crucible I am quite sure you have or do something that has the potential to cause harm, yet no one is in here assuming that you are being irresponsible about it. If you cannot be reasonable on this subject, I’m done here.
I’m not going to debate with someone who makes a straight equivalence between dogs and children. One is an animal, one is human.
If you can’t grasp why we might treat each differently then there is nothing meaningful to discuss.
I rather suspect though that if we talked about cosmetic alterations of new-borns, inbreeding, enforced sterilisations and eugenics you would readily accept that it is fine for canines to be treated very differently to humans.
can you simply respond clearly? If your dog causes harm of whatever kind, are you personally responsible? I’m giving you your own property if you have taken precautions that had to be deliberately ignored or overcome to get access to your confined pooches.
If you take your dogs off your property, or they leave your property on their own, do you, or don’t you think you should be personally responsible for their actions?
??
Of course you should be, and I am pretty sure, legally are responsible for their actions. If my car rolled down my driveway due to a faulty parking brake and hit someone, I’d be liable.
Are you contending that that is not the case, or that curlcoat is contending that that is not, or shouldn’t be, the case?
If you come into my house, and something happens, I don’t know that I should be liable, at least if you were not invited, but I think I legally still would be. I am pretty sure that my dog would just bark at you a bunch, maybe even growl, but I doubt she would actually do anything physical. Potential burglars don’t know that though, and that’s why she makes a good security system.
Though I’ve had dogs all my life, and my business relies on other people owning dogs, I would be a big fan of requiring the owners to be licensed. I don’t know exactly how difficult it should be, or what the criteria should be, but at the very least, you should be made aware that you are taking care and responsibility for another living being, a being that not only could be made to be dangerous, but can much more easily made to be miserable.
As for why we need dogs? Why do we need friends? Why do we need comfort? Why don’t we just sit on rocks, and sleep on concrete, and eat crickets and grass?
Being alive, being a human, being a social creature, we have needs that are greater than our basic survival. Dogs have been an important part of our history, and they are an important part of our present.
Both are animals, one is human.
There are differences. A dog can at worst attack and harm one, maybe two, possibly three people. A human can kill dozens. Thousands or millions if they get into politics.
Altering newborns for cosmetic reasons, you ever hear of circumcision? Inbreeding, ever met royalty? While parents may not be allowed to sterilize their children, they can withhold life saving medicine and vaccines. Either way, dog, or child, it is a piece of property whose future is dependent on the whims of its owner.
The only difference is that parents can create a more miserable and dangerous creature than dog owners can.
I don’t have a dog in this fight (pun intended), but when you refer to children as pieces of property, and parents as owners, I’m pretty much gonna disregard anything you have to say in making comparisons.
Can you legally sell a child?
Heh. Hence the qualifier. 
You may not be able to legally sell it for financial return(here in the US), but you can give it away, so, still property.
And my point still stands that you are responsible for educating, which can be withheld legally, ensuring their health, which can be withheld, legally, socializing, which can be withheld, and just general training to be a good person, which can be withheld.
The fact that dog owners are supposed to be held to a higher standard of care for their pets than parents are to their children is the comparison, not that they are the same thing, though a screwed up child is more damaging to both the child and society than a screwed up dog.
wow! bolding is mine. You cannot seriously think that.
If so…well…that, boys and girls, is how you double down.
To address you points specifically.
I’m against non-necessary circumcision without consent
Procreation between close relatives is illegal
The courts decide on whether life saving treatment can be withheld by parents
You’ve conceded the sterilisation point
You’ve not addressed the eugenics point
Humans are not property in the same way as dogs are. I can’t believe I’m having to back this up.
I maintain that dogs are, and should be, held to different standards than humans.
Humans have more rights, they also have more responsibilities. Something that dogs can never have. At the point where a system of justice can be applied to canines and they in turn are able to comprehend right and wrong within human society then I’ll be happy to remove all owner liabilities and hold the dogs responsible for actions.
The bolded part was a bit of a hurried statement on my part, summing up the many differences between dogs and people. But yes, the only difference, when it comes to outcomes, of being a poor parent vs a poor dog owner is the magnitude of the screw-up.
A parent has complete physical and legal control over the child, the same as an owner has complete control of the dog. That is the similarity. And the only difference in that similarity is the level of damage.
You do realize that I AM putting children on a higher standard than dogs here, right? If not, I appologize for not being clear.
Tha’ts nice, but does that have the force of law, or are parents still making this decision millions of times a year on behalf of children who cannot consent?
Not here in Ohio. As long as both are adults, and niether is parent… perfectly legal.
