doing it.
Now, as it happens, I do also avoid the products of factory farms, I buy locally-caught fish, I have never bought a kitten or puppy from a mill, and I’ve stocked my aquarium with domestically-bred fishes rather than ones captured in the wild. So what? It doesn’t give me the moral high ground. It just means that, like many here, I try to act on my beliefs. We’re all works in progress.
Comment by Eucritta — January 22, 2009 @ 5:37 pm
Eucritta, yours is a consistent moral stand. You’ve thought about it, and you make your choices consistently and in line with your well-considered beliefs.
My problem is not with you, but with people who think hunting is abhorrent yet fail to recognize the greater cruelty and far more wide-reaching environmental devastation of the intensive production of food animals. Or rather, pretend they aren’t involved or responsible because all they did was buy the meat. To me, that’s morally inconsistent.
I eat little meat, but what I do buy (the majority of which is for the dogs and cats) is from sources that practice humane and sustainable standards. And honestly, although I can never see myself pulling the trigger on a deer, I don’t have a problem with those who do. That’s my moral consistency at work.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — January 22, 2009 @ 6:06 pm
Straybaby —
My husband is the digital shutterbug — we’ve put it on our list that we’ll get photos of Pepper working the deer this year.
Actually, all of my PA ag-but-not-livestock collegues told me to “get a herding dog” because they would drive the deer just like Pepper does. However, when talking to herding dog breeders who lived outside of PA, when I told them that I was hoping the puppy would grow up to do this type of thing, they were very, very skeptical that such a thing was possible — I think I got bounced from some breeders’ “possible puppy lists” for being “unreasonable” and “stark, raving mad” ;-)
We never trained her to do it — and boy, did it freak out my husband (who hadn’t read the herding books) the first time she rounded up the deer at the river and drove them right by his left side, but obviously, something within her told her this would be fun and useful and I’ve never seen a reason to tell her she was wrong! ;-)
Most of my PA sustainble ag collegues who don’t have livestock are pretty laid back about their dogs’ breed — as long as it’s a “herding breed” they’re happy. So if you don’t want a BC per say, you might get the same garden protection from a relation. . .
Comment by Dorene — January 22, 2009 @ 6:38 pm
The funny thing is, my Cardigan Corgi (one of Patrick’s favorite maligned breeds as a ‘mishapen’ showdog) is a fantastic garden protector. :P He learns boundaries easily, is sensible enough to leave coyotes and ‘family’ cats alone, and runs off feral cats and deer. (He also is pretty good at vermin control, although one of my things that I least miss about country life was his tendency to leave trophies on the porch steps, as it looked like we were hiding a Bunny Guillotine somewhere.
Comment by Cait — January 22, 2009 @ 7:18 pm
PB’s and my post must have arrived here about the same time as I would have phrased mine slightly differently had I read his beforehand.
I would have said that IF you were going after wolves, you would need the breeds used in the middle ages, not today’s lurcher which was never from the get go designed to be a wolf killer. The modern Irish Wolfhound is essentially an Edwardian re-creation, and since no one hunts wolves with it anymore, I would hold it’s ability to do so suspect were it allowed.
Emily, I would suggest if you are going to use an example, you attempt to research something about the example you are going to use. Try Googling lurchers. And then go to Patrick’s site to see what he does with his dogs. If you’ve ever had a woodchuck invasion in your cow or horse pasture, you’d welcome him in a heartbeat!
He would happily ridicule me and my dogs given half a chance, because we only do artificial sports such as LGRA and ASFA/AKC LC. And I’d let him, because it’s a pale substitute for what they were originally bred for, and I am all for any attempt to prove a breed’s original intent. In this case, something akin to the original purpose, no matter how flawed, is better than nothing at all! IMHO.
