HORROR

apples and grapefruits set.
As much an animal lover as we are, I can say that, without hesitation, we would sacrifice our best dog friend to save a human life. Not a question.

perhaps we see our animals only as their fullfilment service to us, in doing so we create visions of "unconditional love" and"no greater love..." etc etc
Owning dogs, you must know that you are the leader of the pack. Nothing more nor less.You treat your animals with consideration and respect , Im not sure the word love is correct, more often, love is merelya feeling that is substituted for what the animal supplies in companionship and this makes you feel good. Placing more anthropo... sentimental reasons for attachments to pets and animals is, to me,attaching rather a cynical view of human relationships.
My border collies work hard for me, they take on their tasks with a superior attitude, sort of what a sergeant major feels about a colonel. "Hes my superior in rank only".I dont handle the sheep as well, so they dig me out of a mess. For that they want things. However, if someone who I didnt know,needed a dog frammis in order to live, it would break my heart but Stash would be a "martyr"
its abenevolent dictatorship at our place. people have votes, animals do not.

Very utilitarian and huxleyan, but ..
.
I dont believe animals have spirits or "intelligences"

They operate at a much more primitive level than the dumbest of people

They are quite predictable

they have no sense of planning and time ( two things necessary for
some abstract communication).

Youre seeing animals with your own capabilities and intelligence, and by doing so, you anoint them with your talents, intelligence, love etc.

As neolithic humans weve evolved a commensal relationship with many animals. However, being kind and loving to a pet doesnt come from the same place as agape.

You are very presumptuous in the statements you make about how i view animals, a subject of which you know nothing . . . i consider that dogs are often worth more to people for their utilitarian uses than most human beings . . . i also do not agree with your rather didactic assessment in all of its points . . . my feelings about those who harm animals is based upon the relative defenselessness of animals, and their reliable loyalty, for whatever the provenance of that loyalty may be, as compared to the naturally devious and selfish nature of most humans . . . your view of dogs reminds me of what London described in To Build a Fire . . . but it is not the entire picture of the relationships possible with animals, and espeically dogs . . .

Lets us do what my grandmother often advised . . . you think your way, and i'll think mine . . .

set-youre not getting away with that dismissal. just retrace your steps of your own posts. i merely responded to the bait sir. If you feel I talked down to you then accept my apologies, I was not aware that the TOS required agreement with or praise for our propositions.

Didya ever think, that, what you say in a post may only be crystal clear to you?

Having said the above as an honest criticism of your tendency to be obscure, and then spring out and holler "gotcha",
You leave little doubt about what you feel for humans. With what you know about them, which (like me)is based mostly on experience ,how can you then take a huuge illogical jump to confer more" humane "traits into animals?.

Most wild dogs will kill rivals and offspring not their own. They will turn away the sick members of the pack. Yet we dont say that this is an evil abberation of their ethology, its just their hard wiring, they just do that. they will be loyal to the pack leader and then abandon him when hes badly wounded or old.

Now i have to go and re-read" to Build a Fire' to see what JL said about dogs

We have a somewhat similar situation with our dog Sage (aka The Wet Nose Dog). About four years ago a female saluki mix dog just showed up at the horse stable at the north end of the Compound we live in. She seemed friendly and gentle enough, and many people hoped somebody would rescue the poor dog soon, since Security in the Camp has the reputation of beating stray dogs to death. My wife stepped up, and brought the dog home, just until a permanent home could be found for her, of course. By the time that I came home for the weekend the kids had become attached to Sage, and I would have been a Nazi War Criminal for not allowing her to stay.

We'll never know for sure, but we figure Sage must have been owned by people who abused her badly, and ultimately dumped her off. If I ever walk by her briskly or make any sudden motion around her she cowers in fear and wimpers. Its been years now, and I haven't seen any improvement. I wish I knew what to do.

Jim, thats one of the most disheartening sights , a dog that has been so broken that it continuously cowers. Thats a very difficult thing to break and requires a special hand. We took in a doberman that was like that, A DOBERMAN can you believe? This dog came around after many months of getting down to her level and hand feeding . Gradually we increased the sudden noises while reinforcing positive outcomes like feeding or pets.Still It didnt all go away but was reduced significantly.You see a marked improvement in what only we can call "self esteem" , here you bring the dog up higher in pack rank . I knew some guys who raise sled dogs would actually lay down on the floor and play as a subservient pack member. I dont know how that worked, and, anyway, most sled doggers I know are totally doggy obsessed.

