Maddy

I agree with you. If breeders want people to not be afraid of contacting them to enquire about pups , pulling apart peoples emails on a public forum is a bit of a put off.It may be someone genuinely looking for a dog but because they dont know all the right questions you will write them off without a chance. Maybe they do not speak or write in fluent english or did not want to overload with questions unless the pup was still available. It was after all just an initial email. If you email them back you may find the information you are looking for, if they dont measure up well what harms done. The fact that the sender does not even refer to "it" as a dog (let alone by gender, breed or name listed) suggests to me that the sender has likely not even bothered to read the ad before firing off his form email. Even a person with a poor grasp of English is likely going to have a rough idea of the word for "dog". Scam emails are usually easy to pick by tone (all business and none of the emotion you'd get in a letter sent by someone who was actually hoping to buy a puppy) and this email reads more like an invoice request.

And what about people who are convicted of murder and then later found to be innocent? I'm afraid I'm going to have to side with Alan Gell on this one. Until you can guarantee guilt (beyond any doubt) capital punishment will always bring with it the risk of killing innocent people and that is never an acceptable risk. The days of innocent people ending with a noose around their neck is from a bygone era and long before DNA. Many people guilty of a crime end up admitting of such and that is the very time that CAPITAL PUNISHMENT should ensue. Alan Gell was sentenced to death in 1995. DNA testing had been available for several years prior to that (Kirk Bloodsworth was found innocent of murder in 1993 using DNA evidence). Human error and deliberate falsification of evidence means that even with better technology, innocent people may still be wrongly convicted.

And what about people who are convicted of murder and then later found to be innocent? I'm afraid I'm going to have to side with Alan Gell on this one. Until you can guarantee guilt (beyond any doubt) capital punishment will always bring with it the risk of killing innocent people and that is never an acceptable risk.

*Facepalm* My initial post was relating to people signing e-petitions, not people commenting on these stories on the forums. If your response was not addressing my post (or the issues relating to e-petitions I brought up), perhaps you should not have quoted me.

Allow me to quote myself again here as evidently, you missed it- From my previous post.. Clearly, I am not suggesting that you would be inflicting anything on the child, instead that you wished someone known for several very violent (and undeniably very sexual) murders would harm the child. You can back-pedal all you like on that one but I do not see how your comment could be interpreted any other way than a disgusting (and completely inexcusable) wish that a child be killed. Trying to downplay your comment by denying you meant anything sexual does not detract from your statement- you still very clearly stated you wished a child would die a violent, horrible death at the hands of a criminal and in my opinion, that says something very unpleasant about you. Regarding the child's history, for all you know, the child may be a victim of continuing sexual or physical abuse and yet you've passed judgement on this girl regardless. You have no way of knowing what this child may suffered so to claim that you are " all for the child receiving extended counselling and help to become a sensible adult" is simply not true.

You wrote.. From my previous post.. Clearly, I am not suggesting that you would be inflicting anything on the child, instead that you wished someone known for several very violent (and undeniably very sexual) murders would harm the child. You can back-pedal all you like on that one but I do not see how your comment could be interpreted any other way than a disgusting (and completely inexcusable) wish that a child be killed. And suggesting that a child ought to have the same ability to judge behaviour with all the insight and emotional developement as an adult.. If you honestly believe children are capable of making informed, rational decisions (where consequences are fully understood and the morality of the decision has been thoroughly examined and deemed appropriate), then you clearly have never met an actual child. Actual children do incredibly stupid/dangerous/selfish things all the time because they lack sound judgement. Children are treated diferently under law for a reason- children sometimes do terrible things but compassion would suggest that you look at ways to help those children become good adults, rather than simply wiping them out as if they were cockroaches. Edited to add.. This* is the sort of thing you've indicated you'd like to see happen to the child. If you still can't see anything wrong with your comment, I think you need to seek help :D *Warning- very graphic photo

Obviously you did not read read my post very well, my initial post was in criticism of the petition (not the thread or any of the people commenting in it) and I do not see how I could possibly have been any more clear about that That aside, I'd suggest you go back to read that second link; "helping" where no one really benefits is simply a waste of time that could be better spent actually working towards improvement of the situation. How you choose to help is up to you, I just don't agree with convincing people to sign e-petitions when the reality is, they do not lead to positive change (despite what they claim- the sites that host these petitions will tell you otherwise but when there's paid advertising involved, I think closer scrutiny is definitely required).

