Baby Shot in Hunting Accident

Humans,
Tragically we read in the news that a 5 day old baby in rural Pennsylvania was shot by a relative who was hunting when a stray bullet flew in the window and hit the baby in the head. When will you humans ever learn that there are too many guns, too many bullets, and too much hunting.
Chloe

Abstract Ideals

Hi Humans,
You humans have all kinds of abstract ideals, some promote good things, like being nice to each other, but some are used to justify all kinds of bad things, even killing each other on a mass scale. The list is endless, but the one that most stands out now is this group of thugs called ISIS which says any gruesome massacre is OK because it promotes their religion which according to them is what God wants for everyone.
We dogs don't have ideals. Any mischief we perform is done in a limited scale. Personally, I don't even like to run after rabbits or squirrels. Being domestic, I prefer my food from a bag. Wild dogs like coyotes kill other animals for food. As distasteful as it sounds, for them it's a matter of survival. But none of us carnivores do destruction on the mass scale that you humans do, and we don't do it for some abstract idea.
Chloe

Proof That Private Gun Ownership = More Gun Killings

Hi Humans,
This is a PubMed abstract from the American Journal of Public Health that demonstrates that one is more likely to be shot by a neighbor, friend, or relative who owns a gun "legally" than by an intruder. So the gun lobby BS that gun ownership deters crimes is just BS.

Am J Public Health. 2014 Oct;104(10):1912-1919. Epub 2014 Aug 14.

The Relationship Between Gun Ownership and Stranger and Nonstranger Firearm Homicide Rates in the United States, 1981-2010.

Siegel M¹, Negussie Y, Vanture S, Pleskunas J, Ross CS, King C 3rd.

Author information

• ¹Michael Siegel, Yamrot Negussie, Sarah Vanture, and Jane Pleskunas are with the Department of Community Health Sciences, Boston University School of Public Health, Boston, MA. Craig S. Ross is with Virtual Media Resources, Natick, MA. Charles King III is with Greylock McKinnon Associates, Cambridge, MA, and Pleiades Consulting Group, Lincoln, MA.

Abstract

Objectives. We examined the relationship between gun ownership and stranger versus nonstranger homicide rates. Methods. Using data from the Supplemental Homicide Reports of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Reports for all 50 states for 1981 to 2010, we modeled stranger and nonstranger homicide rates as a function of state-level gun ownership, measured by a proxy, controlling for potential confounders. We used a negative binomial regression model with fixed effects for year, accounting for clustering of observations among states by using generalized estimating equations. Results. We found no robust, statistically significant correlation between gun ownership and stranger firearm homicide rates. However, we found a positive and significant association between gun ownership and nonstranger firearm homicide rates. The incidence rate ratio for nonstranger firearm homicide rate associated with gun ownership was 1.014 (95% confidence interval = 1.009, 1.019). Conclusions. Our findings challenge the argument that gun ownership deters violent crime, in particular, homicides.

So my recommendation to you Humans is stay away from friends, relatives, and neighbors who own guns. They are more dangerous than intruders.

Chloe

Excuse Me

Hi Humans,
You Humans say excuse me when you step on my foot accidentally and when you want me to get out of the way. So I guess excuse me must mean “get out of the way or I will step on your foot.”
Chloe

Language

Hi Humans,
You Humans have so many different languages and dialects. It boggles the mind. And each language has many different nuances that frame how you think, so that some concepts that are natural to one group of humans who speak one language might be incomprehensible to one who speaks another. We dogs don't have that problem. We all have one language. Barking, sniffing, tail wagging, and a few other nuances are all we need and are understood by dogs all over the world.
Chloe

Do Dogs Appreciate Beauty?

Hi Humans,

I’ll bet you Humans think you are the only creatures who can appreciate beauty. I beg to differ. I can’t speak for all the other species, but we dogs can certainly appreciate the beauty of aromas much more than you nose challenged Humans. When I go for a walk down the street with Dad, I stop at every bush to appreciate its unique scent. I don’t see Dad sniffing the bushes. He just gets impatient with me and tugs at the leash pulling me away before I can fully savor the beauty.

I would concede that you guys can appreciate paintings, sculpture, and other visual art better than we can. After all you do have better eye sight. As for great music, when Dad is listening to some quiet romantic classical music while doodling on his computer and I am reclining nearby, I can appreciate that as part of an overall serene environment. But when it comes to a banging crashing symphony or some atonal modern noise, that doesn’t set well in my ears.

As you Humans say, “Beauty is in the eye [or nose] of the beholder.” That is true.

Chloe

Squeaky Wheel

Hi Humans,

It seems that humans who are the loudest, most selfish, and most uncompromising seem to be heard and get their way more often than those who are realistic (the “squeaky wheel”effect). We dogs don’t seem to get away with that kind of behavior. An uncooperative dog often ends up at the pound and eventually… Well, I don’t like to talk about it. Nice dogs (like me) do better at survival (and it does not hurt to be cute like me either).

This “squeaky” wheel effect can occur on a small personal scale. An example would be the human who always gets his or her way because humans around him or her give in to avoid the withering fire shooting out at them from his or her tongue.

On a domestic political scale, political groups with the most extreme and uncompromising ideas have recently taken over politics in our country. It is amazing to see the foolish ideas that otherwise intelligent humans with big brains will believe and accept as normal.

The same is true internationally. Look at the recent war in Gaza. Hamas, which uncompromisingly believes that it can conquer Israel and turn all of the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea into a Fundamentalist Moslem Arab country in which Jews are either absent or reduced to a subservient minority, caused or supported the murder of 3 Jewish teenagers near Jerusalem. One could say it is crazy for a Jew to hitchhike across any part of the West Bank (real or perceived), but that is no excuse for murder. It seems that the murderers did this to stir up animosity between Jews and Arabs. And they were successful in their goal. Some Jews with “goyishe kopfs” accommodated Hamas with a pogrom against Arabs in East Jerusalem. And even worse, some pinhead Jewish murderers grabbed an Arab teenager and murdered him in a rather grisly way. This gave Hamas the excuse they were seeking to beef up their rockets across the border creating a situation where the Israeli government had no alternative and had to go to war with bombs and shells and when that didn’t work a ground invasion to destroy rocket sites and tunnels. Of course that resulted in the death of about 2000 Palestinians (apparently acceptable in the Hamas plan) and about 70 Israelis. It also was convenient for anti-semites in Europe and elsewhere outside of the region to attack Jews and call for boycotts of Israel.

So where are the sane humans in all of this? Why are they pulled to the brink and beyond by the crazies? They did exist in the 1990s when there was a climate of reconciliation and compromise on both sides leading up to the Clinton/Barak Plan which would have brought peace and the creation of a Palestinian state next to Israel. Yasser Arafat fumbled the ball because he lacked the courage to make the deal, creating a tinder box to which Ariel Sharon lit a match with his unannounced visit to the Dome of the Rock, to which the crazies on the Arab side responded with an intifada of suicide bombers. Then the sane humans on both sides just allowed themselves to be dragged along into endless conflict.

And those are just a few example of how you gullibles act. Well Humans, I don’t have an answer to your problems. After all, I’m just a dog. Maybe some day the sane ones among you (who I hope are really the majority) will get together and figure it out.

Chloe