Ever hear of anti-vaxxers?
Forced sterilization and eugenics are kind of hand in hand to me, so I felt I addressed both. And for almost 100 years, the United States has not practiced such things on humans openly. So I will “concede” that adult humans are freer in their reproductive choices than dogs.
You are not needing to back up anything. We stopped treating humans as property in the US about 150 years ago. I agree with that, sure.
Not all parents got that memo.
Never said that owners should not be liable for the actions of their dogs, I was just pointing out that people are not generally liable for the actions of their adult children, even though they are just as responsible for any of their failures, and their failures are usually much more spectacular than a dog’s.
Alright, so a bit more recently. I wasn’t really looking for cites, and I just remember the US being pretty big into forced sterilizations on prisoners, mentally ill, the poor, and otherwise “unfit” people in the 20’s. I had actually thought i had stopped longer ago than it apparently did.
Just following the board’s mission statement. 
Which has nothing to do with what I said. What is it with parents that they have to immediately take offense? My point was, if you are truly worried about beings that can cause your children harm, you should be FAR more interested in seeing that fewer babies are born to people who cannot/will not raise them to be decent human beings. Do you disagree that this happens, a lot?
I’m already fine with that - I imagine that it would be illegal for me to put a child in a crate or leave it alone in the backyard while I run to the store. Obviously there are different rules for different species, but again, this is beside the point. This thread is about people getting their panties in a wad because criminals and idiots are fancying a certain type of dog to hurt other people with, and the whole focus is on the dogs as if humans are completely innocent in this. Not only is that unfair, it is no way to deal with the actual problem.
It takes far more than a clumsy equivalence to offend me.
this is a thread about dogs, not humans in general. I never brought up the subject of children, my children or causes of harm to them.
The biggest danger to humans is humans. That is why we have a whole system in place dealing with human behaviour. That’s what society is. Part of that deals with what animals can be owned by other humans, the level of threat they pose and the legal restrictions and obligations we place on the human owners.
You want to start a thread about the dangers of bad parenting? go ahead. But just because another threat exists are you saying that we should not have a discussion on the dangers of dogs?
Which is why I specifically listed three measures, all of which were focused on the responsibility of the owner rather than the animal and the type of dog involved was irrelevant.
A - Chipping
B - Insurance
C - Muzzling
I’m sure further measures can be suggested but those above seem to me to be a sensible starting point.
I completely agree with chipping, many reasons there. If nothing else, helps reunite loved ones in the event of mishap. It also, of course, reduces people’s abandonment and other cruel treatment to the dogs.
Insurance, I am not sure,that’s up to your insurance company. My insurance is aware I have dogs, I’d have to ask to know whether or not I pay an increased premium. I told them I have a dog, they didn’t even ask what kind.
Muzzling I disagree with. Unless the dog has a history of aggressiveness. If nothing else, people perceive a muzzled dog as being more vicious than a non-muzzled dog. It’s not entirely health for the dog to wear one for extended periods of time. It’s harder for them to take a treat or drink water. Yeah, I’m against muzzling unless it’s actually necessary. And honestly, if a dog is aggressive enough to need a muzzle, it probably shouldn’t be in public at all.
In general the efficacy or necessity of any of the three is based on value judgments or opinions given known facts. This is in contrast to breed specific measures, whose validity is contradicted by known facts.
However I don’t agree with any of the three measures, as new governmental actions at least. Chipping is good, my dog is, but requiring it for all dogs falls IMO into the common trap of ‘what is desirable will be mandatory’ of govt-solution oriented people. It doesn’t take into account the big adverse selection between the people who follow laws like that and the people who cause all the problems. Same with insurance. It’s required to have insurance to drive but a lot of the most dangerous drivers don’t. And the context for spending resources chasing after the people who ignore car insurance laws is order of 10k people a year in the US killed by cars, v a few dozen killed by dogs.
Muzzling all dogs in public is a ridiculous overreaction to any real problem IMO. But again I’d say it’s at least a cut above Breed Specific measures in that it doesn’t deny basic reality (dog breed is not the issue let alone laymen’s characterization of ‘breed’ of mixed breed dogs by their appearance, no actual science shows it is). It just puts a very, very exaggerated weight on avoiding all dog bites to people outside a dog’s household, something that in many areas (like where I live) rarely happens as it is.
I agree almost completely. Only thing I’m not sure of is if muzzling all dogs is a cut above BSL. But yes, why is it that the public’s response to a problem caused by a small portion is to penalize all, without following up on whether the original problem causing people are bothering to follow the new laws?
Should’ve paid attention to their own sign!