My cable modem keeps crappin' out on me, an' i'm currently awaiting the arrival of the service tech from the slimy bastiches who provide me my internet service. In the interim, i've produced an assault on Farmer which is lenghty, verbose, pedantic, sarcastic, ironic--in short, i intend to unleash upon his devoted pate just about every literary weapon in my not-inconsiderable arsenal of written invective. But i saved it as a WP document, 'cause i don't want to miss this opportunity to beat him severely about the head and shoulders in print, simply because of the technical ineptitude of Time-Warner.

Farmer, in the immortal words of Ah-nold: "I'll be back."

I await, but we have to go to the Canal Celebration in Chesapeake city first.

I feel like I'm watching The Clash of the SPCA Titans...

Alright, ya big bully, yer in fer it now . . .



I set no bait, nor have i asked for your agreement nor your praise. Before responding to the rest of your dog-slighting nonsense here, let me point out a few things which i apparently did not make sufficiently "crystal clear" to avoid having displayed my notorious propensity "to be obscure."

WARNING: This thread was never intended to discuss dogs![/b][/i]

Had that been the case, i would have posted it in the "Pets, Gardening and Underwater Basket Weaving" forum, where it would have belonged. Please note the title of the thread. Here, i'll post it for those with advanced lazy eye, unable to raise their gaze to the top of the page: HORROR. The title of this thread is Horror, because i had hoped that people would be willing to discuss that rather personal concept. So far, Miss Lowan appears to have been the only reader to have "gotten it." So far, Miss Lowan is the only reader to have responded appropriately to intended subject of the thread--Horror. However, to avoid confusing any one with my tendancy to be obscure, let me state directly what i did intend for this discussion--but first, another . . .

WARNING:

The initial post of this thread contains IRONY--subsequent posts by the author may also contain IRONY. Children, the congenitally dull-witted, devotées of the cult of scientific certainty and others incapable of construing meaning obliquely from that which does not directly (in Dickens' apt formulation) call a post a post and a pump a pump are hereby notified that they may not have "gotten it."[/b][/i]

The topic of this thread is the experience of a sense of horror. To be more specific, i ended the initial post with a sentence, the which i have already once "re-posted" so as to mitigate the effect of not having shouted out for all the world to hear that a post is a post, and not a pump, and that this thread does not concern itself with pumps, but only with posts. However, recognizing that such a concept is alien to the thought processes of toddlers and scientists, and that such persons need longer to absorb non-literal meaning than do those of us who polluted our youth with fiction, poetry, satire and other forms of literary idleness, i will post it a third time.



This is the piece of what i had not unreasonably hoped would be obviously creative writing, and of which i was perhaps unduly, perhaps vainly, proud. DAMN IT, I'VE NEVER READ ANYTHING BY LOVECRAFT, AND IF I FIND OUT HE STOLE THIS LINE FROM ME, I'M SUIN' THE BASTARD. (Yeah, i know, he died in 1937--the foregoing was another venture onto the shifting ground of irony, and is intended to produce humorous effect--you've been warned already.)



Please, if necessary, re-read all of the forgoing on the subject of irony and the pernicious effects of a youth squandered in such affronts to Anglo-Saxon Protestant ethics as reading literature, poetry and dime novels. Thomas Gradgrind lives! (Literary reference, Charles Dickens [1812-1870], the novel Hard Times [published 1854], scathing denunciation of the utilitarian philosphy of John Stuart Mill [1806-1873], literal minded, humorless social commentator and all-round wet blanket.)



Apparently, i "gotcha" before i even knew you would read and respond to this thread.



As i've already descended into the acid lake of sarcasm, having thorougly wetted myself with irony, allow me to observe that the word you want here is human, not humane. The word for which you vainly searched before is anthropomorphic, conferring human traits upon that which is not human. When a dog views you as "the leader of the pack," that dog is indulging in a cynomorphic inferrence, attributing canine traits to that which is not canine. But, of course, we are so much more highly developed than any other mammal, in terms of comprehension and emotion, that it would be foolish of me to introduce any concept which would tend to throw into disrepute so gratifyingly christian a position as that, no? After all, they're all hard-wired, and we're just bursting with subtle and elegantly byzantine software, n'est-ce pas? Forgive me if i pause to wonder at the extent of your grasp of the subtle.



