I’m not trying to be a dick, but, I am actually stunned, no, STUNNED by the people who are such goobers when a K-9 dog dies. I was at work the other day, and an adult woman, roughly 65 years of age, had actually gone to the funeral of a K-9 who had just, IIRC, died. Not even KIA. OK, sappy old retiree, dog lover…she mentioned it in a room of about 5-7 other co-workers. I was tempted to make some witty (obnoxious) remark, but, I was beaten to the punch when everybody else chimed in about having wanted to go, what a big loss this was, about what his officer/master/partner was feeling, what the department was feeling, and somebody else mentioned that they had wanted to go. A mid-20s Arabic-American person joined in the chorus, with a 40 year old rake, a newly mustered out GI (altho, ex-MP), a 25-30 year old Euro-American, college student, and I can’t remember the other one or two.
I am stunned, as I said.
Here is a dog, a dog, mind you, who does what he is prodded to do, at the instigation of a doggie biscuit. The dog would not hesitate to tear the leg off of one of these people, depending upon the whims of its master, whether it’s a kid, an aged pensioner, a rabbi, or a police officer. It who doesn’t even volunteer for the work it does; it is mindless (as far as we know.) It isn’t brave, and it would lick it’s balls in front of your entire family if the mood strikes.
And, here are these people acting as if it were family, or somebody deserving of high honor.
The mind boggles.
I will leave it to others to tear you the new one you so richly deserve, and will settle for saying that you have absolutely zero idea what you are talking about, are making a complete ass of yourself, and that I would hate to live in your world, or your head.
Judging from the OP, it appears Harry just isn’t a dog person and is unfamiliar with the emotional bond between a canine and his family
I know it’s cliché, but IMHO, dogs are better than people, people can be mean, simpleminded jerks, but the family dog, nope, that’s pure love, to a dog, you (the general you) are the best thing in the world and (s)he is always happy to see you, and time spent with a canine is time well spent
I could have the crappiest day at work, but as soon as I open the door, my 49 pound fuzz all becomes a Me-Seeking-Missile, all grins and happiness, jumping a good 3 feet straight up out of pure joy that I’m home
When I’m feeling sad, he’ll come over and lay down next to me and do his best to cheer me up
When he hears an unfamiliar knock at the door, or unfamiliar footfalls, he instantly becomes a snarling, hyper defensive watchdog defending his pack, I’d hate to be on the wrong side of Cooper, Mighty Defender of the Realm, he may be less than 2 feet tall, but it’s all coiled muscle, his strength, and speed are astounding
He’s a full fledged member of the family, much more than a dog
As one who routinely has 300 pounds of dog sleep draped across him, I begin to understand how the faithful feel when I say I don’t believe in their god.
You know the dogs who are used to search for survivors in a natural disaster actually get traumatized if they keep finding dead bodies. I’ve read where they’ve had to fake hide a volunteer just so the dogs can find a live one. It’s more than just conditioning.
Can’t make a snarky remark, since you insist you’re not trying to be mean, but as a dog owner, I can appreciate the amount of training and hard work that turn a handler and his dog into a good team. The dog isn’t prodded into his work, he does it because he loves his master and wants to please him. The dog is willing to protect his master and will lay down his life for him. He’ll go after a suspect and hold him for the officers, but at home, he’s a gentle pet and will play with the officer’s kids. I appreciate that kind of loyalty and intelligence. Dogs are not mindless. Compared to people, I wouldn’t expect one to do brain surgery, but as someone pointed out elsewhere on the site, dogs have an understanding of humans and human communication that surpasses all other animals, even apes.
Only a small subset of working dogs are trained for take downs. Most are not. When you start cross-training them to do multiple jobs (like bomb detection plus patrol duties) they are not as good at either.
It shouldn’t be surprising that many of us have a special bond with a creature that has been selectively bred for countless generations to be our friend and protector.
