Animal Rights and Wrongs
Jim Engel
European green party and animal rights activists have for decades been an increasingly serious threat to our working dog culture and heritage. Rather than driven by empathy or concern for animal wellbeing these shrill opportunists—seemingly trapped in empty, sterile lives—seek relevance through the flaunting of a thin veneer of righteous indignation, seeking to inflict unwarranted harm, distress and humiliation on those carrying on traditional canine culture and service. As with all bullies they can never be satisfied, the visceral thrill of oppression—the obliteration of generations of canine heritage—leading only to the insatiable desire for more.
In Germany today this pacifist agenda has given rise to do-gooder legislation and administrative action forbidding the infliction of pain on an animal. Many if not most police dogs are high drive requiring an element of coercion for control in the heat of engagement, which can be and apparently in some contexts is now construed as illegal. The consequence is reported widespread withdrawal of on the street police dog teams and in some instances at least a blanket policy of non-engagement.
From a distance it is unclear if this is to be the new normal or in time swept under the rug, but if the former it would seem that in the worst case the era of police canine patrol is coming to an end in Germany. While this may turn out to be overblown it nevertheless would appear to be within the realm of possibility. If it should come to pass it is difficult to imagine the ongoing existence of hundreds of German IPO clubs cultivating aggression for which there would be no legal application.
Over the past generation Europe, especially in the north, has been much more liberal than America, where restrictions on the training and deployment of dogs for protection or apprehension have not been an especially serious issue. We should not be complacent, for while we have been generally supportive of our police agencies some major cities in recent years have come under the sway of ultra-liberal elements with knee jerk propensities to "defund the police" and "decriminalize minor crime" with serious consequences in terms of law and order.
Such things ebb and flow and, as discussed below, there are emerging conservative political trends which may in time reign in some of these extremes. Wisdom dictates that we need both short term strategies for mitigation and long term course corrections. In particular the SV needs to decide once and for all if the German Shepherd is to be a police dog or a prosaic family pet and if the former set about rebuilding bridges to the German police establishment.
The animal rights threat, particularly in Germany, would thus in the short term seem to be coming to some sort of a crisis. Depending on how all of this plays out the long term reality is likely to be more nuanced and sinister.
Unholy Alliance
Much of this ultra-liberal animal rights agenda aligns with that of the purebred show dog paradigm, most especially their mutual repudiation of efficacy in founding working roles as fundamental to breed identity. That the hunting dogs must hunt and the police dogs must interdict and restrain is self-evident, yet denied by the animal rights and canine establishments alike. This propensity to sell out their own heritage has been relentless in the SV and other working breed clubs as well as the FCI and AKC generally for many years, as a review of the SV web site will quickly verify.
As a consequence of these trends the SV has for decades been increasingly estranged from German police trainers and administration—historically their natural allies and confederates—a trend the cabal has imprudently perpetuated in their headlong pursuit of pet market cash. This may not end well, for if the primary stake holders in the patrol dog heritage are to remain so estranged their adversaries are increasingly likely to prevail.
Although there was sporadic AKC harassment and fear mongering in the 1980s, for the past forty years American protection dogs have generally been trained, trialed and deployed free of legal impediment or negative public reaction. The major exception was the civil rights era in the American south where photos of police canine teams alongside the fire hoses in the suppression of demonstrations became a routine feature of our press coverage and the evening TV news. This did at the time cause serious publicity concerns and there were reports of some police canine unit curtailment. (Today canine deployment in crowd control is virtually unknown.) More recently there have been occasional incidents of apparent lack of control or gratuitous biting of a detained prisoner, often accompanied by cell phone video, but generally this has not resulted in serious talk of curtailment of police canine or ongoing sport activity.
In Europe there have been much more serious problems, with the ultra-liberal opposition becoming more pronounced in northern regions, particularly the Nordic nations.
In the Beginning
At the advent of agriculture, the gradual transition out of hunting and gathering, the partnership between man and domesticated wolves—the dog—emerged to foster common security, the pursuit of sustenance in the hunt and husbandry of domesticated stock as in the cattle, sheep and swine. This pastoral phase of human emergence was a precursor to agriculture and thence modern industrial society. The essence of this utilitarian partnership remains valid even today, is and must remain the foundation of our working canine heritage.
But there is an ugly fly swimming in this ointment. The emergence of the purebred paradigm and the conformation oriented national kennel clubs in the latter 1800s, heralded as the ultimate manifestation of our canine alliance, has been subverted to the evolution of grotesque lines of pathetic ornamentals devoid of any vestige of resilience, utility or service potential—akin to hothouse flowers, orchids predestined to shrivel and wither in real world sun shine.
