Would you trust the government to raise your children?
After all, the government will never tell your children “no”, they will give them all the candy they want, and they especially won’t be made to work. In fact, they will be praised and given more candy when they don’t work.
Don’t want to raise your children this way? What if it became illegal to raise your children any other way than the above-mentioned? Well, it’s happening in the dog training world.
Hillsborough County in Florida is passing just such a law surrounding dog training. Here are the exact words: “In no way shall a dog trainer use or promote any aversive training methods or techniques.” Read that sentence again…I’ll wait.
YOU. CANNOT. TELL. YOUR. DOG. NO.
Don’t really care about this article? Let’s make it more personal. Here’s what happened to me.
My dog is giving me bloody scratch marks on my arms and sides by jumping on me. He almost made my 2-year old nephew blind by scratching his eye, and my mom has never been able to pet him like a normal dog because of his jumping. He has ALREADY had an $1100 surgery because he ate something he wouldn’t put down…oh…and HE JUMPED OUT OF THE CAR WINDOW ON THE FREEWAY.
Okay…come over to my house and tell me that I don’t have the right to tell my dog “no”. Come over and tell me that I only have the option to try and feed him treats to coerce him away from lunging at other dogs. Come tell me to my face that I am cruel, inhumane and backwards-thinking because I want to inflict one second of discomfort on my dog so that we don’t have to give him to a shelter where he will be killed.
This law does not talk about certifying dog trainers, or working together with the community to make sure all dogs are treated fairly. There are already abuse laws in place.
These are some government employees who didn’t bother to do their research and it “sounded nice” to them, so they decided to try and put it on the books. And yes, I’m not even touching the fact that some organization, I’m sure, is lobbying behind the scenes for this to pass.
So…just because your dog is peachy, or you don’t have a dog, or the concept of “aversive-free” sounds nice…doesn’t mean there are not people out there who need to tell their dog no. Just because you don’t need glasses to see, doesn’t mean you should take away someone else’s right to wear glasses.