This is precisely the short-sighted and superficial inference to be drawn from London's short story. After Sejanus had assassinated the Emperor Giaus (know to the poorly-read and therefore ill-informed as Caligula), Praetorians were sent to execute his children. His daughter was about ten or eleven years of age, and, under ancient Roman law, could not be executed, on the assumption that she was a virgin. So the Praetorians raped her first, before the horrified gaze of her brother, and then gutted her, before doing the same to her brother. Killing the offspring of a vanquished enemy, while preserving the newly-raped mothers to assure that they will give birth and promote the genetic survival of the conqueror is a custom of ancient and honorable lineage with humans. There is a very cruel irony, and heightened form of black humor, to contemplate your high regard for the human race while you dismiss dogs as merely "hard-wired"--laborers in your vinyard, as it were. How very laudable that you imbibe that oh so judeo-christian belief that humans occupy some dizzyingly elevated level of sentient development from which to gaze down in regal, benign contempt of our mammalian cousins. Before you dismiss the emotional capacity of dogs, and their putative capacity to form loving attachment, please inform me of the basis upon which you have arrived at this conclusion. With what measuring devices have you assessed their emotional capacity? How have you calibrated the device? What was your statistical methodology? OK, those were a series of cheap shots--you've already admitted to an anectdotal basis for what both you and i contend about dogs and their relationship to humans. So let me introduce some anectdotal evidence. Dogs who are used for search and rescue often become depressed when they've long worked a disaster site, and have found nothing but dead bodies. Their handlers will secrete one of their number under some rubble at the end of the day, so that the dogs may be allowed to "find" someone who is living, and thereby salve their sorrow. Dogs used for such a purpose have a rather short working life, because if used for too long, they become despondent, and will no longer perform to expectation. We have, as humans, the not unreasonable expectation that with sufficient time, Conan the Barbarian can be civilized to the point that he no longer wishes to slaughter all of the babies, before raping the mothers. Why is it such a stretch for you to imagine that the same may be accomplished with the lowly, the humble yet faithful dog? For untolled millenia, the dog has waited by our fires for the odd scarp thrown his way, and defended to the death our children and hearths. Our reward to this companion, more reliable than our human allies, had been the cuff to the head, the chain, the kennel. Your attitude toward dogs frankly disgusts me.

I will take the opportunity here to deflate your rather inept attempt at ironic humor (you really shouldn't fool with reagents with which you are not familiar)--among those who see dogs as more than simply cheap labor, "rescue dogs" are those who are taken from unloving humans so as to be given a home in which they will be loved and cared for as they deserve. Standing at the heel of every true dog lover is the ghostly avatar of all the thousands of generations of canines who have served us so faithfully--with goofy gape-mouth grin and lolling tongue, the ghost asserts that in this particular case, all is right with the world. (Time for another warning: the foregoing was metaphor, inserted for literary effect). Certainly, dogs have run away whimpering from a force that overawed them--human cowards abound as well. Certainly there have been dogs who have gleefully killed children, or full-grown men if they were capable--the capacity of humans to warp and pervert all that they find around them never surprises me. On balance, i'd trust a dog i'd known for a few months with greater readiness than humans i've know for years.

I do not by any means consider you to be stupid, or ill-informed. I do believe that you've taken a position in this case which is indefensible, and that you've done so because you casually hold, unexamined, a prejudice against all mammals which are not human based upon judeo-christian hubris and arrogance. The humble dog has a potential to be more than a herder, more than a night watchman, more than a killer of rodents and other vermin. For aught that i know, "vermin" may well enjoy intricate and highly-developed emotional lives--i prefer the company of dogs, however.

Well, having heaped burning coals on the largely unoffending brow of Farmer, i feel much better . . . and so will take this opportunity to make a few observations.

I mentioned a rabbit, a ground squirrel and a dog. Everyone here, with one notable exception, has assummed this to be a dog thread--HELLO . . . wouldn't be projecting just a tad, now would we, folks?

Very early in the thread, Our Dear Bunny took the meaning of the thread correctly, and responded appropriately. How come the rest of ye missed it?

Alas, i fear the life-expectancy of irony as a literary device is much reduced in our unlovely times . . .

Set, surely you know that these discussions don't work like volleyball, a little set (see what I did!) and then whammo, a perfect hit. People take bits and pieces and meander in their own directions. Nature of the beast. What you're looking for may or may not happen, but does that mean the responses are inappropriate?

