Grobstein » dogs

Dogs on God

Dave Gottlieb — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 18:33:27 +0000

Prints here. Many of the best New Yorker Cartoons are about dogs.

Canine receives Juris Dogtor

Dave Gottlieb — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 02:19:04 +0000

Feline-Americans hate the troops

Dave Gottlieb — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 19:30:36 +0000

There’s a wonderful story in the Times about service dogs for injured veterans (adorable slideshow!). Can you possibly imagine cats doing that? No, I didn’t think so.

UPDATE: How to tell if your cat is trying to kill you.

No Missa Bond

Dave Gottlieb — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 18:24:28 +0000

Link.

I iz picklez jar

Dave Gottlieb — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 15:55:19 +0000

One of my faves (I didn’t make this):

AskMe: my boyfriend sez dogs should not be pets

Dave Gottlieb — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 03:58:52 +0000

There’s a pretty interesting, tough question on Ask Metafilter about how a dog owner should negotiate a relationship with a man who not only doesn’t especially like dogs, but thinks the entire phenomenon of dogs-as-pets is absurd and decadent. I’m not sure what I think overall, so let me just cherrypick one stupid answer from the thread:

First- dogs don’t have personalities. You’re projecting your feelings onto the animal.

Keep it in the yard when he’s there. That way it won’t be crated-up. He seems comfortable with not having the dog around. You should learn to do the same.

You’re not flexible because you’re too attached to the dog and/or you might be unconsciously using the dog as an excuse not to have a relationship with the man.

Sorry to be so brusque, but people come on this site for straight answers. All I really see from most people is hand-holding and syrupy “support”.

The substantive suggestions of the answer might be sound, but the tone and the principles asserted are not. What could possibly be meant by the statement that “dogs don’t have personalities”? In humans, we use the word “personality” to describe characteristic patterns of social behavior. Can the poster mean that dogs don’t have patterns of social behavior? No, that’s crazy — dogs are social animals and have rich repertoires of social behavior. So he must mean that patterns of social behavior are substantially the same from dog to dog, so that no dog has a distinct personality. But that’s crazy. That’s like saying all dogs are the same color. Anyone who’s met more than one dog has probably observed more than one set of patterns of social behavior.

Now, it may be that some ways of describing human personalities simply can’t be applied to dogs — I wouldn’t call a dog “bookish.” But that’s a far cry from “dogs don’t have personalities.”

UXO, BOMB DOG

Dave Gottlieb — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 21:40:58 +0000

Read it. Possibly I’m extra susceptible to fiction about bomb dogs because I just lost a dog, but I thought this was pretty wonderful.

We stood on a hill overlooking the meadow. A bunch of other kids ambled behind us, rags and bones, scruffy faces, some little ones on the shoulders of the bigger. Bit by bit, as Uxo and the damn machine cleared the meadow, we’d advance to the new safe zone for a better look.

It was a comical sight, if not for the stakes: Volkovoy, dull gray heap, like a breaching whale, trundled and pivoted, roared and smoked, extruding claws and spades and hammers. It plowed up the sod. Now and then, if it couldn’t defuse a dinger, Volkovoy flashed and shook, encasing and detonating the thing, then dropping it out the back, busted metal dung. Meanwhile, Uxo, sweetie, his tail curled back like the tongue of a letter “Q,” walked and sniffed and walked. His smart flat face was matted and dirty, but when he yipped and looked back at me and the kids – “A bomb here, boss!” he seemed to say. “Look how good I am!” – his eyes were full of light. Then I’d tiptoe out to fetch the dinger and disable it. He knew not to lick me then.

Introducing the catmill

Dave Gottlieb — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 01:02:12 +0000

From the dogfighting case Hargrove v. State (Georgia 1984), a description of some equipment found at a dogfighting arena: Also seized were two treadmills used for endurance and strength training and a device called a “catmill,” also for increasing stamina … Continue reading →

Pit bulls

Dave Gottlieb — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 21:03:01 +0000

In the face of municipal and private pit bull bans, some animal folks argue that pit bulls have a bad rap, and are not intrinsically more vicious than any other breed. This seems to be true, but it misses the point. Even if pit bulls don’t have especially bad humors, they may still be especially dangerous by virtue of their physical characteristics. They have much stronger jaws than other breeds, which makes it potentially a lot worse to be bitten by one. Imagine telling a gun control advocate that gun owners aren’t any meaner than regular people. That argument won’t get you very far, because capacity for harm is dangerous even where the relevant population isn’t extra-vicious. Because pit bulls are more dangerous when they do attack, special regulation of pit bulls may be justified even if temperamentally they’re usually very sweet.

(BUT THEY ARE SO CUTE!)

Grand theory #145: reigning cats and dogs

Dave Gottlieb — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 01:00:03 +0000

All conflicts in the law can be explained as expressions of the larger social conflict between dog people and cat people.