Soft-Hearted Weirdo
I believe I’m the outlier. The soft-hearted weirdo. But I have trouble with people attaching shock collars to their dogs. (Or any other living thing.)
I’ve actually had trouble with collars of any kind, because dogs are sentient creatures who weren’t born with collars and didn’t ask for them. But somewhere along the line, I followed suit. My dogs wear collars. With tags to show they’re “legal,” and information to aid in their homecoming should we get separated.
When I was a teen, living in a city of roughly 30,000 people, leashes were rarely used. Dogs that lived with human families roamed the neighborhood. They visited other homes. My family frequently entertained Mugsy, a spirited boxer whose family lived several blocks away. And Dancer, who would show up at dinnertime and stand on his hind legs, dancing, to earn morsels of people-food. I never learned where his family lived.
But since then, leash laws have become a thing. And I do understand why. I was once attacked by a dog while riding my bicycle. I went to the hospital in an ambulance and fell in and out of consciousness for days. Had the dog been fenced in, this wouldn’t have happened.
My current canine companion, Tootsie, had the run of 22 acres most of her life—except when I drove her into town where we visited George’s Pond or the stream next to the Berryville Community Center. Then she was on a leash. We sometimes had disagreements about which way to go. But mostly we listened to each other’s cues and compromised.
Now we live in a city. Whenever we leave the house and its small, fenced yard, Tootsie must be on a leash. It bothers me that Tootsie has less freedom. But we do spend more time walking together now.
Most dogs we encounter in public are outfitted with shock collars. They’re all supremely well behaved. No disagreements of the kind Toots and I occasionally have. Which is precisely the point, I suppose. But I always wonder how humans justify this. Some say it “doesn’t really hurt.” But I don’t buy it. Would they put these harmless shock collars on their kids? Would the law allow them to put shock collars on their kids?
I once knew a farmer who told me he didn’t really like dogs—but he used them on his farm. Usually, I’d see a dog trailing his farm truck or helping round up cattle. But one day I witnessed a seething farmer approaching the woods into which his dog had run—apparently in fear. The farmer kept pressing the shock button—and the dog, hiding in the brush, yowled in agony.
The other day I saw a man hollering at a very young boy on a public sidewalk. The man was extremely angry at the boy for some transgression, four-lettered words pouring out of his adult mouth in an x-rated tirade that asked questions (WTF are you doing?) but never allowed for answers. Imagine if that boy had been wearing a shock collar—and the man held the associated remote control.
I think we’d be hard pressed to find people who would grant shock collars for training kids. Why is it any different for dogs—who are sentient creatures with obvious intelligence? Who love us, trust us, and defend us? Most people agree it’s not good to kick a misbehaving dog. Shocking a dog into submission doesn’t seem much better—even if the shocks are theoretically small and don’t really hurt.
But then, I have trouble with people having the power to cut down a hundred-year-old tree to make a parking lot. Like I said—soft-hearted weirdo.