The bleak reality is that we have been our own worst enemies, that the rights movement has been most invasive and pernicious when aided and abetted by kennel club factions promoting their own agenda, particularly the SV show and play breeder propensity to downplay and ultimately repudiate police service as the founding breed identity.
Bizarre as it may seem the common cause binding these strange bed fellows is the disowning of service and serious sport through portrayal of the selection, training and deployment process as inherently inhumane and exploitive, with particular focus on the radio collar. This is the mutual agenda behind all of this no force training nonsense, the banning of prong and radio collars and the opposition to the application of the stick to certify courage and hardness.
None of this is to imply any sort of alliance in the sense of clandestine agreements but rather a matter of implicit but malicious SV acquiesce through neglect of vigorous resistance. Unfortunately some prominent SV working judges, particularly in Nordic nations, are actively endorsing appeasement, as in advocating preemptive abandonment of the stick and other concessions lessening vigor in training and particularly, because of the public nature, the trial.
Thus in the broad perspective the rights movement has been implicitly pressed into service as a smoke screen for the existential threat, the conformation cabals dominating the FCI and national breed clubs. This has been a persistent pattern of manipulation, of utilizing the rights menace as a foil for their own perverse ends, particularly the purge of serious performance prerequisites and expectations in working dog breeding.
Beginning of the End
The abolition of the Schutzhund trial—the essence of the von Stephanitz heritage—in 2012 in favor of the FCI IPO program was the opening gambit in the ongoing repudiation of the police dog heritage. This was quite clever in a perverse way, for it enabled them to connive and plot the emasculation of the IPO trial behind the scenes yet pretend to plausible deniability in public. In this way the German Shepherd is being emasculated —transformed into pseudo Golden Retrievers for the cash rewards of the pet market—indirectly through the rights activists and the FCI while still rendering lip service to the von Stephanitz legacy as a cynical myth managing marketing ploy.
All of this is of long standing, predating by many years the formal abandonment of the Schutzhund trial, for as the emasculation went on over past decades to accommodate the incessantly declining vigor, athleticism and character of the show lines the pretext, the fig leaf, was always purported social pressure, particularly that of the rights activists. At each stage —the elimination of the reed stick, scaling wall, attack on the handler and turn on the long pursuit—the cover story was that their hand had been forced, that the blame must deflect to social pressure rather than the incessantly declining physical and moral vigor in their dogs.
While there has been persistent pressure on training devices such as the prong and radio collars the initial focus and early success of the animal rights elements was in rendering ear cropping and tail docking illegal through a strategy of divide and conquer. The Shepherd community, particularly in Germany, was on the whole blasé, quite willing to casually throw the involved breeds under the bus with nary a backward glance, entirely oblivious to any lingering resentment.
These cropping and docking bans had detrimental consequences for many breeds, particularly among the hunting dogs. Closer to home this came at a bad moment in time and was thus a critical nail in the coffin of the Doberman Pincher. Going forward the lesson for the rights activists was clear, that we are hopelessly vulnerable to even the most transparent divide and conquer ploy.
Blood in the Water
Historically every serious protection training, trial and deployment venue has featured acclimation to and then testing by means of a stick, be it the multi reed or split bamboo clatter sticks of the ring sports, the original Schutzhund bamboo stick, the later padded stick or the longer version employed in the KNPV trials to strike the dog prior to actual engagement in the long bite.
And all for good reason, for in the real world beyond sport play the upright man facing an aggressive dog will instinctively employ some sort of weapon, secured beforehand or improvised in the moment, to parry the grip or intimidate the dog. This upright stance freeing the hands to wield weapons created the most formidable predator ever to walk the face of the earth, even when equipped only with wood and stone. Primitive man in a very brief time span transformed the world, as in sweeping away much of the larger indigenous American fauna—such as mastodons, mammoths and dire wolves—in but a few thousand years.
Police dog selection and training must prepare the dog to effectively engage the weapon wielding foe, rendering use of the stick or similar weapons in training and testing fundamental. To pretend otherwise is absurd, and to train and deploy sans stick would be flagrant dereliction of duty, placing both the handler and his dog in unnecessary jeopardy.
This strategy of blame shifting to the FCI emerged more overtly in 2014 as the spot light focused on the elimination of the stick hits in the IPO protection exercises. This came in a letter from Frans Jansen, President of the FCI Utility Dog Commission, early that year to the effect that there would be no stick hits at the upcoming FCI IPO championship in Sweden that fall and furthermore that within two years the stick would be gone entirely.
