destroying animals because of human stupidity

[suchislife]

I heard on the news a while backs about the declining population of pure dingos in Australia. There is only ONE Island known to have a 100% pure population, and the amount of dingoes on the island is decreasing. This is because one year the government decided to do a huge cull of the animals that were used to being fed by humans because, I THINK, some kid got attacked/killed by one.

What’s worse, is that laws have been made so that tourists must NEVER feed the dingos to avoid this having to happen again. However it still happens, because HUMANS choose to ignore the laws and feed the animals, the dingos suffer and have to be put down! I think this is f*cked up, the animal did nothing wrong, the human did, I think the better option would be to stop tourists going to the island all together!

[DesignFox]

I agree. There is little sense in putting an animal down because it attacked a human. I have heard stories of these things happening with zoo animals when a child is left unattended and manages to get too near the cage. Don't be dumb and feed the animals, and for the love of all things intelligent, don't leave your kids unattended where there are wild things that can eat them!

[blas87]

What is a dingo?

The current debate in the US regarding extermination of animals lays within the pitbull breed of dog.

I've never owned a pitbull, and can only count on one hand the number of times that I've petted a pitbull or had a friend who owned one.

I have, however, had an incident with a stray pitbull who tried to attack me. A friend thought it would be a dandy idea to try and lure a stray pitbull to find its owner. For some reason, the dog saw red when it saw me, and lunged toward me. I am not a violent person towards animals, and would never advocate this, but since pitbull's jaws never let go of what they clench, knowing this dog might tear my face off, I raised my leg to kick it in the face, and dug for my pepperspray. Luckily, my friend pulled the dog back.

So I've seen pitbulls with love for humans like the love my laborador retriever has for me, and I've seen the stereotypical sort of pitbull who tries to kill people. I really don't think exterminating them all is going to do anything. It's all about how they are raised.......and if a pitbull goes off and injures someone, it should be put down. Any dog has the potential to be dangerous if raised like that, and it's beyond stupid to raise a dog to hurt people. It can backfire horribly. That is most likely why that one pitbull tried to attack me. Its owners were probably white trash thinking that it'd be cool to have a mean, angry, fat pitbull to ward off the cops.

[Boozy]

I agree - the thought of exterminating all dogs of a particular breed is horrible!
Pitbulls can be dangerous, though (as blas' story indicates!) Here in Ontario, we have a pitbull ban. But if you already own one, you can keep it. You just can't breed pitbulls anymore. I think this is a much more humane solution.

[AFPheonix]

There's a few problems with the perception of pits. One, every time there's an attack by a dog that looks kind of blocky, it's called a pitbull attack in the media. Other breeds like the Presa and varieties of ridgebacks look very similar to pits to an untrained eye.
Two, pits for some reason are attractive to idiots who want to appear to have the thug lyfe. These are the morons who work diligently to train these dogs to be mean and dangerous to humans. The origins on this dog was to NOT be human-aggressive, just to kill critters well. These same morons are also breeding non-selectively, and so are putting out dogs with bad strains that have more propensity to go against the breed standard and be human-aggressive.

No, I don't have a pit. My sister does, and I threaten her regularly that I'm gonna steal him when she's not looking, because he is the world's sweetest dog.
Any dog can be aggressive and mean. People can be and have been hurt, maimed, or killed by any breed of dog, including labs, poodles, and even small breeds too.

[suchislife]

What is a dingo?

I dingo is a dog that is native to Australia. It's about medium sized, and often has a golden coat much like a golden retriever (or well, most of the ones I've seen have), the coat is also fairly short. Their quite cute actually, my step brother used to have one. They make good pets, although, they don't take well to traveling and prefer to stay in the same location.

Sadly, due to the introduction of domestic dogs, the dingo is beginning to die out, well not die out, but the pure Dingo's are dieing out because stray dogs have started to breed with them. So yeah, that’s a dingo

[XCashier]

What is a dingo?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dingo There are a couple of pictures here.

[DesignFox]

On the pit bull issue- I think banning an entire breed of dog is just plain stupid. Any dog can be dangerous if it is trained to be aggressive. Just because a dog is of a certain breed doesn't automatically classify it as being dangerous. This line of thought merely perpetuates fear and stereotypes, which can lead to people attacking or putting down innocent animals/harrassing their owners. Let's start educating people, and start going after the F***tard breeders and dog fighters rather than making the dogs (and the people that actually love/respect them) suffer.