of last words on the subject

Categories: uncategorized

Date: 14 November 2007 08:44:32

it has worked for us and JD is a very happy dog. below is reply I posted in response to a comment on a website where someone noted that they thought it was cruel to debark a dog.

Crueler would be sending the dog to the pound and possibly its 4th owners at less than 18 months old, possibly being put down because we would be honest enough to say that he is a constant and stupendously loud barker. Cruel were early owners not training the dog to bark only in warning. Cruel were the owners who gave him up when he stopped being cute. Cruel were the owners who took him from a 30 acre farm and tied him up in a suburban yard and let him bark. Cruel would be continually punishing either with voice, hand, rolled newspaper, water spray, citronella collar (he likes it), electric collar (he doesn't care). Our dog has a bark still, it can be heard quite a distance away, however it is not LOUD, it is not piercing, it is not teeth grindingly fingernails on a chalkboard constantly loud. He can still growl loudly. He still 'barks' at the birds, the sun, the wind, life in general, tail wagging, running around as usual - in fact, not a single even slight change in pre and post bark behavior."

All comments are valid, however the old adage of 'walking a mile in my shoes' etc really does apply. I grew up with dogs, in fact lived with 8 dogs over my life before JD - of those, most were barkers but not constant, and we lived on a farm out of town. One was and, in hindsight, the reason my parents were given him was because of that - they were his third or fourth owners. He would have been an ideal candidate for debarking and probably would have been able to have a long and happy life in town, as he was a lovely dog other than the barking. Instead he lived on a farm with wombat holes that he loved going down and where, ultimately, he died. Suffocated in a collapsed wombat hole at only 2 or 3 years old.