Heart Like a Dog

The Good, the Bad, and the Oh My God of living with dogs!

Follow-Up Friday

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For those new to the blog, my follow-up Friday provides me with an opportunity to update or revise a post from the previous week.

You know sometimes you post about something and you need an update but it doesn’t warrant a whole blog.  Or sometimes someone made a comment that really resonated with you.  Yup, Follow-Up Friday baby! 🙂

I really only want to follow-up with Justice For Putz.

People have different ideas about whether dogs are supposed to provide protection or not.  Personally I don’t want my dog putting him/herself in harm’s way for me.   My dogs are like my children and I would protect my children with my life.  I try really hard to let my dogs know that I can take care of myself and in turn take care of them.  That is the reason we train with other people and dogs as frequently as we can.

But I can’t get inside my dog’s mind to know what they are thinking and I can’t predict with 100% accuracy how my dog will react in any given situation.  I’d like to think neither one of my dogs would EVER bite, but they are dogs and I don’t know.  Which is why we take precautions with our dogs around other people, especially children.    We also try and educate other people about how to treat our dogs.

I find it sad that because a dog bites, it is immediately the dog’s fault.  My aunt and uncle had a dog once, Scooter who jumped their fence and bit a child.  I don’t know all of the reasonings for their decision (if the law was involved or not) but they decided to euthanize Scooter.  It broke my heart when I found out, because Scooter was a great dog.

After Scooter had been put down, my aunt and uncle found out that the child who had been bitten had been using a sling shot and shooting marbles at Scooter.  One day Scooter had enough and stuck up for himself and he lost his life because of it.

Sadly Scooter and Putz aren’t the only stories about dog’s being wrongfully euthanized.

I wonder if Putz had been a Labrador or a different breed of dog if the outcome would have been the same?  2 Brown Dawgs left a comment about another pitbull who did nothing, and was still euthanized.

It concerns me, because right now the focus is on pitbulls, because a certain population of people have used the dogs wrongly.  But that focus can change.  When I was a kid I remember my father telling me how vicious Doberman Pinschers were, German Shepherds were also considered a “dangerous” breed, but we all know that isn’t the case.

We need to take action now and stop this breed specific crusade, because if we don’t we can’t be sure it won’t be our dog’s breed that’s next.

Book update, my book has 6,231 words.

Justice For Putz

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I came across a disturbing article on Facebook today.

Thanks to Bringing Up Bella for posting this article about a pitbull that was put to sleep by the Minneapolis Animal Care and Control.

Putz, the dog was defending his mistress from her ex-husband.  The ex-husband had already kicked Putz and had rolled up his fist in order to hit his ex-wife when Putz intervened, biting the man on the wrist.

Putz was then impounded and Minneapolis Animal Care and Control assessed Putz and deemed him dangerous and suggested he not be returned to his owner.

An animal rights group became involved and offered to have Putz sent to an animal sanctuary where Putz could live his life without the possibility of being re-homed. Despite their best efforts the judge involved in  the case disregarded the offer and ordered Putz be put to death.  Putz was euthanized on Saturday.

I don’t think I have the words to express the outrage I feel at this miscarriage of justice.  A dog was protecting his mistress from harm, had he been a truly vicious dog (as MACC said) this dog could have done a lot of damage to the ex-husband, instead he simply bit him on the wrist preventing serious harm to his mistress and for his loyalty and love, he was murdered.   Surprisingly the ex-husband’s record of domestic violence wasn’t taken into consideration.

I fully believe most dogs don’t bite without provocation and in an instance of a dog bite all circumstances should be taken into consideration.  I can’t believe in this day and age stuff like this still takes place.

It scares me to think that my dog could be killed just for protecting me.  What scares me even more is I don’t know what to do to stop this Salem Witch mentality.

I will start by signing the petition to bring justice for Putz, if you’re interested you can find the petition here.

I will also do some research and see if I can find out the name of the judge who ruled on the case and drop him/her a line with my thoughts.  I do know if I lived in Minneapolis I would probably be picketing somewhere.

Book Update: My book has 5,249 words.

Thanks Long Overdue

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January 12, 2012, I am awarded the 7 x 7 Link Award from Shoes on the Wrong Feet.  I leave Shoes a comment thanking her for the award and then…..well I just wrote about other things.  I think I should publicly thank her, so thank you Shoes for thinking of me.

The 7 x 7 award is very similar to the Seven Links Challenge, which I absolutely dreaded doing, I mean going through 420 posts to find SEVEN posts is difficult.  Rather than go through all 420, I decided to go with some of my more recent posts.

Most Surprisingly Successful:  A Christmas Miracle.  I wrote this post on a whim.  It was supposed to be my follow-up Friday post but I saw this writing prompt and the story just about flew out of my finger tips.  I had the most comments and the most views that day.

Most Underrated:  The Legacy of Michael Vick.  I know, I’m hung up on this one, but damn it, the topic was current and it should have been slightly controversial considering I was giving him the benefit of the doubt and I am a huge dog lover, AND it should have been pressed!!

Most Popular:  Pet Blogger Challenge.   This was the first time I participated because…..well I didn’t know about it last year.  But I really liked the way it was structured, it was almost like I was giving an interview.

Most Beautiful:  I had two on this one, To Cassie With Love, which was a letter to my daughter on her graduation from the Army Language School.  We had to miss the graduation due to the freak winter storm that left us without power for a week.  I was very emotional when I wrote it and thought it came out quite nice.  The other one was One From The Bucket List, which was a tribute to my nephew upon his return from Afghanistan.

Most Helpful:  Solve A Reader Problem. I’m not really sure if this was helpful or not.  I don’t get people writing in to ask me for help with their dogs, so I had to come up with a topic on my own.  I went with what helped me with managing all the blogs I follow.

Most Controversial:  Blog The Change, Be The Change.  While it wasn’t really controversial, I fully expected it to be.  You really surprise me sometimes.  I talk about putting people in stockades and throwing rotten tomatoes at them and you don’t even blink an eye!  LOL what do I have to do to get you riled up?

Most Pride Worthy:  This is a really hard one for me, because I don’t always think my posts are the greatest.  Sometimes I write one and say, Damn that was good!  And then there are other times where I say, what rubbish.  I would have to say all of the posts I listed above are Pride Worthy.

I’m also supposed to tell you seven things about myself that you don’t already know.  I’ll give this my best shot.

I snore.  I snore on my back and I snore on my side and I snore on my stomach and I snore with my mouth closed.

I once snored so loud that my kids knocked on my bedroom door and woke me up to stop snoring.

I love to cook, and while I can sometimes prepare a fancy dish, I like to keep my dishes pretty simple and straight forward.

I love to bake.  Baking is my thing. I love baking cookies, brownies,  and pies.  YUM

I was recently diagnosed with food allergies to wheat, peanut butter, clams, scallops and sesame seeds.  OMG those are five of my favorite foods. 

Because of the wheat allergy my Dr. has recommended I go gluten-free. 

This really puts a damper on my baking. 🙁

The last part of this award is to pass it on to seven bloggers who I love to read.   In the past, I have passed awards on to people who never picked them up or did the challenge.  So in order to avoid that happening again I am putting my own twist on this.

If YOU would like to do the 7 x 7 Award, please pick it up from my side bar and go for it.

And also, I’d like to know how you think I did with choosing my blog posts.  Did I miss any?  Were there some you thought fit better?

Book update is the same as yesterday, but I hope to work on it tomorrow.

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