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July 21, 2004
Ain't Nothin' But a Hound Dog
The British anti-hunting crowd is upset by the inevitable consequences of their proposed hunting ban.
A hunting ban need not spell doom for thousands of hounds, the Associate Parliamentary Group for Animal Welfare (Apgaw) concluded on Tuesday.
Its report follows an investigation by dog welfare experts, who decided euthanasia should be a last resort.
They apparently think you can make a house dog out of a hound. That's a real knee-slapper, innit?
"An adult foxhound is a very large and boisterous breed, so re-homing will be harder," said Rachel Casey, of the Department of Clinical Veterinary Science, Bristol University.
Reckon? Know what hounds do for entertainment when they're not hunting? They bark. Since they're pack animals, when one of them barks, they all bark....and they won't stop until you throw something at them and yell "Shet up dawgs!"
The other problem is that when hounds are denied an appropriate outlet, they will find more destructive ways to express their overwhelming hunting instinct. Like destroying your furniture. Or by becoming a very efficient egg-sucking, chicken-killing machine.
Tonya Wood, joint Master of the Heythrop Hunt, laughed sadly at the thought of re-homing hounds. "It just doesn't work," she told BBC News Online. "I would challenge anyone to take a hound into their house and not want to get rid of it within a week.
Now there's a lady what knows hounds. They're not bad dogs, by any means. My favorite hound was this huge red 3-legged bloodhound that my grandpa had when I was just a tot. Like most hounds, ol' Sarge lived to hunt. Unlike most hounds, he was content to laze around in the shade & be fussed over by a very small girl....until he thought my grandpa was going hunting. Then he turned into a very large bundle of barely contained excitement and I learned pretty quickly to get out of his way. He wouldn't mean to hurt me, but nothing could come between him and what he loved more than anything else. Hunting.
As a general rule, hounds are working dogs, not pets. Keeping one cooped up in your home would be as ill-advised as keeping a large bull in a china shop. I'd hate to see 20,000 dogs put down, but denying them the one thing in life that they live for is equally cruel.
Perhaps the proponents of the ban might consider applying the ban in stages, progressively limiting the places in which hunting could take place and working with the breeders to spay and neuter most of the hounds they currently have. That would improve the breed and eliminate the need to euthanize most of the current hound population....not to mention the utterly ridiculous proposition that one can teach a hound to be a house dog.
Naw, that would make too much sense.
Posted by Rita at July 21, 2004 07:50 AM