CURBING THE HYPE OF DOGS

CURBING THE HYPE OF DOGS
by Carole Wade, Columnist

March 28, 2006

Contributing Columnist Carole Wade I've heard and read over and over again that "dogs add years to a person's life." That's ridiculous. If, in fact, dogs are beneficial to a person's life, then why are insurance firms this year notifying all their dog-owning clients that liability coverage will no longer be provided for their animals?

Not long ago, the Fifty-Billion-Dollar-a-Year Pet Industry and its advertising agency cronies dreamed up two new buzz words for dogs: "rescued dogs" and "mixed-breeds." Animal shelters today acknowledge that many so-called "rescued dogs" are imported from Africa and South America. Supplying these animals to American families is so lucrative that overseas suppliers, facing a "rescued dog" shortage in their homelands, turn to ever less-developed Third World countries for more and more dogs. Tragically, especially for small American children, these "mixed" dogs lack the stabilizing genetic background of the pedigreed animal and tend toward fermented rage and aggressive behavior. A purebred Labrador, for example, typically exhibits friendliness toward infants whereas a "Labrador-mix" is possibly part Pit Bull and potentially very dangerous to youngsters.

Over and above total astonishment, crafty Mexican businessmen observed America's dog worship (as reported on "Dirty Dogs: Is Your Best Friend From A Puppy Mill?" CBS 2/KCAL 9 Los Angeles, February 3rd, 2006) and promptly "jumped" onto the cash-to-be-made bandwagon by selling dogs of any kind! CBS investigators discovered that for $2,000.00 and up per dog, pet shops in California have lately been selling illegally imported dogs smuggled in from Mexico. The greedy dog brokers -- with false-bottom vehicles -- even had phony "California purebred" papers.

Apparently, at the San Diego border crossing, federal agents see puppies being smuggled into the United States daily: pure or mixed-breed. Unfortunately, these animals pose serious problems for their new owners. Not only are the dogs ill with diseases, but they can make small children violently sick. If these dogs were taken into hospitals as alleged "therapy" dogs, the dogs would cause serious staph infections for the patients.

The Los Angeles Times, FOX NEWS, CNN, and many other news outlets recently reported more unsettling stories relating to dogs becoming the "carrier of choice" for smuggling illegal narcotic drugs into the United States. Knowing the sick obsessiveness of dog worshippers in the USA, international drug lords implant bags of cocaine into dogs' bodies ... and then smuggle in the supposed "pets."

The storied "Katrina Dogs" were almost all strays in New Orleans before the hurricane hit and now are "popping up" in shelters nationwide -- to be later adopted into unsuspecting households with young children. The combination of violent dog and innocent child does not mix well.

There are clinics in California that allege a dog's accuracy in "detecting cancer in humans" with one quick "sniff" as dogs home in on scents. This is the misleading fodder of dog legend.

The Pet Industry frequently hypes dogs as terrorism fighters. But look at the record....

New classes of canines graduate continually from the bomb-sniffing school at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. Some will take jobs at airports while others are off to work in the subways. Unfortunately, experience shows that the certified German Shepherds, Belgian Malinois, and Labrador Retrievers are not well suited to the challenges of mass transit. It has been demonstrated that the challenge of today's mass transit is too rigorous for the sensitive canine nose.

There's nothing wrong with using dogs to walk through the subways to deter crime or sniff the air to make people feel better. But the dogs' noses cannot be relied on. For example, canine performance in airports has been known to fall off exponentially where distractions include gusts of air, noise, food, and people. Also, the new "worker-dog" quickly becomes exhausted as it sniffs for bombs and other explosives. The U.S. Transportation Security Administration's dog program is failing; therefore, scientists are pushing hard to develop new machines to detect explosives and other hazards.

Animal worship today is magnified by the media's promoting continual dog stories notwithstanding the reality of the limitations of these animals. Dog ownership has "wild-fired" in America to the Pet Industry's financial benefit. Grown men and women all over America walk along sidewalks behind their dogs holding their dogs' excrement in bags; their dogs' fecal matter is carried like a "badge" of honor.

It is very troubling indeed that news media outlets including print journalism and television stations are constantly promoting the Pet Industry's dog agenda. To be fair and balanced, when a news anchor or newspaper editor reports a "cute" dog story, that story deserves to be followed by a story and photographs of a child bitten, mauled, or eaten by dogs. ***

About the Author: Ms. Wade is a writer who lives in Southern California. Her articles and comments appear frequently in The American Partisan, The Los Angeles Times (registration required free of charge), the Daily News, Internet newspapers, and monthly travel magazines. She also guests on the Al Rantel show. ***

Photo of Carole Wade furnished by the author