I have had enough!!! need to air this…
I see many pet lovers here but I really cannot stand the sight of seeing dogs being dressed up anymore. orh…it’s so terrible and bad taste to do this to animals and they cannot stand up for their rights.
To begin with, dogs don’t need clothes. Too warm and can condition them not fit for natural environment. I wanted to puke when I heard a friend talked about spending TW$1000 on an outfit for her dog, and proud of the imported stuff. To make things worse…I see many common places selling clothes for them.
These owners are really taking the word “pet” to its limit…i.e. the poor chap loses its complete identity and its ability to survive…all for the satisfaction of the owner who is either single or childless and put their own needs in the wrong place… I would love my dog to be a dog…not one that satisfy my whims and fancies… Think they should get an AIBO instead…
Aren’t there some organisations out there that can put a FULL STOP to this nonsense that feeds the visual pleasure of the owners? To me, it is plain cruelty, another classic example of how we tamper with mother nature… consider this, when such dogs go missing…do you think they can ever survive to be found? This is truly an example of misplaced love…
One of my greatest pleasures at the moment is walking out into places with dirt, muddy water, trees, watery mud, and interesting things for my dog to roll in and/or eat.
There’s something intensely satisfying about watching someone enthusiastically jumping into mud, walking around nonchalantly covered in mud, or charging muddily towards you intent on putting muddy footprints on your clean shirt. Rolling in mud, and eating disgusting things you find, seem to be the defining characteristics of being a dog. Watching a dog celebrate being a dog puts concepts like ‘cute’ and even ‘clean’ in perspective. It helps you stay in touch with the dog that lurks inside all of us.
Perhaps the people who dress their dogs up are seeking something else? Perhaps they are trying to distance themselves from the pollution of the city in which they have chosen to live, or the rural squalor in which their parents had to live?
Or perhaps they don’t have any dog in them? That can be remedied, and my li’l guy will be glad to oblige!
[quote=“venus_buddy”]These owners are really taking the word “pet” to its limit…i.e. the poor chap loses its complete identity and its ability to survive…all for the satisfaction of the owner who is either single or childless and put their own needs in the wrong place… I would love my dog to be a dog…not one that satisfy my whims and fancies… Think they should get an AIBO instead…
To me, it is plain cruelty, another classic example of how we tamper with mother nature… consider this, when such dogs go missing…do you think they can ever survive to be found? This is truly an example of misplaced love…[/quote]
Keep in mind that people do not really want a pet dog that is really a dog; nor do they want a pet cat that is really a cat. They want the prettified, cleaned up, domesticated version. Have you ever lived with an unneutered tom cat? I would say that living with such a beast, in a small apartment, unable to go outside and have sex as nature intended, would be intolerable. A natural, untamed dog, roaming around free, is no pet.
We change animals to make them tolerable to live with. We bathe them - my sister’s dog gets a bath every day, and smells like perfume. We neuter them so their sex drive does not drive us insane. We train their natural exuberance out of them. We feed them meat byproducts from animals that they could not possibly kill instead of letting them hunt.
Dressing them in clothes is just a small extension of what we all do when we get a pet. You are fooling yourself if you think you really want your dog to be a dog.
[quote]We change animals to make them tolerable to live with. We bathe them - my sister’s dog gets a bath every day, and smells like perfume. We neuter them so their sex drive does not drive us insane. We train their natural exuberance out of them. We feed them meat byproducts from animals that they could not possibly kill instead of letting them hunt.
Dressing them in clothes is just a small extension of what we all do when we get a pet. You are fooling yourself if you think you really want your dog to be a dog.[/quote]
I have to disagree. Nature intended dogs to live side by side with humans. As they have done so, they have become tamed. In ancient times dogs formed an alliance with humans. They helped us hunt, shepherd and guard our settlements and we in return gave them food - food which they could not possibly hunt for by themselves. Tamed dogs are dogs, but different from their ancestors. Nature intended humans to train dogs and neuter them/walk them/dress them up, so we do.
Humans have progressed and I suppose in a way so have dogs.
Soon we will see dogs speaking English or humans speaking dog, dogs driving busses, dogs performing complex medical operations, dog rock bands and dog physicists.
We already have dog astronaughts.
[quote=“Dangermouse”]
Nature intended humans to train dogs and neuter them/walk them/dress them up, so we do.
Soon we will see dogs speaking English or humans speaking dog, dogs driving busses, dogs performing complex medical operations, dog rock bands and dog physicists.
We already have dog astronaughts.[/quote]
I like your analysis and…
I agree with the training and neuter to some extent…but dressing them up is like an icing on the cake…something that can do without and I daresay with certainty…the dogs do not enjoy this. I saw another one today…it was looking like “Do I really have to do this???” Come on…if you love them…free them from this torture…
As for advancement, highly intelligent humans known as scientists have already pre-empted that point and came up with AIBO…why don’t you dog lovers just settle for AIBO and dress it up whichever way you like. If you have whims and fancies…try Tamagochi as another possible alternative and don’t get your pets to live up to your dreams please…it’s pathetic… I believe all these technological inventions are meant to address all the needs of the concrete jungle pet lovers…(tons of $$ had been poured into its R&D)… Leave your real pets to the natural world…
And I would really like to see stragbasher having fun with his dog one day…way to go man…that’s the lovely way for one to treat his dog. And no way that dog will end up as meat on the table without a good fight first. Now can your “dressed up” creature put up the fight before ending up as meat or it smells so much of perfume that it is no longer suitable as food? I maintain that I want my dog to be a dog, i.e. it wins its fight not to be put on the table as a delicacy and not because it smells like perfume. That is a dignified win.
By the way, if you flip “dog” around(as I was typing, I discover that through error), it says “God”…so please treat your “God” in the right way…the mother nature way. I don’t think that’s what we were meant to be doing repeatedly…tamper with mother nature…as if we have not done enough damage to the globe already.
We do even worse stuff to each other, than we do to dogs.
Did anybody see the photo in one of the English papers last week, of two dogs in bride and groom dress, getting “married”? I bet the officiant didn’t even ascertain their desire to enter into the bonds of holy matrimony–probably because he hadn’t sufficiently embraced the notion of animals which have wild indiscriminate sex within their packs every few months. (Didn’t want to set a bad example for his daughters, I suppose.)
Hey guys…I can live with such feedback and thanks in a way…but i just CANNOT stand the sight of dogs dressed in clothes!!! It is simply not right, try looking into their eyes and tell me what you see…[/quote]