Comment by Anne T — January 22, 2009 @ 9:33 pm
Thanks Dorene! I will be on you to get some pics online when spring comes round ;)
I think my “thing” about a BC was the “job” angle. I would feel obligated to provide one and I don’t think my cats want to be the “herd” ;) lol!~ I live with an active dog (Dalmatian), but she would be useless as a garden protector. She likes to invite all to play. I can just see her play bowing to deer and other critters who would love to eat the garden. When she’s not eating the greens and fruit that is, lol!~ She’s developed a taste for kale and likes to dig through my CSA shares for it. Carrot greens are also a fav . . .
A friend of mine has just started taking her city living aussie/bc mix herding in PA. Apparently, the girl’s got some herding chops in her :) I’ll prob go watch when the weather gets warmer. And take pics!
I’m going to have to look at the critters that are around where I’m moving. From what I understand, I’m going to have above ground and underground “issues”. Hmm, this could get interesting . . .
Cait, I haven’t had any “trophies” left for me in about 20yrs. When a couple of my kitties were young and I had the flu, they brought me “gifts” instead of “trophies”. Gifts consisted of young birds and mice, alive and well and getting “handed” to me on my bed! These days, the felines are waterbug controllers. They do a good job of taking them into the other end of the apt, and play a rousing game of soccer that doesn’t end well for the bug! Oh dear, decapitated fuzzy critters, been awhile . . .
Comment by straybaby — January 23, 2009 @ 1:29 am
so why do I think this was a shout out to Sarah Palin (etc). I mean there are lots of things rhat need fixin’…
Comment by nancy freedman-smith — January 23, 2009 @ 4:58 am
My bad for not making this clear.
The change was part of the administration’s sweeping “hold for review” of all previous admin’s pending regulatory changes, all those last minute changes outgoing presidents love to try to slip by the new guys.
Something that pretty much happens with every change in admin, at least the last few turnovers of the White House.
In other words, no one woke up on Inauguration Day and said either, “Let’s save wolves” or “Let’s stick it to Palin.”
Comment by Gina Spadafori — January 23, 2009 @ 7:19 am
Of course I have looked at Terrierman’s links and read many of his posts for a long time. He and his friends like to use dogs to kill other animals. (Personally I think he’s lying when he claims that HE kills all the animals his dogs catch, but that’s a moral distinction without a difference)
And duh: no one uses lurchers to kill wolves, because currently it’s not allowed. If it were allowed, they WOULD use them as they do for coyotes. Or they’d use some other large hunting dog. Not wolfhounds of course, because that’s not a “real” dog… If they found a lone wolf (and wolves are often alone), they’d set their dogs on it.
They use their dogs to kill other animals for sport. I notice you.. and he.. avoided the question of what makes him better than a dogfighter…
Still waiting.
Patrick thinks he’s the king of all dogknowledge and anyone who challenges him must be ignorant. Notice how few comments appear on his blog? I can tell you that his writing on AmStaffs/bull&terrier breeds is complete and utter garbage. I know many people who have sent in comments that don’t appear.
Meanwhile you are all constantly commending and quoting someone who is as OPPOSED to the purebred dog as any PETA wacko. Strange bedfellows…
Comment by EmilyS — January 23, 2009 @ 8:31 am
Meanwhile you are all constantly commending and quoting someone who is as OPPOSED to the purebred dog as any PETA wacko. Strange bedfellows…
Comment by EmilyS — January 23, 2009
OK, Emily, ya got me. I’m a sekrit animal-rights operative.
How Patrick runs his blog and his comments queue is up to Patrick. Clearly, we have a different way of doing things here with regards to comments.
As far as this “opposition” to purebred dogs, it’s too bad you’re apparently not able to understand what the issues are:
It’s about defining a breed by what the dog does, rather than what a piece of paper says it is or should be. It’s about reforming breed standards that call for unhealthy, unhappy dogs, and reforming closed gene pool breeding practices that replicate not only physical “type” but also known health problems. It’s about calling for reforms that insist breed clubs rewrite bad standards and use well-planned outcrosses to fix genetic bottlenecks that are killing dogs. And it’s about not winking at puppy-mill scum to underwrite dog show glory.
