ANTONISH wrote:I've been following this thread with interest.
I'm nervous of loose dogs - when I was a child I was in a local park and an Alsation jumped up at me.....[snip]
I'm surprised there aren't more serious injuries due to these pests and their moronic owners.
I do not dislike dogs - and I can socialise with them -but many owners see them as their obedient or playful children instead of the pack animals they are.
One needs to get over the often amplified fears emanating from childhood experiences. The alternative is to live one's life subject to a constant fearfulness not justified by the surrounding reality and it's risks (or lack of them).
There are many moronic owners, of dogs and other beasts. Personally I would make it very hard to be an owner without proof of training and success at, say, dog-managing. There are two ladies near us who train dogs for the blind and also offer general dog-training classes. The first thing they tell the attendees is that they're really owner-training classes.
Dogs are pack animals when in a pack and when running free as such. When they're singular pets living with a human family, they're more like permanently infantilised children - if the owner is competent with the dog handling. They're best managed as such - as children with certain inclinations who need to be managed and dominated when their basic instincts look like they might become problematic.
Of course, humans are pack animals and, in very large packs (or even small ones) very dangerous indeed. Packs of children are particularly dangerous if left to run wild as they lack the inhibitions and understanding of adults. My own theory is that, until a certain age and maturity, they're best treated like dogs. Dogs, that is, that are well trained, looked after and nurtured rather than those that are treated merely as some sort of casual possession that can be ignored if you're not in the mood for them.
I also feel something of the same about children and parents as I do about dogs and owners. Many parents are unfit and should be required to prove that they themselves have the understanding and skills to be proper children-owners. Many allow their children to run about in packs, to the detriment of the rest of us. Many human children turn into slavering adult monsters that terrorise everyone and everything. Their parents allowed their volatile human nature to go thataway instead of thisaway.
Cugel
“Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence are usually the slaves of some defunct economist”.
John Maynard Keynes