It’s a damned animal, for Og’s sake. People are only getting into such a fuss because dogs are generally cute and cuddly animals. Try substituting fish or snake for dog and this controversy dies.
Step… back… with the knives!
Aren’t we leaving the furry, cuddly animals alone?
runs screaming
Epidurals are not commonly used in Veterinary medicine. Sticking a needle in the spine is a very delicate matter and there are more possible complications. Also animals will be anxious if they are aware but can’t move or feel anything, you can’t explain to them what’s going on. General inhalant anesthesia is safer and a better option. Most of the time the animals do well and feel nothing.
However, as I explained, if not administered or maintained properly the dog could feel what is going on. If the dog was just put under and not monitored (since he wasn’t going to wake up, why bother?) it is possible. My comment was a response to someone else saying the dog felt no pain. If you weren’t there and didn’t observe the entire procedure you cannot be certain of that.
In no way was I saying that the dog shouldn’t have been euthanized if it was aggressive. I am a bit curious about how the dog “left unclaimed at a local dog pound and considered unadoptable” ended up at a local veterinarian for that procedure. Most pounds and shelters have guidelines they must follow and would not be able to release a potentially dangerous animal to someone else. Did this veterinarian work at the pound? As vetbridge also pointed out, what was done may have been illegal, if that’s the case how good a lesson is that for the kids?
I agree. Sorry if my post obscured that. However, I see no reason to assume incompetence, and none was reported. Why bother to monitor him? Because not all veternarians or substitute teachers are heartless monsters. I’d like to think that most of them aren’t. Why NOT assume humane treatment? A moving, thrashing dog in pain would be very difficult for students to observe, in any case. I will therefore assume that all proper veternary procedures were taken care of and that the dog was not in pain. If incompetence or pain was present, I would take issue with that incompetence or pain, not with the vivisection itself.
Substitute a Norway rat for the dog, and I’d still be pissed. If there’s any chance that the dog experienced additional stress, discomfort, or pain from this experience, then the animal shelter that gave the dog up for vivisection failed in their duty.
Dissect an animal after it’s been properly euthanized, sure. Don’t do it while the procedure might inflict suffering on the animal.
Daniel
I still don’t understand the point of doing this. How many people in their adult life really have a need to know the intricacies of canine digestion?
When did they let people who went to Vo. Tech. onto the internet?
One could say the same for things much more commonly taught in schools, like geometry or art.
Daniel (Hand) - why does it matter if the dog suffered or not if it was scheduled to be put down anyway?
Hell, let’s ask a few, see if they mind.
I love doggies, but as long as the kids (or their parents) were given the opportunity to opt out, I don’t see a problem here.
I vivisected a rat in college physiology lab. And I think we did a frog in bio.
We isolated and then stimulated the vagus nerve (and yes, the rat’s heart rate did indeed slow–cool!).
I had no problem with doing so (it might have helped that my dad is a pathologist–I ahve seen more mice etc dissected than alot of people–and fetuses in jars etc-dead ones, that is, heh).
The only problem I had with the rat experiment was that after we were thru, we were supposed to kill(allright-euthanize) the rat. I don’t remember how, exactly, but there was a procedure in place.
Our rat would not die. Seriously, it kept raising it’s head like a Living Dead thing.
the TA finally took the rat in the back room, and we all strained our ears to hear the gunshot…
He gave it a massive OD of sodium pentathol, IMS.
I’ll do surgery again in a heart beat–but don’t ask me to finish anyone/thing off…<shudder>
Little Bird, Stark Raven Mad
I’d have more problems with this if it had been a frog, snake or rat. This dog was going to be euthanized anyway. Using a frog, snake or rat would have meant killing an animal for no real reason.
As it is, I question whether this was proper for even an advanced high school class.
Stark Raven Mad
I said I didn’t see much point in having a student learn canine digestion and you responded:
One could say the same for things much more commonly taught in schools, like geometry or art.
Subjects such as geometry (and math in general) do have their applications in everyday life. Did you ever do any work in your yard and needed to know how to make a right angle, how to measure area, or even find true North? I certainly have and geometry sure helped. One time I had to make an octagon out of a square piece of wood. (Okay I didn’t have to but an octagon looks nicer. Try doing that by trial and error with wood or even on a piece of paper. Pretty tough isn’t it?