What is that supposed to mean? That you were just joking with us when you posted all that crap in the OP? That you really know SOMETHING about dogs, rather than the nothing your OP seems to indicate? What?
Your mind may boggle, handsomeharry, but if you came here looking for validation of your distinctly peculiar outlook, you aren’t going to get it. I’m a military operating room nurse, and I’ve done two tours in Afghanistan. Dog handlers were not infrequent customers in my OR, and very often their dog was injured, too. Want to know what every single one of them said when they woke up from surgery? “How’s my dog?”
In the military dogs are extremely highly regarded for the dangerous, life-saving work they do. So much so, that (in the AF, anyway), a military dog is always one rank above it’s handler, to remind the handler that when it comes time to eat/sleep/perform personal care, the dog comes first. And yes, military dogs have ranks, and are very much considered soldiers. They get military honors when they are killed in action, too. So you may not get it, but rest assured, many other people do.
They’re police officers, and people get all torn up when police officers die, even when those officers weren’t killed in the line of duty. And let’s face it, it’s not like human officers would hesitate to shoot you dead if they considered you a threat, so the idea that “this dog would kill you and everyone you love if the mood struck” doesn’t really carry any weight against K-9 officers it doesn’t against human ones.
Also, I’ve done vet work on police dogs before. They’re the only dogs I know for a certainty will NOT try to bite me while I poke and prod them. Besides, you’d totally lick your balls in front of my whole family if you were that flexible.
Unlike horses, livestock animals, and animals kept more recently as pets, dogs and cats appear (from archeological evidence) to have chosen “domestication,” and so it was a mutual dance, and the forming of a symbiosis. It’s also something dogs did about three times earlier than cats, which is why dogs and humans have much more sophisticated communication than cats and humans (not a put-down of cats-- we have two, and have had as many as seven at once; typical for us is around four).
When our son was a baby, they dogs were very protective of him. They went on high alert any time a stranger (to them) bent over the stroller. We has to teach them to sit and stay sitting when we were walking with the stroller, and stopped. I think the baby would have been safe outside a New York cafe with those two dogs watching him, even though they had not been trained to do so, just accepted him intoi their pack, and understood that he was vulnerable (and also for some reason important to DH and me).
A friend of mine is a cop who has worked with several dogs that he has trained or co-trained. He is now a master trainer and moonlights in that area, traveling to Europe to pick out dogs for other departments.
His first dog was exceptional. The local papers did a few stories a year about his heroics. On at least two occasions he took down suicidal people, armed with knives, who otherwise may have been killed by cops. He tracked amazingly well, finding lost kids after human grid searches failed. He could be a snarling scary beast one minute, then lick the ice cream off a kid’s face the next.
My friend spent 8 hours a day with the dog at work, then came home and spent his evenings with him. The dog was his best man at his wedding, complete with a tuxedo. He was a part of his kids early lives. When, at 8 years of age, the daily stresses of police work became too much, the dog was retired. My friend had to come up with the cash to purchase him from the department.
When he died two years later (10 or so years ago now) my friend called to tell me the news. When I answered the phone he asked how I was doing, then broke down crying. I’d never heard him cry before, and knew right away what he was calling about.
This post took me a half hour to write. I keep stopping to pet my dogs and blow my nose.
These dogs are not mindless, vicious, automatons. They are exceptionally intelligent and trainable creatures who are valued partners and friends and who do incredible work for, as you say, a doggie biscuit. Actually they care more about praise and love and the fun of the job they do. They will work until they drop for the love of the job and because they want to please their handlers, not because they are “prodded”.
That supposed ferocity is trained to the Nth degree, and it has very clear on and off buttons. Yes they looks like crazy slavering beasts barking and lunging on the end of a leash - that’s mostly excitement and eagerness to get out and work, it doesn’t mean they want to rip your throat out. They are, for the most part, cocky and have big personalities and are not for the amateur dog-owner, but I’d trust one a lot more than I would your average Cocker Spaniel or miscellaneous “Lab mix”.
