Some mastiff and bulldog and mastiff enthusiasts have been discussing this blog on World Mastiff Forum. I happen to like mastiffs very much–nice, very intelligent dogs.
But one of my detractors on the forum made a massive taxonomy error that I just can’t let stand:
I’m sorry. That’s just wrong.
The foxes in question were not silver foxes.
They were gray foxes, which aren’t even in the same tribe as silver foxes. A silver fox is just a color phase for the red fox, Vulpes vulpes. The foxes in question were gray foxes, Urocyon cineroargenteus. Urocyon is a very distinct genus and evolutionary lineage in the dog family. It’s not closely related to any other dog species. It split off the main canid evolutionary tree 9 to 10 million years ago.
It’s about as distantly related as a dog can be still be a dog.
I should note that no one has refuted a thing I’ve written about toaddogs.
Not a word.
They can’t.
So what they do is throw nice little tantrums and hope someone gives a flying fig.
They are so caught up in my foul mouth, which I readily admit that I have, that they’ve refused to address any of the cogent points I’ve made in any posts about the breed.
And if you want to compare cruelty between bulldog faddists and fox trappers, well, the bulldog faddists are much more cruel.
The only human-inflicted discomfort a fox feels is the few hours it’s caught in the trap. The dispatch, in this case with .22, is humane and quick.
A bulldog suffers its entire life because it’s been bred to be so deformed.
That’s years of not being able to breathe or cool itself properly. Years of hip dysplasia. Years of poor oxygenation. Years of skin infections.
I could go on.
But if you think you’re going to destroy my arguments by suggesting some hypocrisy in my impassioned defense of hunting, fishing, and trapping and my passionate attacks on dog breeder stupidity, you’re sorely mistaken.
I’ve got my arguments lined out.
They are logical.
Yours aren’t.
That’s why you must come on here act like a bunch of nattering nabobs of negativity on my blog.
You don’t have any arguments.
At all.
I win.
The reason why that person doesn’t get why you’re so hung up on ‘British people’ is because a pile of them parachuted down here and starting spouting illiterate personal attacks against you in the comments section, claiming your criticism of the breed was because you hated English people.
Context matters. =P
Like they care.
I might as well declared my support for a united Ireland for all they care.
A united Ireland, now there’s a thought.
Re the British thing
I’m British, I’m not offended, frankly I don’t give a toss.
Why?
It’s simple really, it was deserved. People might be trying, or being forced to try and change the breed here, but here isn’t everywhere, and so the same cant be said for all.
Plus, it’s our mess, we created the breed and we destroyed it and we gave it to the world, for them to join in. When it comes to the breed, as the sum of its parts, we’ve nothing to be proud of.
I am starting to think people who are anti-trapping or anti-hunting have no idea what would happen to the forests when there are no taxes or revenues being generated from them– they get logged. In the end, government only cares about providing jobs to their people.
Deforestation and destruction of virgin patches are a much greater crime than some ensnared fox in a trap. The British Bulldog is a crime against dog because nowadays humans have complete control of the dog from birth to death and decided that the misery of keeping a English Bulldog is just as just as breeding one of the other breeds without anatomical problems.
Fox-farming, on the other hand, with silver-foxes are altogether different issue; and it is really obvious the poster is attempting to invoke images of fur-farms in the process by mentioning “silver fox” instead of “grey fox”. It is actually quite clever to do a spin like that– it is so subtle and leads one to think it is a naming error.
“…compare cruelty between bulldog faddists and fox trappers..”If I had to choose then maybe a tortured existence could be considered be more cruel than instant premature death, but both are unnecessary and merely reflect on the base instincts of the human perpetrators in each case – primitive hunter gatherers excepted.
The problem is that you don’t understand ecology at all.
Please reread my posts on “mesopredator release.”
This is a mesopredator that exists without much predation in the wild. Coyotes sometimes kill them, and bobcat might also do so on occasion.
Without significant predators, these foxes will produce way beyond their carrying capacity.
What’s worse is this species is both vector for and is quite susceptible to canine distemper.
Allowing this foxes to exist at very high densities almost guarantees that you’ll have a canine distemper outbreak, which will kill other canids and raccoons in the area.
