fido follow up

so, in the monday bit i talked about the local fox affiliate doing a bit on “bully breeds”…

…which it’s never about. there’s actually quite a few dogs in that family. bulldogs, for example, which everybody loves. never mind the short little mascot fuckers got their name because they were developed to herd animals forty times their size – you think those jaws are just for looks? the dog on the target ads? the dog on the little rascals? all lovable american icons. hell, a bulldog is even a symbol for part of our military…

…but it’s cousin? the pitbull? not quite the same heritage (think jimmy carter vs. billy carter, or for you younger fucks bill clinton vs. roger clinton). it’s all bullshit. blame the people, not the puppies – they’re the one that RAISE them to do that. okay, so a pitbull attacked a kid once or twice. how many times have african-amercan teenagers done it? i don’t see any of you forming prejudices towards them!

oh…wait.

i remember when copper came up to me and followed me through a grocery store parking lot. everyone else in the lot had shied away from her, but my cheerful, “hi, doggy!” got her, and next thing you know the city is calling me and asking me to adopt her as long as i have her fixed and DON’T fight her, ’cause they know she’s from a fight house as they’d seen her before. so i not only adopted a pitbull, and a stray one, but one that came from a violent upbringing and had been trained to fight. now she was in my home and even sleeping in my bed.

my friends said i was crazy. said she may seem sweet, but that rest assured she WOULD turn on me, get violent, and attack me. possibly kill me. the sleeping with me thing didn’t last long…due to two reasons, neither of which were my friend’s:

1. that short fur of hers holds a HELL of a lot more dirt and dust then i gave it credit for, and i got tired of waking up in a sandbox.

2. she snores like a teamster.

adopted in her in august…of 2k2. i figure if she hasn’t gone after me in seven years, i’m probably pretty safe. but now there’s housebill 1982 in the texas legislature. it’s designed to protect us all from “vicious dogs”, which aren’t designated by if they’ve attacked somebody or show tendencies to be aggressive or are a certain breed – just that they have the “potential” to act vicious, or aggressive, or for that matter bark if somebody’s in your yard.

yes, you read that last part correctly. for all you NON-dog owners out there, that’s what dogs DO.

i’ll spare you all the other gory details of this bullshit bill – basically, it states that any dog over forty pounds (for all curious, every dog i’ve ever owned, even julie, was over forty pounds) but this is the way i see it – you know how, every now and again, at the end of the newscast there’s that “fluff” piece about a quilting bee? or car wash? or (pardon the pun here) dog show? and on REALLY slow news days it creeps more into the middle? this is clearly a slow legislative session if they’re wasting their time and our tax dollars on this “threat to public health”.

god forbid we use that time to face less important issues like getting kids free flu vaccines to prevent a swine flu (yeah, pork folks, it’s called SWINE flu – stop your bitching, ham sales will NOT decline because of this) vaccine for school kids or (shock – gasp – shudder) help find some out or work texans about to lose their homes (ahem – me) jobs or something. fuck all that – save the world from pitbulls and rotts!

stop her before she kills again!!!