You seem to be missing the point here.. it's more than a little hypocritical to condem another for lacking compassion when you'd happily see a child harmed (and I find it sort of odd that you justify your previous comment by suggesting you didn't mean rape, you "only" meant that you hoped the child be murdered in a manner that was horrifically violent and very sexual). To be blunt here, I find the comments of some of the lynch mob to be more disgusting and lacking compassion than the child's actions and that is a very sad reflection of some of the posts here. Number 10

That child is nowhere near old enough to have endured any such mental scarring and guess what? even if that was so you would think that she of all people would have even more compassion for defenceless animals instead of being such a despicable being. Can't find it in me to make any excuses for that maggot. I'm guessing forgiveness and trying to understand others isn't a part of your ideal world either? Suggesting that you hope a child gets raped and brutally murdered has got to be one of the most utterly disgusting things I have ever had the misfortune to read on this forum

Sorry, I can't afford to fly over to Singapore and protest in person, so this form of expressing disgust is all that I have. Sorry to be so 'lazy.' If you feel commenting is so inefectual, why did you bother? At least we can share our abhorance of acts like these, and feel a little better that there are decent people in this world?(And unfortunately, I'm far off feeling 'Good'!) Or would you rather only read about these horrible atrocities and be left wondering if the world has completely gone to hell? I won't be looking at the pics, either. I will just hug my dogs. , those of you who are not sighing with the tedium of this post... There's plenty that people can do to help without flying to Singapore to camp out in front of the Judge's house. Also, despite what you misread, I did not suggest that sharing your feelings on the matter here was ineffectual- your feelings (or anyone else's here, for that matter) are likely not going to help any dogs in Singapore but if it makes you feel better, well, that's great. What I said (take a moment to re-read my post, please) was that signing online petitions (unless those petitions are set up by Government as a means of assessing public opinion) does not achieve anything. You could argue that it draws attention to a cause but then, creating an informative website that outlines the issue and provides the public with all the facts is a far better method of drawing publicity (sans the feel-good factor of "helping" by signing something, of course). You might want to have a read of this: http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/petition/internet.asp And maybe this.. http://www.snopes.com/info/glossary.asp#slack

QFT.

*Enter the bearer of unpopular opinion again..* Online petitions achieve exactly nothing. Courts (of the actual variety) will not consider the feelings of Teh Peoples of Teh Interhwebs when sentencing criminals (which is probably a good thing). It's a terrible story and all but if you want to actually make a difference, online petitions are a waste of your time- it's a feel-good action with no real benefits to anyone but people who get satisfaction out of a fairly lazy form of protesting.

Personally, I find the lynch mobs worse. I hate to have to be the one to say it but.. a human's life > a dog's life. All life is valuable but I find it a little odd that people who claim such compassion could eagerly hope for a girl to be hunted down and possibly harmed. Sure, she ought to be appropriately punished for what she has done but it seems like some people here are missing their own hypocrisy- "Oh noes, puppies died! She deserves to be killed too!!oneoneelevntyone11!!". I rest my case, apparently drowning babies is A-okay

Just noticed a certain someone's breeder bashing website (the one with the name vewwwy similar to the name of a far more reputable pure breed site/forum *cough*) has been pruned down rather a lot. Although he didn't actually bother to delete the pages, just removed the links from the menu and left them accessible by changing the URL. The n00b

I was referring to Steve11's post (regarding the rape comment), not anything you'd said. Just wanted to clarify that.

Erm.. got some penis issue you need to discuss? Seriously, I can't help but wonder why anyone would suggest something like that or why some people seem to jump immediately to mutilation of genitals as a form of punishment. That aside, I really don't think it's an appropriate comment to make on a forum that can be accessed by minors and is not expected to contain content of a penis burning variety.. Umm penis issues not me at all "That's what strap-ons are actually for. True story" from one of your recent quotes and my avatar doesn't have a finger going to touch a "noodly little appendage" either but that is ok for kids to see and read though. I guess it is in the eye of the beholder but my 7 year old son (who can't read small font luckily pointed it out to me and thought it was something rude too. I'm not interested in a critical debate about my posts but if I did say something that was inappropriate then I sincerely apologise to those that were offended. I would be quite happy to edit and remove that quote if you would like but since you highlighted it in your post it would still be there for people to see. The quote of mine was from Off Topic (which requires forum membership and 150 posts to view) and frankly, I see a considerable difference between a joke relating to plumbing and someone suggesting a man should have his penis burnt off as punishment. And if you can't see a difference there.. well... yeeah, I think we'll have to agree to disagree. Regarding my avatar, it's a cropped down picture of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (full version of the image is here) as there was no way to resize the image to the correct size without turning it into a tiny, indecipherable blob of colour. The avatar text refers quite literally to what it is (no innuendo intended), a hand reaching out to touch one of the spaghetti limbs of the FSM (and it's also the name of the original image). Picking through my previous posts in an attempt to find hypocrisy doesn't detract from what you've written and had I not commented on it, it would have remained there, untouched anyway so whether or not I remove quotes of it from my posts, it seems a little silly to me that you then try to make it seem as if I'm the one doing the wrong thing by not removing offensive material from my posts. Back on topic.. I'll say the same thing here that I said in the cat thread- there are laws in place to punish people who abuse animals and regardless of how disgusted you ("you" being the reader, not picking at anyone here) feel, expressing a hope that this man gets raped in prison, has his penis burnt off or is otherwise brutally injured says something very negative about the person expressing those things. Expressing compassion by hoping someone gets raped seems.. kind of backwards to me.

