It's not that I don't like dogs...

Does every U.S. home need at least one dog to be considered livable by its human occupants? It would seem so. By that logic, it would also seem that the average U.S. home is more livable today than any time in its history. We currently own more than 73 millions dogs. Those are the owned dogs, not the droves of unclaimed creatures roaming the streets in packs across understaffed municipal and rural areas nationwide.

It's not that I don't like dogs. I actually do like dogs, but I like trained pets.

The problem is that the vast majority of dogs, at least in the area where I live, not only go untrained, but unsupervised. These are animals, and for animals to be integrated with such depth as they apparently are being into our society, they most be properly trained and managed. An animal cannot be blamed for doing what is in it's nature. The human responsible for that animal on the other hand, is, and should be held, fully responsible.

A dog left untrained and unattended, even in a fenced yard, is a nuisance. If it manages to get out of its enclosure it poses a serious bite risk which grows with each successful escape. Even if it is properly contained, it is going to be disruptive. An untrained dog is a noisy dog. They bark. It's what they do. Contrary to the apparent popular perceptions in America today, dog barking is not music or even entertaining...unless they're singing Christmas carols.

While every individual has the right to own a dog. Every individual also has the right to be able to enjoy the outdoors, or indoors for that matter, free of barking dogs.

I actually read an opinion piece in the local paper a week or so ago, about the subject of animal control. It was directed at another article from earlier in the week...which I missed...but which apparently had stated that stronger animal control efforts were needed. The author of the op-ed piece, basically stated, that the person who wrote the original article was obviously a fascist and a nazi. They went on to explain how rounding up animals declared dangerous by the state and euthanizing them, was no different than Nazi's rounding up Jews and sending them to the gas chamber.

Ummm...yeah...I wonder what the last name of the anonymous writer of that op-ed piece is? Schmidt? Krüger? Zimmermann perhaps?

With opinions like that, it's no wonder the neighbors can't figure out why someone complains when that wonderful little "child" of theirs, which they love so much they have chained up in the back yard all day and night, barks and howls from 11pm until 4am...every night.

Euthanizing dogs the same as murdering millions of people? Idiot.