Friday 27 March 2015

Scapegoating part 2: The Seven Stages of Hate Groups

Now many have likened the three described in part one to a cult, I find this somewhat inaccurate. While many are religious, Hatred of a breed of animal is not a religion, They are instead a Hate Group, Like all hate groups, they are subject to the seven stages of hate. Which I will go into further depth as to how it applies here.

Stage one: The haters Gather.
As this is an INTERNET hate group, the gathering started small, a website here or there, but has ballooned, there are now almost as many groups and pages out there hating these innocent dogs as there seem to be legitimate members of the groups. (There is quite a lot of evidence that many of the more violent members have multiple accounts.)

Stage two: The hate group defines itself.
The most unfortunate thing, is this hate group tried to define itself as a Victims advocacy, Adopting a ribbon that if you are not paying attention, looks similar to the POW/MIA ribbons. They looked for every dog attack in the news, trying to call the animal a Pit Bull when it wasn't. They once called a Spanish Mastiff a Pit Bull, For those who do not know breed nicknames, a Spanish Mastiff is also known as a Great Dane.

Stage Three: The hate group disparages the target.
This still goes on. Every day in their little groups they talk about how much they hate Pit Bulls, thinking it is private they feel perfectly free to use the words Hate and Kill.

Stage four: The hate group Taunts the target
This also happens every day, They go on Pit Bull advocacy groups, Rescue groups, and news articles about good dogs and attack them for being Pit Bulls. They also stalk the bite news, trying to bully the victims into joining their group.

Stage Five: attacking the target without weapons.
This one is harder to prove, as the nature of their hate is fear based. They FEAR the Pit Bull. Instead, I would point out how often they talk of ways to stop attacking dogs (Rare occurrences that they themselves admit has not happened more than once to them.) One goes around the internet telling every dog owner, responsible or not, to carry a Dangerous for both parties item called a break stick in case their Perceived Pit Bull attacks. Trust me, the LAST thing you want to do if a Dog attacks is get your hands into their mouths.

Stage six : Attacking the Target WITH weapons.
Every time a Pit Bull suffers an untimely and painful death They celebrate it. They deny any inclusion publicly, but privately brag about know they will kill/have killed the dogs. Fortunately for court proceedings they forget about the privacy settings on their little groups, and this bragging ends up public knowledge. God only knows what goes on in their one secret group, Lets hope they get judged for it.

Stage seven: The hate group destroys the target
Most will publicly admit this is their end game. Two of the leaders mentioned in the first part have publicly stated that they will not rest until every Dog that can possibly be called a Pit Bull are dead. Many of their underlings parrot this statement, often taking a “Kill them all!” Stance against a dog that millions go every day without hurting a flea. The only reason they lead the bad bite statistics is that there ARE so many of them. If there were millions of Great Danes or Poodles, those breeds would lead the bite statistics. The more there are of a dog, The more likely bad owners will get them. This group of people refuse to acknowledge the real culprit, The owner of the dogs.

Unlike how these people think, a dog lives in the now. Pit Bulls Do not know they were bred for bad things, They only know how they are treated. If they are treated badly, they will act badly, But if they are treated right, like Millions of bully types are today, they can be the sweetest, most loyal animals you have ever met.


This sweetheart has her own acre and a half and would never hurt anyone

Thursday 26 March 2015

Scapegoating Part One: The Ringleaders are introduced

I need to start with this statement, I am not a professional anything. That said, I researched this article heavily. This article does not presume to try to convince those on the fence about Breed Specific Legislation which direction they should go, instead, it is to explain to those who are already against it why it exists in the first place, and why the major proponents of it strive so strongly for it.

I would like to start with the origin stories of two of the strongest proponents, and a breakdown of what happened.

Colleen Lynn seems to have started with impolite jogging, but there is evidence she hated long before that. One day, I do not remember how long ago, a dog walker and her large dog went for a walk, innocently sniffing about, when a Jogger pops up from behind them, without announcing herself, and going between the dog and the fence, startling him into a bite response. One or two quick bites, and the jogger fell down, breaking her arm. I have seen pictures of the injuries, the bite holes were far too clean to have dragged her down, all the stitches are in a very straight line, from the surgery to mend the bone. This Jogger had the dog put down for the minor injuries and broken bone, but it didn't end there.

Miss Lynn went on to start a website, Dogsbite.org. A site that searches the internet for every injury they can POSSIBLY blame on a “pit bull type” (Which to these people encompasses dozens of breeds, many of which do not even have TERRIER in them). These injuries include completely unrelated events, such as getting hit by a frying pan; getting shot; getting bitten by ANOTHER dog at the park, while having a dog they would call a pit bull at home; getting rescued by your own pit bull from an attacker, both human and Canine; and one poor child who was unsupervised and took his pet for a walk and then got hit by a train. Hardly seems a credible source to me.

The second person we will be talking about is Jeff Borchardt. Borchardt, and his friend and baby sitter Susan Iwicki, both have multiple counts of drug use and alcohol abuse. Despite this, Borchardt left his 18 month old with Miss Iwicki, giving her explicit instructions not to expose the boy to her two at the time classified as BOXER MIXES, who were unsocialized and over-crated. Of course, the already proven irresponsible Iwicki did not follow his instructions, carrying the child with her when she let the dogs out. The over excited dogs thought the boy was a toy, pulling him from her arms, 15 minutes later Miss Iwicki was found by the police, screaming into a phone, uninjured, the boy dead and alone in a back room on the cold wood floor, no seeming effort to rescue the boy. Despite the fault clearly being on Iwicki, Borchardt does not blame her, he blames the dogs, who were magically reclassified into pit bulls after the attack. Borchardt spreads his blame to anyone who owns a pit bull, save one person, the one person actually responsible for this child's death.

When Miss Lynn heard of Borchardt's child's death, she decided to help him make his own site, Daxtonsfriends.org I would not follow that link it tends to give me virus alerts. Daxtonsfriends is a site that is closely related to dogsbite, putting out false information about what a pit bull is (Again, dozens of non-terrier breeds) and illogical information on how to prevent dog bites that has nothing to do with preventing actual dog bites. Again, this site is rife with misinformation and hatred for pit bulls.

There is a third website, run by a Merritt Clifton, who I know little about, What I do know is this, He claims to be an animal expert, but has little to no experience with actual animals, and no education. Animals24/7 is a site rife with illogical numbers, most often quoted by the two previous sites, but he will never give you a source beyond google, and his numbers make no sense when compared to numbers by more reputable organizations like the ASPCA and the American Veterinary Medical Association. These three sites, used alone, as most anti-pit bull advocates seem to do, would give you the impression that all pit bull types are out to kill you. Until you look at other sites at least.


Together these three command a small battalion of loyal fighters, wielding the weapons of tired copy paste, falsified data, Stalking, Cyber-bullying, Death threats, and Animal abuse. Spreading as much hate and fear as they possibly can. The next chapter will tell us why.

Sources: