I’m so tired of this rhetoric that hunting is antithetical to leftism and that keeping dogs for hunting (and hunting in general) is only accessible to the bourgeois and is also somehow antithetical to leftism.
If any of you chronically online, city-dwelling goofs actually took some time to get to know hunters, you’d learn a thing or two about the working class.
Yes, big time dog person here. I currently share my life with four crazy, high energy dogs and it’s absolutely marvelous (if not a bit exhausting).
I went on a slightly unhinged rant on here the other day about how lefties ought to get on board with protection sports and the k9 world.
The dog world (in my particular dog sports of choice in my corner of the U.S. at least) in general skews conservative-to-fascist. I’m a member of multiple dog clubs/training groups/orgs and I am, thus far, the only person left of Obama that I know of. There are a few libs here and there, but most are pretty quiet about it. Since I share a mutual loathing for libs with the more conservative members of my dog groups, I use it as an opportunity to sprinkle leftist theory/talking points into our conversations.
Honestly, it’s pretty great. I get to hang out with dogs and build working class solidarity/develop class consciousness with people who otherwise would never encounter these ideologies.
Preach. Tea and Coffee are some of the only hyper-colonial goods on which I spend as much money as I can reasonably afford. I love a good, malty, tannic and almost sweet assam — especially in the summer when brewed cold.
Coffee, it seems, will not fare as well as tea in the impending climate apocalypse, so I’m really treasuring the good stuff now. Pro-tip: vacuum seal some of the good shit in whole-bean single-servings and stash it in your freezer. Shit will stay fresh for years that way. Don’t know if it works the same for tea, though :(
I also train dogs and — assuming he did use some sort of aversive stimulus on his dog — I am both on his side and not on his side.
If he used vibrate, as he claims his collar can only vibrate, I am less on his side. Many (most I’ve worked with) dogs find it to be more aversive than low-level electric shock.
If he used shock, I’m more on his side.
BUT if he used shock, lied about it, and claimed he used vibrate, then I’m barely on his side. I’m only on his side insofar as I am in favor of the use of aversives to train dogs (as long as the trainer/handler knows wtf they’re doing, which Hassan likely does not). Lying about it on the other hand? Very not on his side about that.
Ultimately I don’t really care. Rather, I hope more people can develop a more nuanced understanding of the use of e-collars in dog training.
Some dogs prefer vibration, some dogs prefer shock. Most dogs benefit from some form of aversive or another. Aversive =/= pain. Aversive = discomfort.
See my other comment in this thread for a slightly unhinged rant on the subject.
Man, I know we’re here to talk about how fucking dumb the whole situation is, but there’s something in particular about this that is so fucking stupid outside of the psy-op part:
If Hasan does have a “vibrate only” collar, it’s highly likely that his dog FUCKING HATES IT. Many dogs find vibrating collars to be more aversive than low-to-mid-level shock, because it’s scary and uncomfortable as shit.
Shit, dawg, I’m gonna take this opportunity to rant about some shit.
Seriously, find a collar that does both vibration and shock, strap it to your neck, and have a friend/partner/stranger/whoever shock you without warning at a setting that would be considered a reasonable “working level” for a pet dog (in between a 1-Low and 2-Med on a garmin/tritronics models, somewhere between 5-15 for e-collar tech.). Great. Feel that? It ain’t much, is it? Kinda almost feels nice, right? Cool. Now, have that same person hit you with the vibrate function without warning. FUCKIN SCARY AND UNCOMFY RIGHT??
Here’s the thing, folks: shock collars aren’t bad. In fact, if you are against the euthanasia of “problem” dogs, you should probably be PRO shock collar. Anyone who says otherwise has likely never spent any time with a truly powerful, aggro, anxious, dominant dog. And all you R+ folks out there, let me know how your fucking “positive only” methods work on a bigass mal or dutchie who wants to fucking hurt you.
If you’re anti-collar and are a totally pro-animal liberation, anti animal-husbandry totally vegan person who believes that we shouldn’t even have pets, then you get a pass, because your logic is consistent with those views. Anyone else can fuck right off if you’re hating on e-collars.
More lefties need to get into the k9 protection world, not for sport, but out of necessity. Some shit will likely come to pass in the future, and dogs are going to be a not insignificant component. You wanna know who currently has the monopoly on fucking hard ass dogs who can do WAY more than just bite? It ain’t lefties, thats for sure. The stuff out in the public domain about the U.S. military use of dogs for surveillance/recon/protection/violence etc is absolutely nutty. And that’s just the stuff in the public domain.
Aight sorry rant over
I made three assumptions: that the anti-hunting left are chronically online, that they’re largely city-dwellers, and that they’re goofs. So far I have yet to be proven wrong.
Listen yall, I hunt. I hunt alone and I hunt with people. Every person I hunt with is working class. Nearly every person I encounter while hunting is also working class. Most of the anti-hunting rhetoric I encounter seems largely anti-rural in nature, which to me seems antithetical to class solidarity.
Several breeds of hunting dogs were developed by and for the working class — hell the entire German breeding program was designed specifically for the working class hunter. The Russian Spaniel was developed specially to be a hunting dogs adapted to urban apartment life. The fucking Epagneul Breton traces its roots to French peasants who bred and kept small, less conspicuous dogs for the purpose of poaching game from the estates of the French nonility. Hunting and hunting dogs are inexorably linked with the working class.
Honestly, I would be willing to entertain more of this ideology if those promoting the idea that hunting and leftism are antithetical were predominantly vegans, but many of the people I encounter making this argument are not vegan. If you are complicit in the killing/suffering/exploitation of one animal because it’s convenient for you, then you sacrifice your right to be critical of others.
Moreover, I don’t understand the logic that killing a living creature is wrong, and that somehow humans are distinct from their nonhuman counterparts. Surely, the colonial extractive mindset is a mind virus, but hunting isn’t inherently extractive. Killing other living beings isn’t inherently extractive. Further, if the argument against killing animals is based on the issue of consciousness, that we shouldn’t kill conscious beings… who are you to arbitrarily decide what living things are conscious and which things aren’t? What even is consciousness? I believe it a far safer bet to assume all living things across all domains are conscious, rather than assuming a small class of vertebrate and invertebrate animals are conscious.
Ah, fuck. I’ve got shit to do. Peace.