Canis lupus hominis

Since Crufts,  I’ve been inundated with Facebook threads and crazy websites that do nothing but conspiracy-monger and accuse others who don’t agree with them as being “animal rights activists.”  These exchanges are often way over the top.

But this thread on the Exhibitor’s Voice and Choice Facebook page beats them all. (I know that it says “Canine Alliance,” but it’s not the same thing as the other Canine Alliance, which will be discussed in a minute.)

(Click to make larger).

The post they are attacking can be found at Pippa Mattinson’s thelabradorsite.com in which she offers some criticism of the Canine Alliance for claiming to be about dog health but whose primary goal is to stop the Kennel Club’s new policy of mandatory vet checks for BOB winners in fifteen high profile breeds.

She gets called an animal rights activist, but if she’s an animal rights activist, then the term must be meaningless.

I always thought animal rights activists opposed hunting and shooting.  Many of them also oppose training dogs for any purpose.

Generally, animal rights activists don’t have blogs that cover shoot management, gun dog training, stalking roe and fallow deer, and ferreting with nets.

But you can find every single one of these issues covered in posts on her personal blog.

Discussing most of these subjects would get the typical animal rights activist hot under the collar in pretty short order.

So why are the Canine Alliance’s toadies and sycophants slagging her as an animal rights activist?

It’s simple:  They have no arguments.

Well, they have arguments, but they make sense only to other people who feel threatened by a major kennel club taking health issues seriously.

And when people feel threatened, they throw poo.

Not really all that different from monkeys.

Calling someone an animal rights activist is a way of turning yourself into a victim or, at the very least, making one’s position seem persecuted by some evil other.

It’s really childish and silly, especially when the person they are calling an animal rights activist is obviously not one.

And this is why you know they are losing the argument.

The public doesn’t see rational actors here.

It sees people who are acting like a bunch of overgrown children.

There is an unbelievable assumption of entitlement that oozes from the words on the various Facebook pages and website.

These people feel that they are entitled to show dogs with exaggerated and unhealthy conformation in shows that are sponsored and governed by a private entity.  They also feel that they have some right to have these dogs rewarded with prizes, even though this private entity has had standards rewritten and widely publicized that these health checks would be mandatory for BOB winners in these 15 high profile breeds.

The public, by and large, don’t like people with an entitled mentality.

The entitled mentality is a very good way to lose the public debate.

It’s also the road to irrelevance.

If these people insist on going down this path, it is very likely that all dog breeders are going to suffer the consequences.

The public is developing a low tolerance for this foolishness.

And these people are going to lose badly.

People love their dogs.  Dogs are held in a higher status in much of the West than perhaps any time in history.

People don’t have much sympathy for people who intentionally breed dogs with conformation issues that cause health and welfare problems.

And if this is the mountain that a large chunk of the dog fancy has decided to make its last stand on, they are sorely mistaken.

This will be the Alamo, not Rorke’s Drift.

Calling a gun dog and shooting sport enthusiast an animal rights activist is the sign of people who have lost the debate.

They have no defense.

And it’s now all out in the open.