OMG!!

Although that exact thing happened to my Chiweenie. She just sat their squashed in the stroller next to the baby with a WTF!! expression on her face! I really wanted to point out that they had shoved a mix of the 2 most likely to bite breeds into their childs face..

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SUMMER...JUST SAY NO!

I love my furkids.
dogs-Adam, Hannah, Heidi.
cats-Banjo, Bess, Eric, Tootsie, Blossom, Gracie.
Syrian Hamster-Inigo Montoya.
Rats-Ezri, Audrid, Emony.
Corn Snake- Kiora.
Kenyan Sand Boa- Kushti.

RIP- Winter, Autumn, Leela, Spring, Gandalf, Summer,Jet, Pip, Moo, Lilac, Wild Thing, Patrick, Frisbee, Echo.

Wow - was the guy a Marine? blonde, military-whitewall haircut, tattoo that only shows if he is sleeveless?
globe + anchor - with a scroll.

Erm...are you saying that you think it would have been better for the coyote to eat the chi?

Crikey, I best keep you away from my Aunty's Bruno!

Can vouch for that. My aunty got hers when she was going through Chemo. He's hilarious. He's proper little guard dog but as soon as you're in the house he's all over you, climbing onto your knee for kisses! When my uncle (proper, big burly army officer) takes him for walks its brill! He gets so many funny looks!

I love him to bits, him and Rupert are always playing together when we go round!

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yer aunty would probly have more sense than to let her wee dog run loose in coyote country...
hopefully the owner of this Chi learned that lesson thoroughly - she + the toy-dog were both very lucky, this time; it is vanishingly un-likely that the Chi would be so lucky twice.

do i literally think coyotes deserve to live more than Chis? of course not.
this was tongue in cheek, YEESH i thought it was spozed to be us Yanks who don't get sarcastic humor?!


do i think all predators should die?
absolutely not; the invading emigres and their offspring in the USA did a $#%^! good job extirpating predators
over their 1st 350 years here, from approx 1500 to 1950, and i for one am deeply glad to see them coming back.
without them to keep prey-popns in check, the environment as a whole has been severely damaged.

as just One case in point:
which was the earliest species to profit from the return of wolves to Yellowstone?
cutthroat trout - which no one anticipated or predicted; elk + other ungulates had taken to hanging around water;
the banks were broken down, watersides stripped of any edible vegetation taller than grasses, erosion put a silt-load
in the water, lack of shade sent the water-temp soaring + reduced the O2-carrying capacity of the water...
enter the wolf, or rather RE-enter:
wolves are not stupid; elk have to drink, so do whitetail or mule-deer, etc.
toot-sweet, the ungulates began avoiding watercourses; streambank willows re-sprouted, banks were stabilized, SHADE re-established, water-temps dropped, gravel-beds for spawning were peeled of their silt burden, water-clarity improved, and trout-popns soared.

the moral of the story is, don't mess with the googol - U don't know enough, and it never turns out anywhere near
what U had envisioned. a predator-free lower-48 was a disaster; white-tail popns are still well-beyond even the massively enriched
carrying capacity of the New-Normal, with huge amounts of the edge habitat they love.

i was, however, utterly factual + accurate when i said that a MUCH higher proportion of all the Pitbulls i have met
[AmStaff, APBT, and just plain-old 'grade', non-breed pit-types] were highly human-affiliative, vs the sum total of Chis
who were the same...
most Chis look at non-family humans with an extremely jaundiced and prejudiced eye, IME.
perhaps one in 10 is open, friendly + willing to be touched - not picked-up, petted - by a friendly stranger,
who introduces her/himself politely; most of the rest would prefer U just go away -- Now, thanks.

does that mean Chis should vanish as a breed?
not in the least - it means that i wish that Chi-OWNERS would make an effort, train their dogs, socialize their dogs,
STOP carrying em + picking em up every time something over 10# weight gets near them, and treat them like the dogs they are.
or could be...

-Rant-
stop making excuses and allowing behaviors that would get a Rott or AmBull or even a Boxer killed,
just because their dog is 'too small to do damage'. bites hurt, %$#*! -- just because they cannot easily
rip gobbets of flesh out of yer limbs, does not mean it doesn't count.

all better, now off my soapbox, with the addendum that owners of other under-20# dogs should do the same -
train, socialize, habituate, and don't ignore or allow behaviors unacceptable in big-dogs; if a 90# dog should not do it,
odds are excellent that a 9# one shouldn't, either.

cheers,
--- terry

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terry pride, APDT-Aus, apdt#1827, CVA, TDF
*wolves R wolves, dogs R dogs, + primates R us.*
tmp, sept-2007

Nicely put, I agree with you both.
I don't really like generalising about breeds because I think so much lies in how the dogs are socialised, trained and cared for, plus personal variables.
True breed characteristic always need to be considered and accounted for as a dog owner but I still prefer to look at each dog as an individual, especially when it comes to negative generalisations about breeds.
Nice to see a positive story about pitties though- especially with all of the stigma and rubbish that the media will have you believe just to sell stories.

Great article

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