Borzois over Flowers

No. Just no. Ok?

So I used to make this joke all the time. Now I have chronic tinnitus. For those of you who don’t know what that is, it’s nerve damage in your ears which often comes as a result of being constantly exposed to very loud noise for a long period of time. The nerve damage results in a constant ringing/buzzing in your ears. So far there’s no cure. The severity of it varies, and I’m lucky to have a mild case, which I can barely hear during the day and is easy to block out at night. That said, loads of people with tinnitus aren’t so lucky. Severe tinnitus can’t be blocked out. Those who suffer from it also suffer from severe loss of sleep, depression, anxiety…. the list goes on. Tinnitus also comes with a degree of hearing loss in most cases, making it even harder to ignore. In fact, some people with severe tinnitus kill themselves just to make the ringing stop. Tinnitus can be so severe that it drives a person to suicide. Chronic tinnitus used to mostly be prevalent in older people who worked for years with loud machinery etc, but all of a sudden it’s becoming more common in our generation. Why? Because of people, like me, who listened to their music too goddamn loudly through their headphones.

Because who the fuck is gonna argue with an army of polite older ladies?

It is so well known that women are better and safer drivers than men that OUR CAR INSURANCE RATES ARE LOWER. Women get into fewer accidents, get fewer DUIs, and receive fewer speeding tickets than men.

“women never shut up”

Several scientific studies have shown that not only do men talk more than women, they also think that women have been talking for much longer than they actually have. Men interrupt and talk over women, dominate conversations, and still think women talk too much.

“women are shallow”

Lol next

“my wife is my ball and chain lmao”

Multiple studies have shown that marriage between men and women: Increases male lifespan, decreases female lifespan Decreases male depression rates, increases female depression rates Decreases male stress levels, increases female stress levels Increases male health and happiness, decreases female health and happiness Increases a man’s chance of getting a raise or promotion, decreases a woman’s chances of getting a raise or promotion

“women are too emotional”

Men love to say this about women after hurting them, in order to shift the blame and dismiss their feelings in one go. In reality, women are taught to hold our tongues and control ourselves quite literally from birth. We’re taught to put men’s needs and wants ahead of our own emotions regardless of the personal cost. Men are taught to do more or less whatever the fuck they want to women. Men take their emotions out on women while women are expected to shove theirs down.

It takes no small amount of effort to care for a dog properly, and this goes especially for dogs with intense and potentially dangerous drives. And frankly, the level of education and involvement the average pet owner has doesn’t make for a place I’d want to send ANY dog, let alone one with said dangerous drives. Like, Huskies are notorious for their independence, causing them to roam and to selectively obey, aaaaaaaand I’ve seen one get slammed by an oncoming truck after he busted out of the backyard he sat in day after day and ignored his owner’s increasingly frantic commands to return. German Shepherds are protective, often aggressive, and potentially reactive, and you can find a slew of cases of GSDs who weren’t raised correctly and weren’t managed correctly and ended up biting a kid. Fun stuff! Stuff that easily could have been avoided if the owner had just put in a leeeeeetle bit more effort. You can see the same with breeds which famously feature a host of health issues, but are denied proper preventative care by their uneducated owners. As I’ve been told by Doberman folks again and again, there’s much more to it than making sure puppy isn’t exercised too hard so he doesn’t develop hip dysplasia. 

And sure, shit happens, but shit is a lot less likely to happen if the owner is educated and the owner is involved. And unfortunately, many of the people who have 2k in their pocket and are willing to drop it on a dog are not people who fulfill either of those criteria. They are not people who should own ANY dog, let alone one bred to work. Unfortunately, those people typically want a dog, and perhaps their breed of choice in particular, for the wrong reasons. Many of those people haven’t done necessary, basic research. Many of those people have just seen cool videos of the finished product. Many of those people aren’t aware of the nitty-gritty aspects fundamental to proper dog care. Many of those people have a thousand other terrible reasons for wanting the dog that they do. And most importantly, many of those people are going to get very frustrated very quickly when they find out that, yeah, duh, their ACD has energy for days and will tear entire boards off the privacy fence if not given a job, and yeah, duh, APBTs don’t tend to be dog park dogs, and yeah, duh, puppies are gonna nip and pee everywhere. Yeah, duh, dogs don’t come pre-programmed. Stuff that should be simple, but is not.

And what’s especially important to remember here is that the type of people who are reputable breeders and trainers and long-time competitors have seen things go wrong again, and again, and again. They’ve seen it with the average pet home, same as we all do, and they’ve seen it even more with people who think they want a working line German Shepherd, but actually just want to look cool, and should probably go blow that money on a sleeve. (Denise Fenzi has an excellent blog post on this - The Family Ferrari.)

This doesn’t mean those who are considering a dog or a specific breed should believe a lot of the exaggerations out there. No, your Malinois probably doesn’t need 20 hours of hard labor a day in order to be halfway relaxed. No, it probably won’t give a shit if you never score that PSA3. But it will nearly invariably require proper exercise and stimulation, not just for your sake, but for its own. Humans gave them that drive; now it’s our job to make sure they don’t get a messy ending because of it.