That said, I do understand what you're getting at. (Will I get spanked if it turns out I'm wrong?) I have long been a passionate proponent of animal rights -- I drove to Florida with my dad when I was a kid, and was bawling for the last half or so because of the many dead animals I saw by the side of the road -- deer, possums, I think some pets, too. (At that time it was actually not that uncommon for people who no longer wanted pets to chuck them out the window of a moving car on the highway.) At any rate, I was distraught. I decided that part of the culprit was the lack of fencing between the highway and the wooded areas, and wrote a letter to the Governor of Florida. (I was like 9.) He wrote a nice response. Prolly didn't DO anything, but I felt as if something had been accomplished.

Have volunteered at the humane society, though that was heartbreaking. So difficult to leave the animals there instead of taking them home. A lot more tears.

I find myself now in a position that I never expected to be in -- petless. I left my animals with my dad when I went to college, and by the time I was of age/ in a housing situation that allowed animals, I had somehow hooked up with a guy who was wonderful in every way except for the fact that he was highly allergic to animals and never had any as a consequence, and so in addition to the allergies was not particularly interested in having a pet, even if the allergies could be tamed. That was E.G., and so in the 11 years we've been together, no pets. I haven't lived with a pet in... criminy... 14 years. Never would have thought it.

I regularly see animals -- friends', or while out on a walk -- it's pretty much impossible for me to let a dog go by without petting it -- but don't HAVE any pets.

Setanta, do you have any pets of your own, now, or ehBeth's sweeties it?

I freely admit that I'm rambling, but I'm gonna continue...

I love animals, I think they serve many purposes including non-obvious ones (pet therapy, purring cats strengthening owners' bones, etc., etc.) but I have some qualms about pet ownership in the US and how resources are allocated. Isabel, a cat who was my mother's and mine for 4 years before I left for college and my mother's for the 14 years after that, just died last weekend. She had diabetes and my mom had been injecting her and keeping her alive well beyond when she could expect to die otherwise. She had been a snarly, moody cat before she got sick -- she came from the humane society and it turned out that she was separated from her mother too early as a kitten. Neurotic, always looking for a teat. But when she got sick, and realized, somehow, that my mom was making her feel better, she became the sweetest cat. Really helped my mom through some hard times.

My mom could have kept her alive longer. But she felt that, at 18, her time had come. My mom's friend has a 20-year-old cat, who she spends something like $200/ a month on to keep alive. My mom started to say, and I finished as she looked for the words, that we feel that kind of expense is justified when every human child gets the basic nutrition that they need. My mom's friend's cat will die, anyway. There's no way to keep her alive for 70 years. It's the tragedy of pet owndership, that we will almost always outlive our pets. But it's a fact.

I guess I'm saying that in terms of farmerman's point, I wholly wholly applaud people who adore their pets and will do anything for them. But I think it's sad to see the profligacy of pet liposuction, pet optometry, pet psychiatrists, when so many humans go without basic necessities.

Hmm, ramble over. Await spanking.

Hey, I got a slightly honorable mention....

By the way, my ramble didn't take me altogether where I planned to go, which had to do with the emotional depth of animals.

You'll get no spanking, as alluring as the prospect is . . . Lovey would make me regret it for years to come . . . and, yes, you have missed the point.

As the King of Thread Diversion, i've no beef with a thread being hijacked. I was just disappointed that i'd started a thread on the personal experience of horror, and had been so (to me) obvious as to name the thread "Horror," and no one but the Cunning Coney tripped to the fact.

As to what people spend on pets, i consider pet liposuction no more or less ridiculous than the same procedure for humans. As for those who suffer want while someone's pet wears a diamond studded collar, i am indifferent simply on a pragmatic basis. Forbidding diamond studded pet collars will not induce the idiots who buy such things to send their money off to a "worthy" charity.

It is a well know fact that cats are the spawn of Satan, and that they batten on humans for the free ride, and the sense of superiority which accrues from lording it over a creature so much larger, but obviously dull-witted, than they. Dogs, however, are cheerful, friendly and willing to work hard for you all day. If you meet a "bad dog," you've definitely met a human product. Knowing full well that the moralist among us will decry this position, i will state in no uncertain terms that i consider dogs to be "worth" as much as humans. Make your choices how you will, i consider feeding a hungry dog as laudable an activity as feeding a hungry child. Perhaps i am becoming the ultimate "liberationist"--barring the irredemably evil cat, there is no reason to my mind to consider other mammals as somehow "less valuable" than ourselves. Contradiction though it may be, i see nothing wrong with keeping a cow as a pet, or simply for the milk, or to slaughter for the beef. Too much morality in the world for my taste--i equate morality with self-serving righteousness, and remain unimpressed.

