On Thu, 01 Mar 2018 07:58:48 -0800, Joerg
wrote:

On 2018-02-28 17:51, John B. wrote:
On Wed, 28 Feb 2018 10:44:31 -0800 (PST), jbeattie
wrote:

On Wednesday, February 28, 2018 at 8:00:12 AM UTC-8, Joerg wrote:
On 2018-02-27 18:01, jbeattie wrote:
On Tuesday, February 27, 2018 at 5:02:45 PM UTC-8, Joerg
wrote:
On 2018-02-27 13:56, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 2/27/2018 1:59 PM, jbeattie wrote:

I don't see any place for horses on popular public
forest trails or unleashed dogs -- one of which nearly
tackled my wife, who is not as robust as she once was.
There are far, far too many dogs in the world.

"A well-trained dog is a joy and a delight. An untrained
dog is a damned nuisance. Most dogs are untrained." -
Stewart Brand

Within the last two days:

A) on my mountain bike, I thought I would get run into by a
large dog running illegally off-leash in our local forest
preserve. The owner didn't hear me coming because she was
yakking on her cell phone. She apologized, but continued
allowing her dogs to run.

B) Our very nice neighbors' micro-dog has yapped loudly
when it saw me outside. It also yapped loudly when it
didn't see me outside, because it yaps incredibly loudly
any time anything catches its attention. That's true even
at 7 AM.

C) I spent some time with a very sweet, intelligent Golden
Retriever at a friend's house. But that young dog is still
too excitable to be trusted not to jump on guests.
Hopefully it will calm down as it matures.

I've known a very few very nice dogs. I've known a few
tolerable dogs. I've known or encountered hundreds of
obnoxious dogs. Unless a person lives in the country and
hunts, farms or runs a ranch, I don't see the attraction.


Join us and our two Labradors who are trained therapy dogs on
a visit to an Alzheimer's place. Dogs can open peoples minds
there like no human ever can. On of our dogs was guiding a
blind woman for a while. In San Francisco, not on a ranch.
How do you suppose that should be done without a dog?

I was in a surgery waiting room a few years ago and some
candy-striper brought in a "therapy dog" to calm the anxious
family members, and all the other dogs people had smuggled into
the waiting room started barking. It was like a f****** dog
pound. Not calming for me. Plus, it's like forced dog petting
-- you are a monster unless you pet the f****** dog and remark
to the handler about what a great dog it is. Again, not calming
for me.

As Frank said, "working dogs" are a different animal. Guide
dogs, drug sniffing dogs, herding dogs, etc. can justify their
often massive carbon footprints. As for "therapy" dogs, why not
cats, lizards, fish, robots? I'd take a Swedish underwear
model with a vodka tonic.

"The studies based on robot substitutes yielded positive
results. These studies suggest the possibility of using robot
substitutes for patients with Dementia, but further studies are
required to better define the technique. Shibata et al., 2001
The text of the note suggest that robot therapy has the same
effects on people as animal therapy and are currently
conducting an experiment in a dementia care centre in Denmark.
Preliminary results obtained from the 7-month clinical trial
showed positive effects on elderly patients' mental health, but
a larger patient sample and control group were necessary to
scientifically verify the study's effects."

Review; Animal-assisted interventions for elderly patients
affected by dementia or psychiatric disorders: A review; (2013)
47 EJPSYR 6 762-773

If you really care about the environment, you do not own two
dogs just to own two dogs -- or three or five or ten. I see
goddamned dog herds on some of the MUPs.


Obviosly you have never been arond a lot of people with
Alzheimer's. I have, for decades.

I have. My sister-in-law died of Alzheimer's. My father-in-law was
in a facility for 11 years before he died. My son spent the first
four years of his life running around the place. I suspect he was
more therapeutic to the occupants than a dog. As an ambulance
driver in the '70s and '80s, I was transporting Alzheimers patients
before there was even a diagnostic criteria for the disease. And
before that, I was delivering pharmaceuticals to what we
euphemistically called "rest homes" starting at age seven. My
father was a pharmacist, and we owned a small-town drug store. I've
been seeing people with senile dementia and Alzheimers in clinical
and long-term care settings since I was a kid.

And what does this have to do with the over-population of dogs?
There is no proof of
any long-term benefit to Alzheimer's patients from dog-therapy, and
other therapies are equally effective -- like people and robots,
even fish. Everybody claims their dog is a therapy, companion,
assist dog, generally as a dodge to get the damned thing into a
restaurant or movie theater or to prove its incredible importance to
society. It's the new thing to do. It's right up there with "owning a
dog is just like raising a child!" Right.


A Friend, who had three very lively kids, once commented that
"raising kids is just like raising hunting dogs. Except I believe
that the dogs learn a bit quicker." :-)


I think Doris Day said that: "Until the age of 14 men mature. After that
they just grow".

Regarding therapy dogs not being there when you grew up that's because
people just did what needed to be done. They knew of the therapeutic
effect of some animals, at least where I grew up.

I'm not sure about that. At least I can't remember anything regarding
the "therapeutic effect of some animals". In fact, as I remember it,
animals generally were kept because they "worked for a living". If you
stored any sort of animal feed (other then hay) in the barn you
probably had "barn cats", in other words cats that lived in the barn.
Why barn cats? Well because if you store grain you have mice and rats
and cats kill and eat mice and rats. If you wanted to drink milk you
had a cow, and so on. But a critter kept just so you could pet it or
it could lay it's head in your lap? I can't remember a single
instance.

Just like there was no
formal foster child system in the old days, when a kid lost the parents
neighbors just took him or her in with theirs. People took care of each
other.
--
Cheers,

John B.