This thread http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=597017 appears to have been set up to comment on the dog show and individual dogs. I think it was light-hearted and intended to have lots of comments about liking certain dogs or a certain dog’s antics.
But no.
It immediately got hijacked into a dog breeding debate. The mods tried to step in, but to no avail. You hijacking jackasses ignored the notes and continued the hijacks.
It would have been easy to debate that topic elsewhere; it’s been done to death before.
Not the strongest rant in the world, but you ruined the damn thread–one that comes around once a year.
To the OP of that thread, I don’t mean to tread on your toes, but I didn’t think thats the direction you thought your thread would go.
Well if you open a thread on a distasteful topic, you have to expect to get a few bricks lobbed at you.
My objection to the whole “pedigree dog” industry is fairly clear and unambiguous.
Showing dogs depends upon an arbitrary set of cosmetic traits. These, over time, become exaggerated. This promotes in-breeding together with the discarding of those that don’t fit and associated physical problems from such a shallow gene pool.
None of this is controversial. That, for some breeds, severe medical problems follow from in-breeding is not in doubt.
Measures drive behaviours people, anyone in business will tell you this.
If the Kennel clubs continue to set such standards, dogs will continue to be bred for them. If they continue to breed for them, they will inbreed to assure the required traits, known physical issues will continue to occur. So the suffering continues.
You, as a dog owner are probably a kind, compassionate, animal lover, however.
If you show dogs and demand pure pedigree dogs then you continue to implicitly and explicitly support this. It won’t change until dog owners demand that the standards change.
I got no dog in this fight (HA! Did you see what I did there?), but if somebody were to start a NEW thread about the show do you suppose you and your fellow dog-show-conscientious-objectors could confine your commentary to the original thread?
You know, just on the basic principle that MPSIMS isn’t really the place for lobbing bricks…
These facts are well known to people who watch dog shows. Your posts were threadshitting, dingus. Next time, I suggest you start bemoaning China’s one-child policy in a thread about Chinese food.
In my own defense, speaking as the poster who continued the hijack, I didn’t actually ignore the mod note. I was responding to something near the start of the thread without reading the whole thread. I had totally skipped over the actual mod warning.
It can be argued that I should have carefully studied each “Look at that cute little Bichon!” post for moderator actions, thus inoculating myself against the risk of ignoring a moderator action. I mean, it wasn’t a hot and heavy debate overall; there were just a few negative posts, so most of the thread would still have been about pointing at the TV. Forbidding someone from posting a relevant opinion until all the fluff has been scoured for potential warnings seems to be fairly tiresome way of deterring dissent, but it’s not my board, not my rules.
Eh. We’ve also been quite hard on the Nazis (actual Nazis in this case), child slavers, racist goons, and various perverts. But if someone posted a thread about how delightful it is to watch der Fuhrer’s mesmerizing rally at Nuremberg, or some movie promoting child abuse, would we really have to go to a different forum and start a different thread to point out our objections to the abuse of innocents involved in the making of the program under discussion? Have you ever seen a moderator note that said something like “This thread was started to discuss what we like about sexual abuse. If you have any objections to sexual abuse, start another thread elsewhere.”
The issue raised was the (perceived) abuse of the dogs (innocents) that is (perceived to be) fundamental to the entire process of show breeding. It’s not really a separate thing. Ghettoizing (uh…can I say that?) the abuse discussion to this forum so that the original thread is left as a tribute to “this neat dog showing hobby” is somewhat akin to cleaning out all the doubts and objections from other topics that may be promoting abuse and cruelty (“If you want to say anything negative about Hitler, take it to the Pit; this thread is about how he cleaned up Jewish corruption and made Germany strong again!”) and may give the potentially incorrect impression everyone agrees that the topic is all sweetness and light.
In my (weak) defence, I wasn’t the first. I apologised and bowed out until I saw that others were raising the issue again.
Anyhow, if you are pitting such as me for doing what I did then fine, I feel entitled to tell you why. It’s because there seems to be an easy, complacent acceptance of the inherent cruelty in pedigree dog breeding. It is hand-waved away (as you do above) and I think that is wrong.
Is it that hard to read the thread before commenting? The 25th post was the moderator note. As of right now, the thread only has 42 posts. This wasn’t some twenty page thread which has meandered out of control and has been hijacked repeatedly.
Are you seriously comparing breeders of show dogs to Nazis, child slavers, racist goons, and child abusers? You are saying that breeding show dogs is equivalent to genocide, perpetuating child slavery, and child abuse. Seriously? Your sense of perspective is seriously fucked up.
OK, I’ll bite. Change the standards to … what, ezzactly? For some breeds those standards have been in place for decades if not centuries. How do you propose we change them?