[lit-ideas] Re: Can't have a gun? Get a dog

  • From: Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Sat, 03 Jun 2006 13:45:43 -0700

Eric Yost wrote:

Robert: I don't know how this discussion became one in which it's being argued that Lawrence is right and the straw man is wrong.

You may have read my comments about dog training and conflated them with my views on containing Islamist expansion. It may have sounded to you like "war-monger on dog-training."

That's probably it. But I have now several times explained just what I meant by Lawrence's straw man. This post comes a bit late. I took Lawrence's straw man to be that someone here might support a method of training in which the dog was trained to be dominant. Last night he explained that this was meant facetiously. What did not strike me as facetious was the notion that if anybody thought that people living with dogs didn't need to establish who was the alpha animal they would of course be committed to that silly view.


Until this morning, I thought that everyone agreed that when a dog/human 'pack' exists there may be a period during which there is an actual 'struggle' for dominance and that it's in the human's best interest to make it clear that he or she is 'alpha.' I have been absolutely clear what my views are throughout this discussion. Andreas (and in a way) Omar have both claimed that this was a parochial notion, a sort of Western fantasy in which certain unargued for beliefs about 'dominance' lay behind how one viewed dogs and formerly colonized people. This is an interesting conjecture but it isn't borne out by what can be observed in situations in which packs do exist. The dogs in India that Andreas observed apparently did not form packs, and they existed harmoniously with each other and with humans. This doesn't show, however, that dogs and humans in their artificial 'packs' don't exhibit alpha-competitive behaviour or that dogs/wolves in packs live in democratic bliss.

I'm glad you reminded me that I was originally responding to your notion that 'old people' couldn't establish dominance (or apparently train), large powerful dogs. If you think this is so you must think it's so because 'old people' lack the brute strength to 'handle' large powerful dogs. And if you think this it would seem that you must believe brute strength is essential to training Rotties, GSDs, Bouviers, and other dogs (this is a Western list) that are used as protection dogs, in police K-9 units and the like. These were the beliefs and assumptions
I challenged.


It's not. Throughout my childhood we had hunting dogs. I've had dogs in New York, taken care of friends' dogs, and am in the middle of writing something about dogs. I agree with what Lawrence and David Ritchie have written.

Lawrence has by now, written a number of things. David has recounted his experience with his Border Terrier. My only disagreement with Lawrence was over how to understand some of the things Andreas said. As far as I can tell, no one has challenged anything David wrote. I certainly haven't.


Robert Paul
Reed College
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