03/11/2024
CAN WE STOP EXPERIMENTING ON SHELTER DOGS?
Another day, another excuse to abuse dogs it seems.
Last week, yet another study came out about the use of aversive equipment (another Johnson & Wynne). This one was testing whether metal prong collars, like the barbaric and medieval torture collar on the right, are better than plastic prong collars, front-ring harnesses or flat collars at reducing pulling.
I don't know which so-called shelter would permit such a flagrant violation of animal welfare.
The very, very first thing the shelter boss told me on my first morning washing pots was that we were in the business of animal protection. That involved having clean bowls because we aren't protecting dogs if we are spreading diseases.
But the bowls waited.
The dogs and cats ate before everybody else. That was our first job, once we'd checked all the animals were okay. They were cleaned, watered and checked. Their bowls were cleaned last, once every single animal had been seen to.
Then we had our coffee.
That was her one mantra. We are a place of animal protection. Cut me open these days and it runs through me like letters in a stick of rock. This is the world where animals are PROTECTED. It is a shelter.
Not a place where harms are perpetrated.
You can't consider yourself in the world of animal protection if you let researchers in to see which hurts more: plastic prongs or metal ones.
I mean, sure, you *can* try to whitewash yourself and claim you are a shelter.
In the same vein as those "shelters" who drowned dogs, gassed dogs or otherwise executed them back in the last century.
There's ONE reason why experimenters choose shelter dogs to test harmful equipment. It's because someone who should be protecting their dogs' welfare isn't doing their job and the experiment would never, ever get past guardians who couldn't bear to see the consequences. Or, who'd have to live with the consequences.
It's akin to experimenting on vulnerable children in care. I feel that strongly about it. Worse, in some ways, because if you harm children in care, society will be outraged and people can go to prison for breaking laws. If you harm dogs in a shelter, it's only angry animal folk like me who even care, and our voices go nowhere.
Sheltered animals deserve double the protection that owned dogs do. They are our wards, our charges. In France, we call them our protégés. Our protected ones.
Yet again, the so-called experiment ran thick with moral sa**sm. "Oh, we wouldn't hurt you, but the ends justify the means!" ...
.. "It's the lesser of two evils."
Last time, I was mad at the same pair of researchers for trotting out popular, flagrant fictions about shelter dogs. "Oh, we must shock dogs or they'll end up in the shelter!"
I'm mad because I have thousands of excel spreadsheet columns with years of data that sit in my hard drive. They document the provenance, details, microchips, vaccinations, adoptions and outcomes for thousands of dogs. Over years and years, no single dog turned up at the shelter because someone HADN'T shocked their dog.
Plenty of dogs turned up because some d*ckhead HAD hurt them. Some we weren't able to rehome. That goes without saying. We never, ever had a single dog surrendered because using food in their training had failed them. Never. Ever. No dog trained with treats all their life was ever euthanised because they were so broken they couldn't even live in one of the few sanctuary spaces we could access. Several were euthanised who had only known violence and harm.
So I was mad about THAT lie. I was mad about the lie that dogs chase cars and could be "treated" with a shock collar. That dogs kill sheep and could be "treated" with a shock collar. That bad dogs end up in shelters. That "weak" training approaches take time and end up putting dogs in shelters.
It's nothing more than an excuse to justify sa**sm.
The researchers used these plausible fictions - that dogs chase cars and get hit, that dogs kill sheep - and said that there was no data. There IS data. In France, as in many countries, sheep are insured. If your sheep dies because they were attacked by a dog, then you will need a necropsy certificate from a vet and you can claim your compensation. Insurance companies are savvy: they know all kinds of deaths would be claimed as wolves or dogs. But if you think they don't have data, you don't know insurance companies or actuarial science. They love data more than I do. Data saves them spending out and means profits for shareholders, so damn straight there IS data on how many sheep are killed by dogs if you want to claim that shock collars would save the lives of sheep.
In last week's "study" of the effects of prong collars on pulling in shelter dogs, yet another plausible fiction was trotted out. This one was that dogs pull and it makes guardians afraid to walk them. As a consequence, the researchers say in their introduction, dogs get fat as they are not walked.
