Red is blue

People often think along predictable paths.

For example: people tend to believe that if a person has one really good trait or ability, that they must be good in other ways too. Like if a person is a good movie star - they must have answers to war, hunger, and who's the best ball team. Thinking like this is sometimes called "the halo effect".

In fact, your wonderful uncle that is so helpful and makes everybody laugh, might not really work "down at the factory" - he might really be a hit man for the mob.

That dirty, druggie next door with the filthy habits, who you have learned to like in spite of his lifestyle because he seemed so warm-hearted, might really be an undercover federal agent - and you might be wrong about him on both counts - he might really hate drugs, but he might be very cold-hearted.

Why people tend to associate two unrelated traits is beyond me, but they do. Maybe it is because of some past experience they have had? They once knew a tall man who was tight with his money - so now they believe that tall men are tight with their money. They once knew a fat woman who drank like a fish and slept around - so now they believe that all fat women are like that.

The reverse is true too. People often believe that if a person is bad in some way - they must be bad in all other ways too.

For example, when I was in high school, in a history class, one girl made a comment like "All Nazis are Communist!"

When I disagreed with her statement, she loudly argued back. Fortunately, the teacher was not a complete idiot, and tried to explain. But he had a hard time convincing several kids in the class that Nazis were NOT Communist.

I was shocked to learn that some of the other kids could not make this distinction. I had parents who were very different from each other - so I had to work out a common ground. Many other kids had not been raised this way.

Her training had been in "good vs bad" and "us vs them". To me, the "best" point of view was in the middle - so, of course, that is where I put my country, and I put the Nazis off on one 'wing' and the Communist off on the other 'wing'.

This positioning sent her into a rage. To her, extreme equalled good. She said that you could not be too good - so good was an extreme, and so bad was the other extreme.

So to her, our country was good, so we were at one extreme, so since both the Communist and the Nazis were bad, Nazis and Communist had to both be together at the other end of the continuum.

She could ask which of the two were not so bad as to be all the way at the end of the continuum, but she could not understand when the teacher said that they were both bad, but bad in different ways.

And she really got angry when I tried to explain that the continuum was not one of good vs bad, but of politics, with us in the middle. To her, being in the middle was bad, or at least terribly average; good was always an extreme.

One other kid said it better than I could, and better than the teacher, he said that the 3 political point of views were really like points on a triangle - equally apart, and extreme in their own ways.

Have you heard it said that someone can't 'see' shades of grey? or that to someone, "everything is black or white"? (as if they saw every thing like black ink on a white piece of paper).

Between all the extremes is a whole continuum of shades of grey - and many colors too.

This same inability of many people to make distinctions is found in the arguments about dogs too.

For example: people are sometimes shocked to find out that most puppy mills have purebred dogs, sometimes from show champion lines. I think this comes as a shock to them because they associate "puppy mill = bad", "purebred = good". They assume that good and bad can't be found in the same kennel owner.

I don't want to simply end the confusion by pointing out that purebred does NOT equal good, and large numbers of dogs does NOT always mean that the kennel is worse than a kennel with only 12 dogs.

As far as the conditions that the dogs are keep under, these two factors can be as unrelated as height and hair color, in that a person can own only one dog but treat that dog so badly that all 50 of the dogs in a large kennel are better off than he is.

I am NOT saying that the number of dogs is not a factor. A person with 50 dogs can NOT give them the attention that a person with only one dog can. But a beagle that lives in a pack of 20 other beagles might actually be happier than a pet dog kept alone in a house.

But most breeds of dogs can NOT be kept in packs, so that, once a breeder has more than about 4 territorial unfixed mature dogs, the dogs often (but no always) start being shoved into cages or shipping crates for part of the day.

I start blogging with this sort of aside, because too many people seem to try to find out where I stand; am I in agreement with them or not? The truth is that I lack the motivation to take a commercial or personal stance that so many people involved with large numbers of dogs, naturally fall into.

When I think you are correct - then I will be in agreement with you, but when I think you are wrong, then I will say that too.

There are no easy answers to most of these problems - most of the easy answers have already been tried.

There are a few easy things that will IMPROVE the situations, but nothing can cure the problems easily or forever, because dogs are living beings, and each generation will bring new problems, and each generation of dog breeders and dog owners, all start out unknowing and untrained at the beginning.