I'm rambling as well, and there is no better activity for wiling away a Saturday afternoon . . .

By all means, Soz, ramble on, i'd be interested to read it . . .

Doesn't seem that i'll get the response on the topic of horror that i'd hoped for anyway . . . sigh . . .

Cav, when you say you "fancy" Cavalier King Charles spaniels, does you wife know what you're doing when she's not around?

WELL WELL< IF we cant be right, be wrong at the top of our lungs,

how can you sound so erudite yet still be so full of it? Its a wonder.
With the exception that you seem to operate under an assumption that you are the reincarnation of Spike Milligan, your posts are generally 2/3 patting yourself on the back and 1/3 something else.
You really dont know a thing about what you speak in this case. If you did you wouldnt be trying to engage in ad-hominem youd have some substance to your posts. Ill have to file that away for future reference. "Here types a guy who likes to hear himself speak".Slip in a reference here and there, all the while progressivly obfuscating any point he may once have had

Anybody ever tell you that you write like a civil servant?.
(I was one very briefly) , and i derove so much material from the typical overreaching memos loaded with words that were only placed to impress and not communicate. Youd have an excellent career in the uSGS, office of minerals research or the tidal and anadromous species restoration office.
Theres a book by a bored academic named Johnson who got totally gassed out by constantly reading stuff like your last post. He came out with an academic "fog factor' paper. in which he calculated the fog factor ( fog factor is the ability to say very little while still using as many words as you can--Its a fine art )
Anyway, Johnson multiplied, the number of syllables in a typical paragraph, times the number of words. this is divided by the number of sentences. The higher the number, the bigger the FF index.
guys like eugene Webber and Jay Gould(one of my guys) were among the horribelest writers, with so many vague references that the points were often lost. I had to stick with jays writing because it was important to my work , you get my drift?
scientists and engineers arent any more or less quick on the draw than any other clot of people connected by some hyphen. In fact, I find physicists among the wittiest of people. All that abstraction needs a valve. So trying to hit me with some fony linnean clade, means nothing. Ive been called an idiot by guys like Duane Gish and Parris Clendening, of that, Im proud.

You havent made any good substrate points about why you are such a proud misanthrope , so im just vamping here. I owe you one more ad-hominem in our broadsides. Think Ill save it for some other day when your foaming at the mouth again. Well Im off to the festival where I can hang around other dull witters like me.

Proud misanthrope . . . heeheeheeheeheehee . . . not a shred of evidence, but a good barb, nonetheless . . . if you wish to take all of this ill, help yourself, it wasn't intended that way, it was all delivered in a spirit of humor, but you help yerself, Boss, it'll not upset me . . .

Tell me something, though, Farmer, if, as you have asserted, dogs are simply hard-wired, why did you write: " . . . You see a marked improvement in what only we can call 'self esteem' " (your quote marks altered for clarity of punctuation)? If you find the little doggies to be no more than laborers in your vinyard, why did you ever get down on the floor, and crawl under the bed with the dog? The techniques which you adivse work as well for humans as for dogs--yet you continue to contend a superiority of . . . of something, what precisely you contend as the human superiority mystifies me. I still think you've got an indefensible position. I noted in the post immediately succeeding my long discursus that i had heaped burning coals upon your largely unoffending brow--too bad you decided to take umbrage with it.

As for the style of my writing, you were warned in advance that it would be verbose and pedantic. Yes, i certainly do enjoy exercising my wit in an area at which i excell--the composition of words. Just as i suspect that you take pleasure in the exercise of your wit in the pursuit of the science which interests you.

Lighten up, Farmer, the most of that was written with tongue firmly in cheek. If you wish to take offense, and hold a grudge, be my guest. I will continue to take great joy in the cobbling together of words, and care not one whit whether it argue a case as you think it should be argued.

And, once again, the intent of my thread is not a discussion of dogs.

Ah, i note approvingly that this has been moved to Pets, Gardens and Midden Heaps, which, given the direction toward which it has been inadvertantly hijacked, that is precisely where it belongs . . .

Why no chickens?

Well, EB, would not one be justified in thinking one might find otherwise unrestrained chickens on the midden heap?