Fox trapping is quite humane. The leghold traps are designed to hold, not to cut. There is usually very little foot damage in modern traps that are designed and set properly.
Before you start bloviating about what’s necessary or not, perhaps you should read this piece by conservationist Ted Williams (not the baseball player): http://www.maninnature.com/Management/Conservation/WConservation1c.html
You usually get very ticked off when I defend myself and my positions in this manner.
Lots of people do.
I’ve noticed that a lot of people who have heard animal rights bromides and have come to accept them as the “new morality” haven’t heard the other side’s views at all.
And when they hear them, they get so upset, they don’t know what to do.
So if after reading that article, you still think trapping is evil and unnecessary, then I have to accept that you really don’t care that much about conservation or biodiversity.
There is no either or here. They are mutually exclusive viewpoints.
You either very much believe in animal right (which I don’t) or you believe in biodiversity or conservation.
You cannot believe in both.
The part about the otters caught in legholds and then released with just bruising was really interesting to me, because one of my first thoughts was about bycatch. I hope these traps get checked very often.
Not every day an objective writer on the subject says “not all activits are as rational as Pacelle” either. He’s usually pegged as the ultimate, immovable con man.
I don’t give any support to the HSUS or PETA.
Regarding mastiffs, since you posted the World Mastiff Forum, someone commented there to look to the bulldog as a guide, and that we should “Now” breed mastiffs for short noses. I think the write meant we should NOT breed them for short noses, but anyway…assuming I’m right about that, it was good to read.
I’ve seen quite a number of bullmastiffs that are extremely brachycephalic and it’s really rather disheartening.
Being the person quoted –and I apologise for mis-identifying the colour of the fox, and corrected it on the mastiff forum — on the forum we are in agreement about the genetic issues with the English Bulldog, the French Bulldog and other breeds.
WE ‘didn’t have little tantrums’, I said I found some of what you said offensive and emotional. to be fair, as far as I know you did not post the blog, a member did.
If you had represented my post fairly, you might have included the part at the beginning where I said that your blog was factually correct in terms of the consequences of breeding for exaggerated features such as the Brachiocephalic head in the English Bulldog. I also linked an article which went into more detail (without the emotionalism directed at the British) of these and other genetic issues of the EBD. It also posits an explanation as to why humans find flat faces so appealing.
I don’t know what the Brits who parachuted in and launched personal attacks had to say, so no, I ‘didn’t get it’.
I also remarked that the UK Kennel Club has made adjustments to their standard, whilst thus far the AKC has not.
If you read the forum, you may also note another thread in which a member provides a great deal of scientific analysis of the physical mechanisms which cause dogs with short muzzles to experience severe issues with breathing and cooling..
No one on my forum is going to argue with the logical (versus emotive) arguments you presented because we are well aware of these issues and. we are concerned about the future of our breeds — particularly the preference for shorter muzzles.
Here’s the deal: The KC changed the standard. Large numbers of judges paid no mind to it. They kept putting up defective dogs. That’s why the KC created the new vet check requirement for BOB winners in certain breeders, and when the bulldog got DQ’d at Crufts, these people had a collective tantrum that is still going on. In fact, they put up a little sore-ass loser Facebook group, which is still up and still full of the same sort of whining.
I don’t laud these people. I don’t care if they did change the standard. They changed it, but that was window dressing. The truth is they didn’t want to change it, and they wouldn’t have changed it if Jemima Harrison hadn’t dragged their sorry asses into changing it.
So I don’t think we ought to be so thrilled the British bulldog fanciers have changed anything. They have, but the culture is still based upon putting up defective dogs.
It’s window dressing. If it were not window dressing, they wouldn’t have had their little baby fit after the Crufts DQ.
So I honestly don’t care.
I do use logical arguments on my bulldog posts, which you can easily find with the search function on this blog, but I got attacked by a punch of fucktards.
No what you did was something I categorically reject, and you didn’t address this in your comment.
You implied that anyone who would support trapping and hunting would have no room to criticize bulldog breeders for producing really defective dogs.
I answered you.
You don’t like the answer.
Tough.
What I usually get when I write these things is I get attacked as an animal rights activist.
Well, now I get attacked because I don’t actually care about animal rights.
I can’t win either way.