Apparently they thought themselves quite clever, that this casual, low key imposition of an accomplished fact would meet only transitory resistance, that we had been reduced to resentful but impotent apathy, that an opportunity of making a world team to even an emasculated IPO championship would somehow be enough.
But they were wrong. As the consequence of a firestorm of protest, particularly in America, the tide turned as they were forced to back down and reinstate the stick. Although the crisis faded, blood remained swirling in the water; they had seriously underestimated our resilience and lacked the courage and will to push through, but their perverse agenda was intact and in the open for all to see.
In retrospect this was to be a turning point.
Changing Times
Times are always changing, and for better or worse is according to individual circumstance. Over recent years, in response to several ominous trends, Europe has been cautiously edging toward a more conservative and nationalistic persona, as exemplified by the British exit from the Euro union. Likely to further this trend is the recent emergence of Russian willingness to go to war to expand their power and influence, bringing for the first time in a generation real fear of encroachment, a new Soviet Union rising from the ashes and the unthinkable specter of nuclear devastation.
These trends are exacerbated and exemplified by stiffening resistance to the social impact of Middle Eastern and African economic and political refugees, many of whom have shown little inclination to assimilate and emerged as persistent estranged and threatening elements under quasi hostile foreign influence.
The socialist, ultra-liberal and pacifist propensities behind the green and animal rights elements are thus to some extent abated and a renewed focus on law and order, and resistance to Russian aggression, is bringing more urgency to police and military preparedness. Renewed support for and emphasis on police canine service can and should play a role in this general stiffening of resistance to these ominous trends.
In times of conflict and fear warriors prosper, and recent escalating developments can be expected to result in positive trends for police and military canine service. This presents the opportunity for solidification and prosperity in the working dog community if we can somehow muster the wisdom and resolution to grasp it, overcome our propensity to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
The FCI has rightly been cut down to size, emasculated and neutralized, largely enabling the WUSV and other breed specific entities free reign to govern their own affairs. The extreme left wing spirit in Europe has to some extent abated, weakening the green and rights factions further extending the expectation that we can govern our own affairs free from irresponsible interference and scrutiny.
We must respond with a renewed sense of responsibility, stay the course. It is to cite but one example true that the prong and radio controlled collars can be very effective training tools that should be generally available, but it is also true, and we all know it, that historically there have at times been inhumane and abusive practices in our training and deployment.
We must be proactive, utterly relentless, in bringing unstinting pressure on rogue elements—motivated by hubris, ignorance, stupidity or malicious intent—to adapt modern methods and practices or find the means to enforce real discipline and publically repudiate those not willing to train and deploy with compassion and within acceptable contemporary methods as well as with minimal but always sufficient discipline.
Furthermore in this era of ubiquitous video police interactions, general sport competition and protection training are subject to the most intense public scrutiny. We must not only train for and employ the minimum of effective force, we must to the maximum possible extent project ourselves, police and civilian alike, as disciplined, restrained and compassionate in the public perception.
The P Word
Words matter, particularly when ostensibly precluded as illicit or vulgar by those wielding, or pretending to wield, social and cultural influence. Pussification is in many minds such a word.
Today elite liberal politicians and haughty bureaucrats insist—among many other things contradicting the mores of our forefathers—that whether or not a being has or ever had a penis has nothing at all to do with whether it is to be a man or a woman—male or female. This is but one more instance of the arrogance that has incessantly crept ever more intrusively into the micromanagement of personal liberty, as in the bans on cropping and docking or the suppression of the police canine function.
Yet what word are we to use in a Europe where Vladimir Putin believes that he can roll Russian tanks into neighboring nations with impunity, police dogs must not engage and inappropriate actions are not to have real world consequences?
Perhaps this is a vulgar word. But if so I dare to say that it is entirely valid in the original sense: common, plain spoken, as in the vernacular of the people, the language of the street and those at labor as opposed to the Latin of diplomacy and elite society. The time has come to set aside subtlety, speak plainly in the venacular of the common man, the working community.
European society in general and working breeds in particular are being incessantly pussified by ultra-liberal elements—including green party and animal rights extremists—and efforts to appease and placate are destined not only to fail and thus relinquish the heritage but also to bring unrelenting shame and humiliation down upon each of us.
We must resist with unity, without compromise, scruple or reservation and ultimately prevail; else all has been in vain.
SV Power Corrupts
Who Owns the House of von Stephanitz?
Orginizations and Conflicts
German Shepherd History
GSD Police Dog Heritage Repudiated by SV
SV Abandons Schutzhund as Breeding Prerequisite
World Unions Rising
AWDF, Stillborn American Elite
Supreme Authority of the Canine World?
Legacy Lost, the Other Breeds
The Americans
Glossary