Knowledge of algebra prepares a person for working with numbers - both real and abstract. I work with computers in my job and learning how to visuaize numbers abstractly is essential for me.
To me, canine digestion is so darned specific that teaching it to a class seems a waste. In my job, knowledge of canine digestion is only required about 2 times per week. (Okay 3 at most). 
Knowledge of the digestive system is not important in life? Forget medical school students, we all eat.
Knowledge of *any * kind is important, methinks. A canine digestive system is not exactly like a human’s, but it is still a mammal and therefore many things are similar.
I’ve thought about this a lot, and all I can see is a really, really cool opportunity to see something fascinating, something I’d never see otherwise. I did pith & dissect a live frog, and it was amazing. The earthworm? Booooring. The cat was REALLY cool, though.
I think I would have been creeped out but riveted at the same time.
Hi, Trunk! Welcome to MPSIMS, the Land of We Don’t Insult Other Posters Here. If you’ll check your visa, you’ll see that we stick to that name as best as possible.
If you have a problem with a poster, you’re welcome to immigrate to the Pit and express yourself there. Otherwise, be careful of the water and refrain from insulting posters here.
Thanks.
- Tour Guide Skippy
Pretty funny, Skippy. Although wouldn’t that name make you…gasp…twee??
I can’t see what the big deal is about it. It was an animal, and it was drugged. It’s not like they plucked a live Ivory-Billed Woodpecker.
I’ve never had a yard, Wolf - Hong Kong is kind of cramped. 
And the fine people at Ikea handle my wood, octagonal or otherwise.
man, that sounds so wrong
Anaamika makes a good point. The dog was going to die anyway, and an opportunity for the kids (or hell, even the teacher) to get something out of it through a bit of slice 'n dice is justification enough for me.
Know what? I’m gonna say it, even if no one else will. To hell with the teacher and his experiment. I like dogs, high school teachers shouldn’t do that kind of thing to dogs. They’re decent creatures that deserve more than that. Yeah, yeah, gonna die anyway, I get it, don’t care. If you really think that way, when YOU’RE about to die, let’s let some High School students have at you, eh?
Not liking this even a little.
Twee. That’s only the second time I’ve ever seen that word (besides looking it up to see what the hell it meant). Slang is weird.
As for the OP…I don’t have much against dissection in general, and spent time dismembering worms, crayfish, frogs and spent hours on a fetal pig named Hamlet. None of the creatures we dissected probably had any idea what was going on, since the member of most intelligent species of the bunch was stillborn to begin with.
Vivisection on the other hand - My dog, who was my fateful companion for 15 years, was scared shitless- yes, literally a couple of times- of vets. A lot of dogs are. If the dog was being put down at the shelter, which is the norm at sheters around here, he probably wouldn’t have known what was happening since it was taking place in a somewhat familiar place. Being dragged off to THE VET’S might have been a really tramatic event for the animal, depending on his experience with the vet’s office. It strikes me as kind of cruel to scare the hell out of the poor dog in addition to putting it down. If for some reason I was on death row, I’m positive that they wouldn’t dress as clowns to terrify me before my execution, so it seems needlessly cruel to scare the hell out of a condemed dog that probably didn’t do anything wrong other than not be cute enough.
Do you want to know how much you can learn about digestion by gross (naked eye) observation of a living canine digestive system? Not much. It wiggles around like a bunch of worms but you can’t actually see digestion by looking at the outsides of the GI tract. As I said before, a freshly euthanized animal still has moving intestines, if that’s all you want to see, euthanize the animal first.
If you cut the intestines open you won’t see much either because most of what happens in digestion is microscopic. You can’t see the food being broken down into nutrient molecules that are then absorbed into the blood stream. If you cut open the intestines you’ll just see a bunch of shit, literally. The only time it’s interesting or fascinating to open up a living animal’s intestines is when you are trying to save it’s life and looking for an obstruction or some other treatable problem. If you pull the intestines out and line them up on a table then you are not seeing them in a natural state anyway, so why must they be “living”?
There are so many better resources to see how a digestive system works. They make little cameras now that people can swallow and it goes through the GI tract and films everything on the way through. There’s also films of endoscopic exams. Either of these would have been a lot more useful in a Human Anatomy class.
IMO there wasn’t really much to be learned from this experience that couldn’t have been taught better any number of ways that didn’t involve vivisection.