There are dog people and cat people, and no pet people
. Except for that army and school part of my life I've always had a dog, and as most of you can tell from my posts, dogs are always part of my "Wander the West Adventures". One of the first things I did when I got a real life full time life job, was to get a dog. In the good old bad days in the BLM almost all field people had a dog (it was a local mgt decision on whether dogs were allowed or not)-a well trained one for sure-no chasing cows or sheep unless told to). We could not have a gun, so a dog was part of our working gear! That aside, dogs are neat, they care and they will always listen to you when you have a problem-and they will always be your friend-no matter what
. One of the final deciding factors in my early retirement was when a political hack up the Washington Interior Office suddenly made a decision that "no dogs would be allowed!" He made this decision (again a usual local decision) because he could-no one asked him too-he just did it-power. Some more of that " my way or the highway mentality" that led to allot of early outs (not just about dogs but an indicator of how some political folks do things) a few years ago! Who'd a thunk dogs were a way to show who is the boss
and whit those govenrment types into line!
There are no bad dogs, just bad masters! For example, during my latest run to the coast, we had a male pit bull that kept running thru the campground-when I complained about it-they said it belonged to a rancher up the road and it was sort of flighty-not aggressive-just not real friendly. No collar and once it discovered "Bob" it liked to come over and sit by the back of the camper. Now I know the master makes the dog,and pit bulls can be real nice, but I did not let Bob out when he was about and limited my walks on the beach because you never knew when he would show up. On a positive note, I saw on TV that the big dog show in New York is now letting mixed breeds compete and they showed this rescue mutt that would compete with the big boys-don't know if he won or not, but that's one for the common man or dog!
Smoke