Dogknapping!

A Yorkshire terrier snatched from the arms of its 13-year-old owner in Hawthorne remains missing four days after the theft. Hayes' daughter was walking home with two friends about 3:30 p.m. Friday in the 4200 block of 116th Street when they were approached by a woman who asked to see the dog, named Lil-Man. Ishii said it is uncommon for dogs to be stolen right from an owner's arms; pet thieves usually take dogs from backyards. However, recently there have been a string of pet thefts in the Los Angeles area, including an incident last month at a La Mirada pet store.

Most crimes like this are to support a drug habit or some kind of organized crime related to drugs, is my guess. I wrestled for a long time over whether or not to legalize illegal drugs. After seeing what it does to to people, knowing of people who have died, and how it affects society, I am solidly convinced that illegal drugs should stay illegal.

I know that people can get into desperate straights in life. I know that young people can do dumb things to try and fit in, and abuse drugs and alcohol. And I have compassion for them. Yet, once hooked, they harm themselves and others. The greater compassion is to not enable them to further injure themselves or others.

(By the way, notice that dogs are increasingly being stolen in LA, and what filth happens there eventually moves out across the rest of the country. and mostly from back yards. Don't leave your dog unsupervised in the back yard, especially if it is a purebred or pit bull!)

What About Prong And Chain Collars?

Some things in dog training don't make sense to a novice. There are a lot of things like that in life.

And here is the real life irony of all of this: I was being interviewed by a potential customer the other day about training their two little one-year-old bratty, out of control, aggressive, dominant, barking, peeing miniature dogs. First, they told me how they spank their dogs for a variety of things, and then they asked me if I was going to use a prong collar when training dogs! Here they are, novices who know nothing about dog training, HITTING THEIR DOGS, and they are wondering if Sam The Dog Trainer, a professional, is going to be the one hurting their dogs! What if I went around and said I had a new method of training dogs that involved slapping little fuzzy dogs around, do you think anyone would hire me? Yet, they are doing this very thing, and not thinking anything about it, yet they are worried I'm going to hurt their dogs using a correction collar. Whose advice should I follow, the novice who slap their dogs around, or the master trainers that I learned my craft from?

It Is Like Childbirth

What if I told you that it is sometimes safer to take a knife and cut open a woman's stomach than for her to have a child naturally? But, that is what a caesarean section is all about, right? For a guy, that kind of thing seems completely outrageous. We think to ourselves: "Man, I wouldn't cut myself open for any reason, and I sure don't want someone cutting my wife open. Can't she just have the baby like my grandmother did 100 years ago?" But the truth is that for some women, a vaginal delivery could put the mother's or baby's life at risk, and the surgery is the safest option. So, being a novice makes you cringe at the thought of a woman being surgically opened up to deliver a baby. But, to a doctor, it makes them cringe if they know a baby is dying during delivery, and is clearly in distress, and some novice is telling them that they should make the mother have the baby naturally anyway.

Who Is The Master And Who Is The Student?

I have always loved martial arts movies. It is also one reason why I have always like Star Wars. Yoda was the Master and Luke was the student. Then there was that old TV series, Kung Fu, with David Carradine as Kwai Chang Caine. Sigh. I miss those shows. Remember all the flashbacks, when Caine would question his masters and he found that what he thought to be true wasn't?

Caine asked, "Master, do we seek victory in contention?" His Master Kwan responded, "Seek rather not to contend." Then Caine questioned the logic of his Master, "But shall we not then be defeated?" But his Master knew better and said, "We know that where there is no contention, there is neither defeat nor victory. The supple willow does not contend against the storm, yet it survives."

I love that stuff.

You have to make a decision. If you believe I know what I'm doing, then you are going to have to trust me that I won't harm your dog, and I'm going to use safe and humane methods to train your dog. You have already received a few references from me, or you have been referred to me by someone you trust who can vouch for the fact that I trained their dogs safely and humanely. You are the novice, not me. I am the one with years and years of experience training all types of dogs, even little cute, fuzzy, cuddly dogs like yours. You are the one hiring me because you don't know what to do to train your dog properly, not the other way around.

You can read more here.