CSotD: Sic’em, Poncho!
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Pooch Cafe is a consistently funny cartoon that — given the public appetite for dog pictures on Facebook and elsewhere — deserves wider publication.
Paul Gilligan manages to blend human consciousness and dog behavior in a way that skirts the cliches without being doctrinaire about it, which is to say, I don't know that he's never done a "drinking out of the toilet" joke or a gag about "checking my p-mail," but he's consistently working on a higher level than that.
And he rises to another challenge, which is to create the crabby, anti-social animal character without making that factor the defining element of the strip. Wise-cracking animals quickly become tiresome if they don't have something substantial to crack wise about, and the comics pages at the moment are full of strips that have jumped the shark or passed their expiration date or however you want to say that the thrill is gone and there's nothing left but nasty comments in the fourth panel (yawn).
All of which is why I'm pointing out the start of what I expect to be a very funny arc, instead of waiting a day or two or three to see how it develops. Jumping in at the beginning of any Pooch Cafe story arc is worth it, and, when it's a loaded topic like this, the odds of delight go way up.
Breed bans are much more common than an overall ban on dogs, but I guess when your protagonist was born under a porch and is of indeterminate heritage, a breed ban wouldn't be that threatening to him.
Pit bulls are the ones most often targeted in these half-baked "solutions," and I've certainly seen some pits who were a danger. But one of Vaska's best friends is a pit-mix named Tanner who is about a year older than him and taught him many good wrestling moves when he was a wee pup.
That's Vaska in the foreground, Tanner facing the camera and Bogey, a chocolate Lab, at the right.
What is interesting about this trio is that, now that Vaska is no longer a puppy, we have to periodically rescue Tanner from being piled on by his two pals, because he is a gentle soul who manages somehow to end up at the bottom of the dog pile in their play and doesn't quite know what to do about it.
That said, I know people who shouldn't be allowed to own pit bulls or any large, powerful, potentially aggressive dogs, because they will purposely bring out the worst in their animals. But it is only the reputation of the pit bull that leads them to get these dogs — a generation ago, it was Rottweilers and before that it was Dobermans.
And both those breeds were badly damaged by being overbred by irresponsible people. Which brings up the first line of defense, which is spay and neuter laws.
In our town, it costs $9 to license a dog, which drops down to $6.50 if the dog is spayed or neutered, or under 7 months old. If I were in charge, I'd at least double the cost of a license for intact dogs, leave the neutered cost as is and extend puppyhood to 15 months. (Many vets recommend that males of larger breeds be neutered at about a year rather than as infants.)
And then I would use those additional funds to enforce compliance, which is to say, to hire full-time animal control officers who would provide educational programs but also simply enforce the laws.
I have owned dogs continually since 1969 and can only remember one time I was asked to produce papers, which was at the Canadian border.
Why not have occasional times when, for instance, a dog control officer goes through the park asking for documentation, in the same way they set up road blocks to see if people are wearing their seat belts? If it's friendly and non-confrontational, responsible owners won't mind.
Here's the secret: Responsible owners want enforcement, because (A) our trash cans get knocked over, too, nor do we sleep well when some idiot has his barking dog tied out in the yard all night, and (B) when the neighbors get annoyed by this stuff, we don't want our dogs to get blamed.
Or for the city to pass laws that miss the point and don't solve the problem but sure mess up our lives.
The flip side of higher fees is that dog owners would need to see a benefit beyond the theoretical. More bag stations — paid for by the increased licensing — and less judgmental signage would be a start.
The people who are going to scoop don't mind seeing a firm-but-polite reminder ("Clean up after your pet — it's the law"), and the people who aren't going to scoop won't be motivated by a confrontational sign telling them how much the town fathers despise us and our dogs.
The response you're looking for is, "Oh, yes, I should pick that up," not "Oh, kiss my ass."
Maybe we need a law that says, if you don't scoop, if you let your dog run free, if you tie your dog out for hours at a time, then the spay and neuter law will be enforced.
And I don't mean on the dog.
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