Via Drudge: A ruling by an Oregon appeals court upholding an order that a couple muffle their continuously barking dogs through “debarking” surgery stirred outrage among animal rights groups on Thursday, which called the procedure cruel and unnecessary.
The case stems from a long-standing feud between neighbors in rural Jackson County in southern Oregon.
Debra and Dale Krein sued in 2012 after enduring years of what they deemed incessant barking by several Tibetan Mastiff dogs owned by their neighbors, Karen Szewc and John Updegraff, court documents showed.
A jury awarded the Kreins $238,000, and the presiding judge ordered all the dogs on the property to undergo “total devocalization” surgery.
The case stems from a long-standing feud between neighbors in rural Jackson County in southern Oregon.
Debra and Dale Krein sued in 2012 after enduring years of what they deemed incessant barking by several Tibetan Mastiff dogs owned by their neighbors, Karen Szewc and John Updegraff, court documents showed.
A jury awarded the Kreins $238,000, and the presiding judge ordered all the dogs on the property to undergo “total devocalization” surgery.
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13 comments:
I am going to guess the order was get rid of the dog or debark it. While 'debarking' is pretty creepy, a constantly barking dog is a poorly trained dog. It reflects on the owner.
My neighbor has a couple of dogs that go on barking jags. They don't bark constantly but can keep it up for easily a couple of hours. Luckily, from my standpoint, this neighbor is about two football fields away so it's more of a minor annoyance than anything else....to me. But how does my neighbor stand it? I mean he's getting that barking at full volume. Or is chronic barking music to a dog lover's ears?
Which only goes to show how little fun Lefties are.
I hope Bags weighs in on this one.
There's got to be a way to train them out of this habit. We had a couple of shepherd dogs - actually series of them - when I was growing up and they loved to vocalize. At night. From their perch outside my bedroom window. Commenting on fire/ambulance sirens and generally being the neighborhood watch/town criers as shepherds will do. I eventually got them to stop.
"Since 1999, Defendants have kept up to eleven (11) adult Mastiff dogs outside."
"With the exception of short lulls, the dogs have continuously barked while Defendants are not at home, which during the workweek can be from 5:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. The dogs also bark while Defendants are home, although not as frequently."
After de-barking the dogs still bark but different muted sound comes out. It sounds terrible.
I read in Smithsonian before they became too obnoxious to read that dogs barking is one indicator that domesticating wild dogs involved arresting their development at dog-adolescence. Because wild dogs bark as puppies then stop. It's dog-communication that means confusion. Wild dog puppies get confused and bark but then grow to adult wild dogs and develop other vocalizations and drop the confused barking. Domesticated dogs stay puppy-confused their whole lives.
Look, I read the thing, I didn't write it, ah-ight?
Know wha that makes me do? It makes me go BARF BARF BARF.
So that's that and now I'd like to mention something else that's nearly as annoying but completely unrelated.
Do you know what "dative" means in grammar?
You do? Fine then, ignore all the rest.
It's a term used in studying other languages. In English it means the same g.d. thing as "objective case." It's the whom portion of the simple formula of who does what to whom. Why Egyptologist, and English ones at that, insist on using the term "dative" instead of "object" boils down to a matter of arrogance such as arises in Academialand among snooty tooty fruities. It makes you want to smack their silly asses.
They take something so simple and turn it into something more difficult of comprehension, because it really is a term used elsewhere, like Latin and Greek, and then apply it where it's not useful, not needed, not wanted, not welcome. But don't even try to argue with the bitches because that's what they wanted in the first place by substituting the term. They wanted to talk about the term itself. This is why I hate other people. It's why I would hate subjecting myself to a language professor. They pull this shit constantly just to yank on our balls.
So fine then, use your erudite arcane exclusive language, your precious meta-meta language that sits atop meta language in the discussion with beginners about learning an erudite arcane and exclusive ancient and thoroughly dead language.
*squeaky voice* "How dead is it?"
It's so dead that carbon 14 tests can't even tell it ever existed. That's what kind of horseshit you're into.
Imagine the lineage of horses that lived and shit and died since this language died.
Go ahead and look up [grammar dative] and see what you get.
More specifically dative denotes "who gives what to whom." Emphasis is on the "whom" while the verb is "give." That's dative case.
English hacks the structure with the preposition "to."
And in these grammar discussions there is never ever ever any mention of sign language. Is that weird or what? It's as if sign language isn't even a language worth mentioning. Never. Yet here is the perfect example. If you added "to" to the sentence, Adam gave an apple to his teacher, then you'd just be a silly little idiot where the signs, "Adam give apple teacher" is beautifully eloquent while inserting the English "an, to, his" are all elaborate rococo Shakespearian curlycue serifs that mark the speaker as some kind of inane dummkopf.
I know this because my friends harshly mocked me.
You should have seen them imitate me. Harsh, I tell you.
It was their way of telling me to knock it fuck off and get with the picture. The very real picture. Even if the picture is imaginary. Show the picture, not the English of the picture.
So now, here is an instructor, defending his interpretation of Egyptian hieroglyphs. And I ask you, what are hieroglyphs if not exactly pictures? They're not pictures about English about Egyptian. So the term "dative" has no place in discussing it. They're simply pictures. They're so much pictures that they blend right into the art, at times with no distinction between the art and the pictures of words.
So applying terms such as "object" may be convenient to grammarians in comprehension, applying terms such as "dative" is academically obnoxious.
It confuses academics and it confuses grammarians.
Here's an academic grammarian being confused. He's the leader of a class talking to another leader of class leaders. So her meta language must be meta-meta language to reign supreme over all other leading academic grammarians. Her goes:
I think that by 'dative' Allen does mean the prepositional phrase 'n.f' or 'to him' in English. He only calls it the dative because it goes in a different place in the word order (pVsdoSOA) §13.6. Note that whilst n+pronoun has its own spot in the word-order, n+noun is treated as an Adjunct and goes in the A slot.
No. He called it "dative" because he's an asshole. It has the exact structure as English objective. Even Egyptian has its unnecessary elaborate rococo Shakespearian curlycue serifs. Because that Egyptian "to" like the English "to" can mean a whole lot of other things, only mentioning the English homophones, "too, and two."
Tibetan Mastiffs are barkers. But wouldn't a well fitted shock collar (the ones that trigger when you bark) solve the problem.
I could think of a few celebrities and politicians that should get them too.
I taught my first Doberman Susie signs.
I could signal come from a block away and signal halt halfway done and she'd drop and wait for a new come signal.
All the AKC Utility Dog exercises in short.
Plus tracking. All dogs can track but the exercise is to stay on the track you start them on until all the dropped objects are found.
Alas that takes lots of time which I ran out of with later Dobermans.
"But wouldn't a well fitted shock collar (the ones that trigger when you bark) solve the problem."
Might get a little complicated when you've got 11 dogs in one area.
Sounds like a long-running problem between neighbors, and as usual, the animals pick up the tab. Some people really shouldn't own pets.
...neighbors in rural...
All good points above in this comment thread.
I would be interested in knowing a little more about both neighbors, as indicated by what I just italicized.
My late mom, born and raised on a small family farm, used to tell us, when we visited, that we shouldn't expect it to be quiet. Sure, we'd hear crickets (not quiet sorts at all, by the way, but that doesn't mean the rural farm environment was "quiet."
My mom told me once that the most quiet place she lived was a particular place in a particular time, and that place was not a farm and nor was it, in her view, truly rural.
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On account of all of that ^ which I just wrote, I'd like to know much more about the people involved and the area in which they live and what were their expectations and why.
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