If you can point me to anywhere that PETA has these aims in common with me — or indeed show me that they have any end game other than the extinction of domestic animals — then do so.
Otherwise, you’re once again making claims you are unable or unwilling to back up.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — January 23, 2009 @ 9:11 am
Yes, EmilyS is proving my point, isn’t she?
For anyone interested, I have an entire page devoted to dispatch. Read it here >> http://www.terrierman.com/dispatch.htm
As for the difference between hunting with terriers and baiting or dog fighting, it is not a hard distinction for anyone who knows ANYTHING about eiher of them. See >> http://terriermandotcom.blogsp.....-dogs.html
And Eucritta, I completely support your decision. I am pro-choice to the bone. Ask anyone :)
Patrick
Comment by PBurns — January 23, 2009 @ 4:33 pm
If anyone needs any further clarification of Patrick’s views, please take it up with him over on his his blog.
The discussion can continue. The name-calling is over.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — January 23, 2009 @ 8:35 pm
The various Bull and Terriers breeds are not molossers/guard dogs. Period. End of discussion. Anyone making such a statement has no credibility on the subject. Period. End of discussion. It doesn’t matter how many acolytes he has. He is just wrong.
The defense of groundhog-getting (oh, no the dog doesn’t kill them, well except sometimes…) is exactly the same as that made by dogfighters (oh no the dogs don’t kill each other, well except sometimes…). And it’s the same B.S. Using dogs to kill other animals for human entertainment is the definition of “blood sport”.
Gina: if Terrierman were a dogfighter with a provocative website, including those oh so useful vet. instructions for when his dog has been injured “not” engaging in mortal or near- mortal combat with another animal, you’d never extol him the way you do. You wouldn’t even allow him to post.
It’s fun to attack me. So much more fun than to address the issue which NO ONE has even tried:
Of course dogfighting is disgusting and repellent.
Why is using dogs in fatal go-to-ground “work” any better?
Comment by EmilyS — January 23, 2009 @ 9:32 pm
Gina: in regard to hunting and your assumption that I am opposed to it:
In what way is using terriers to kill (or not kill) groundhogs or opossums or whatever “hunting”? What is your definition of “hunting”? In what way does questioning the use of dogs to kill other animals constitute “bashing hunters”? Is the person who uses ground squirrels for live target practice “hunting”? Is the person who shoots a badger in his field just because it annoys him “hunting”?
Comment by EmilyS — January 23, 2009 @ 9:43 pm
EmilyS —
Do you know anyone in agriculture?
Groundhogs aren’t mere “annoyances” — they are serious pests that can devistate an entire season’s worth of work in an afternoon. Plus, if you have livestock or heavy equipment, a wasn’t-there-yesterday groundhog hole in the wrong-to-you-but-close-to-the-buffet-for-the-groundhog place can cost thousands of dollars in vet/repair bills when livestock or equipment stumbles in the hole.
I’ll give you the whole list: rats, mice, voles, rabbits, groundhogs, oppossums, raccons, wild turkey and white tailed deer.
None of these in any numbers are “useful” in agriculture and for those of us who grow in urban and suburban areas, we can’t shoot them like our rural collegues. (I had to call the police to dispatch a rabid raccoon last year, because I am forbidden to do it myself.)
Now, I completely support barn cats and training one’s dog to patrol growing areas for varmits, but as I tell those who inquire about volunteering: “Agriculture is an infiniately expandable activity.” - and that means for both the humans and the dogs involved. To tend to all my crops, I just don’t always have time to go hunting. So, growers like myself have standing offers with terriermen like Patrick to deal with the earthen varmits and local bowhunters to try to clear out the deer.
Patrick has a standing offer for him, his family and his dogs to come out and clear the varmits at my community garden anytime he wishes. The situation for most growers like myself is that he’s got more such offers than he can possible fulfill — which should tell you something about the need.