Erm.. got some penis issue you need to discuss? Seriously, I can't help but wonder why anyone would suggest something like that or why some people seem to jump immediately to mutilation of genitals as a form of punishment. That aside, I really don't think it's an appropriate comment to make on a forum that can be accessed by minors and is not expected to contain content of a penis burning variety..

In Tasmania, it's state law (not council bylaw) that prohibits keeping any more than two dogs on a property without a permit. Here's the actual legislation concerning numbers: http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/tas/con...000134/s50.html That said, in the entire time I was running GAP, I never saw a greyhound wearing its council tag (as also required by the act- excluding during racing obviously, when there's due cause to remove) nor was I ever provided any reg numbers to transfer over so I can only assume they simply weren't registered. They are still required to be registered under the Act but I suppose a lot of people figure.. registering all the dogs on a property means dealing with the kennel license issue and possible rejection of an application (which would mean they would be forced to remove dogs).

I've worked customer service before and honestly, I'd rather eat my own legs (raw, with fish sauce and peanut butter smeared over them) than ever have to deal with the general public like that again. Even dealing with the public for GAP was shocking. You'd be horrified by the number of people who treated adopting a new family member as if they were ordering a product and then got upset when I had to inform them we didn't have the model they were after* in stock *You know.. the small, pretty, blue and white female that was cat safe, small animal (read, rabbit) safe, great with kids who were very rough with animals, totally quiet (but very friendly when affection was wanted), would die of a ruptured bladder before toileting in the house, tolerant of everything imaginable and also trained to vacuum up her own hair while mixing you drinks- that's perhaps a bit of an exaggeration but the sad reality is.. only a bit (from some of my experiences).

The same reason they look so perturbed when you puts hats or shoes on them

It's probably already been said but.. dogs =/= babies (unless you happen to have a kid who toilets on the lawn, eats from a bowl on the floor and vomits up grass in your hallway) and the care requirements are so vastly different, there's really not much you apply from one to the other that you couldn't learn from having a pet rock (ie, basic care of a living/pretend living thing). Puppies are probably hard work but you just can't compare raising a dog with raising another human, that's kind of.. well, wrong, in my opinion.

This actually arrived about an hour after I posted the above and so far, it looks like a fail. It's certainly durable and it'll last a lifetime but that's only because Sally won't go near it The fabric is like the same material they use for seatbelts and for a dog who loves the soft, fluffy, squeaky toys, this obviously has no appeal. Back to the drawing board, I guess. HA, I read that the Pentapull toys are interactive toys - therefore you may need to show your dog how to play with it. It's a tug toy essentially for either you or another dog to entice your dog. I liked the look of it but I have had two golden retrievers pull something similar apart within minutes, such are their teeth and intent to win I think it's more the sounds it makes when it moves (soft toys don't really make any sound) that she dislikes. On the bright side, when I've dangled it anywhere near her, she bolts so I guess it could be used to get her running when she's being lazy or doesn't want to come out to the front yard to exercise.

This actually arrived about an hour after I posted the above and so far, it looks like a fail. It's certainly durable and it'll last a lifetime but that's only because Sally won't go near it ;) The fabric is like the same material they use for seatbelts and for a dog who loves the soft, fluffy, squeaky toys, this obviously has no appeal. Back to the drawing board, I guess.

I wish that'd work down here but when you have to have a muzzle on your dog, the idiots see this as an open invitation to let their dogs do whatever they want- even aggressively mounting other dogs (which they call "just being friendly" ). And in my experience, it's always been the smaller dogs- possibly because of the size bias; if a larger dog behaved aggressively, it'd be hounded (no pun intended) out of the park whereas people just seem to expect snarky, sh*tty behaviour from small dogs (or they think it's cute, for some inane reason).

Kiff has a faceless bunny- the head has been emptied of stuffing so it just sort of.. hangs there, looking a little over-loved (and sticky too, for some reason, despite regular washings ) For toys for the other hound, it has to squeak and be reasonably hard to destuff. A cheaper toy we got her literally lasted less than five minutes- she ripped the stomach of it open, took out the squeaker, chewed it up to break it, ripped out a handful of stuffing for good measure and then left the whole mess on the deck- all in the time it took me to go back inside and quickly give something to the other hound Recently ordered the Pentapull from VetnPet so hopefully that'll last a little longer.