I'm surprised by this because back in the UK, I've never seen so many dogs on a daily off-lead constitutional, having lived in Europe for fifteen years, and I've never seen so many fat dogs. My vet congratulated me on Lidy & Heston's weight and said (at 4.45pm) that they were the first non-obese dogs she'd seen all day. Anyone would think that canine obesity is a bit more complex than simple walks... there's also a lot of cultural values to unpick because a load of English speaking clients at the shelter complained that perfectly healthy dogs were underweight when they were not.
Anyway, the researchers reference Townsend et al. (2022) to justify their claim that pulling leads to fat dogs who don't get out much.
They picked on entirely the wrong study.
Sure, the title does suggest that pulling is a problem. But it also says that prongs and shocks and chokes are physically injurious, increase physical stress, can contribute to or cause opthalmic problems, throat problems, breathing problems, orthopaedic damage and even death. They also have emotional side-effects including increasing stress, anxiety, fear, frustration and aggression. They have social side-effects, damaging the caregiver relationship with the dog, and potentially causing unwanted associations such as connecting the correction with seeing other dogs, leading to attempts to escape or to attack.
"Owners may choose aversive equipment out of safety concerns while walking, being unaware of associated welfare risks" they say.
"Least aversive/minimally invasive, reward-based training methods should be utilised for lead pulling, as these support good welfare." they add.
You can't justify saying dogs are getting fat because they pull on lead and refer to a study that stands in direct contradiction to what you're trying to claim. Ironically, the referenced study also has exact numbers for how many sheep are attacked by dogs in the UK, a number that the other researchers claimed didn't exist. It's 15000, by the way. Just to put that number in context, 770,000 chickens died in one single incident in flooded buildings in 2013 in the UK, and over a million chickens die in the UK per week before they are ready to be killed in UK intensive farming. Don't claim that you're interested in animal welfare when your only concern is justifying your own perverse opinions.
I've spent ten days being furious about this recent Johnson & Wynne study about prong collar efficiency. I refuse to even reference it, I'm so angry.
I was sad, too. I think of all the shelter dogs I've known, who deserve more than any other dog our care, our compassion, our kindness and our protection. It is disgusting to me that people still continue to use shelter dogs for their little experiments simply because the so-called shelter have forsaken their primary duty - a duty of care. It's disgusting that shelter dogs are used as experimental subjects because someone forgot that it is their duty to speak up for those they pretend to protect.
Yet again, a plausible fiction is used to justify harming animals. It is nothing more than sa**sm dressed up as kindness.
"I hate that you make me hurt you!" it says. "But it's for your own good."
Another trainer posted about prongs - not connected, I don't think, with the Johnson & Wynne (2024b or c or d or however many they've put out this year). A prong collar trainer said that it was the ethical choice.
You see how they do this? Dressing it up as the ethical thing to do.
Meanwhile, shelters at Poitiers, at Carcassonne, at the Refuge Lotois, at Limoges, all published pictures of previously untrained, big old units like cane corso, dogo argentino, rotties, pitbulls, German shepherds & Malinois in their shelters in harnesses, on long lines, doing mantrailing, in fields, even off lead in huge enclosures. None in prong collars or even on slip leads or choke chains.
It reminded me that there are many, many fine people who really care very much about animal welfare, who don't pretend that harm is justifiable, and who take their duty as the protectors of animals very seriously.
I finish by remembering the time my boss gave me permission to refuse a malinois to a local dog trainer who used aversive methods.
When he kicked off, she stepped in.
"Monsieur," she said, "This a place of animal protection, not animal abuse! You send us more dogs than you ever adopt. Now please leave."
Quite. She had a glint in her eye that suggested she was about to set the dogs on him. Luckily, we never needed to do that. Our own human voices were more than enough to stand up to sadists.
That's what we need now. Voices to stand up to sadists. Especially sadists who dress up their violence in fictional ethical concerns. I've been a peaceful soul long enough, but this riles me and disgusts me to my very core.
The proper study:
Townsend, L., Dixon, L., & Buckley, L. (2022). Lead pulling as a welfare concern in pet dogs: What can veterinary professionals learn from current research?. Veterinary record, 191(10).
I'm not referencing the other. It was god awful abuse of power.
