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Originally Posted by DESS

Okay, this is why I don't like dogs:

1. They are loud. I can hear them barking at night and I can hear them barking in the morning. If I walked outside and shouted randomly on a daily basis, the cops would be all over me. Why do dogs get away with it?

You start/drive a car in the morning or night? Use a lawn mower? Use powertools in your open garage? If so, you're contributing to the same, normal, neighbour hood noises your complaining about.

They are dangerous - not bear dangerous - but dangerous enough as outlined by the City here. Yes of course your dog isn't, but some are. In fact, there was an incident every day of the year with an agressive dog in Calgary last year. A low-incident year (according to the article), but unacceptable nevertheless. Obviously this only tracks the incidents reported, so it's safe to assume the rates are even higher.

Not bear dangerous? What about human dangerous? The city also consdiers Hallowe'en "dangerous" enough to put up this link. Your article proves that dog owners are steadily more responsible on the whole then they were 25 years ago, and maybe the dog brreds in this city are "calmer" too. There's also domestic violence incidents everyday...but many go unreported so surely the rates are higher.

Crap. People simply don't pick up after their dogs and it is absolutely disgusting. Kudos to you if you do, but enough don't that it is an obvious problem.

Yeah, crap is a problem if its not picked up in public places, and those people should be taken to task, as are those who litter without regard for those around people....and there are more than this city's fair sure of casual litterers out there.

Urine. I've never seen any dog owner, no matter how responsible, pick up their dog's urine. If I whipped out my schlong in the middle of a park where children were playing to take a leak, people would freak. Let's put the public nudity aspect of that example aside, people would be disgusted that I was peeing where kids were playing. I find it equally disgusting to know and see dogs do this, but it is somehow socially unacceptable to call out a guy for letting his dog piss whereever. It's outrageous, frankly.

Outrageous? Give me a break, dog urine is organic and mostly water. The pesticides the city puts on those same parks is 10x as toxic and dangerous (although still perfectly safe) as dog urine that's absorbed into the ground as quickly as the equivalent. Sneezing and spitting should be outlawed too, for the liquids in introduces into those same parks. Or cooler chests of ice that may contain traces of beer, pop, or meat juice on summer barbeques.

They're dirty and they smell bad.

To who? Quite the big brush your painting with....and there are a lot less excuses for people who smell 10 times as worse and are more then dog dirty, when drug stores are filled with personal cleaning products.

You know, I understand people love their dogs and that's great. And I can also see that it would be unfair to take a dog out of somebody's home - both to the dog and to the owner.

A more realistic solution to this pest problem we have would be a city-funded initiative to spay and neuter every dog in the city, ban the sale/possession of any new dogs, and just wait for the current generation of dogs to pass away. Within say 15 years the problem would be solved.

Realistic? LOL Quite the case of canine clensing to solve the "problem". So by extension, lets close all the animal hospitals in this city too..if your animal gets sick, let it die. If some sicko kills the neighbours dog...."meh", right?

I would be curious to know if anyone else would be interested in this plan. Perhaps we could start a petition or do something to get the ball rolling on this. Obviously it will be a tough thing to achieve, but I think if we are compassionate to the current dog owners, make exceptions for work dogs, etc. this may have legs. It will certainly get support from some people, I'm just not sure how many at this point.

I think an Internet petition has been proved time and again to get tangible result on such actions. Feel free to take as long as you like researching all those internet petition sites.


Truly, truly, unbelivable.

You don't have to like dogs, or want anything to do with dogs, but to infringe on people's rights and freedoms to possess domesticated animals is about as misguided opinion as I've seen on this board.