So, as to why is encouraging earth dogs to hunt and kill groundhogs better than dogfighting? I can’t see any benefit to society from dogfighting. I’ve seen the destruction that groundhogs can accomplish in a very short time — destruction that in my case means no food in my cupboard and no food at the local food bank.
If you need more information on why groundhogs in agricultural areas is not beneficial, I suggest trying out a gardening or agriculture e-list or blog and just ask “What do you think of groundhogs?” It’s a discussion that usually ends with recipes! ;-)
Dorene
Comment by Dorene — January 24, 2009 @ 7:49 am
Emily, it’s clear you have issues with Patrick and his beliefs. Take your issues with Patrick over to his blog.
My beliefs on the place for hunting in a larger moral context were made clear here, in the second post on this thread.
This is over.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — January 24, 2009 @ 7:54 am
God damn, someone better tell Pip that she’s a fightin’ dog:
http://picasaweb.google.com/HH.....7245218306
And break the news to that gangsta son of hers, Audie Vick:
http://smartdogs.wordpress.com.....champions/
Oh, and for the record, EmilyS …
Patrick’s dogs may not perform the dispatch — after all, they are often smaller than their quarry.
But mine do. I’m not part of the process at all.
It’s called pest control, and is of value to me and my farming neighbors — who have given official permission for Pip and her peeps to trespass for hunting purposes.
Something for the vegans to remember — the hippie soybean farmer from whence your organic tofu comes is killing *all sorts of critters* to protect that crop. With traps, with a rifle, with poison and smoke bombs in the burrows. Or with dogs. (Mine eat the ‘hogs they catch, btw, unless the critter is so mangy that I take it from them.)
But EmilyS still hasn’t answered the highly relevant questions about her own eating habits, so I have to conclude that factory-farmed flesh on the plate is not vanity, but hunted game somehow is. It ain’t cruelty if someone (low paid and brown-skinned) did it for you? It ain’t cruelty if all the “fun” is in the consumption, yum yum?
Someone who cannot distinguish between a fight and predation does not have the cognitive prerequisites for a reasonable conversation.
Comment by H. Houlahan — January 24, 2009 @ 8:13 am
I cherish the memory of the day my Chinese Crested lived up to the proud tradition of her ancestors, and killed a squirrel.
Okay, it was shipboard rats, not squirrels, that her ancestors hunted, but how was she to know? She’s never even seen a ship!
Comment by Lis — January 24, 2009 @ 8:32 am
Hey guys - I understand Gina’s point that EmilyS should take her problems with Patrick to Patrick’s board. But I’m getting uncomfortable with the “ganging up” on her that’s going on here. Isn’t that disturbingly similar to the whole “taking the moral high ground” thing that we’re trying to get shelter folks to quit doing with people who don’t agree with THEIR world view? I thought we’d come to the conclusion that supporting an engaged dialogue trumps a concerted attack any day. Can we start practicing putting our actions where our mouths (words?) are?
Comment by The OTHER Pat — January 24, 2009 @ 8:41 am
Pat … I asked for this subject drift to end in part because of the “ganging up.” But also because this has become more “heat” vs. “light” fight than an actual discussion.
Several people have managed to put their views (both for and against hunting) within a comprehensive moral framework buttressed by real-life examples and experience. Emily has continued to evade the request to do so herself.
She doesn’t have to, of course, but failing to recognize or even acknowledge the context of how other people come to their views isn’t advancing anything.
My views on hunting and guns started to evolve when I living in rural north Florida, and has continued to evolve within the context of what I outlined in the second comment on this thread.
I realize my “third way” philosophy on many issues isn’t going to raise a lot of money for the HSUS or the NRA, both of which I agree with on some issues and not on others. And I know it’s a tad confusing if not downright infuriating both for my hunting friends and my vegan friends.
So be it.
Now … can we move on?
Comment by Gina Spadafori — January 24, 2009 @ 9:12 am