Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Dognappers in Nam

This caught my eye in the paper this morning. Read the article here: Dognappers in Nam

Dogs have a different existence in the Asian and Arab cultures. Life in those cultures is generally much harder and dangerous. It can be bad enough in the U.S. and Europe, with dog fighting and puppy mills and those humans who like to take out their angst and anger on their dogs (and often their kids too). But dogs are not considered a delicacy or vermin in western cultures.

I have been to Vietnam, and other Asian countries. I have been in the Middle East. But I have always returned to and lived most of my life in North American, with some forays to Europe. But I was born an American dog and always have been an American dog.

Asian weredogs do not have the same lifestyles with their humans. They must remain always vigilant, for dog-nappers and other atrocities. Asian weredogs have a long history of rescuing the dogs they grow to care for from the butcher's knife. There is a much richers weredog and werewolf mythology in Asian folklore, much of which derives from the activities of weredogs.

Asian culture, to a great extent, sees pets in general, and pet dogs in particular, as frivolous and far too western. Arabs culture is the same, but more so. Iran has been confiscating pet dogs in recent years, claiming that pet dogs are much too western and a bad influence on the pure Muslim mind. For this reason, there has been an increase in dog rescues and exfiltrations of dogs and weredogs out of Iran, and other Arab countries, in recent years. These operations stay small, to avoid attention.

There are many weredogs who do not care for Asians and Arabs because of these issues. There are also some weredogs, more and more, who claim that it is all human, not just Arabs and Asians, that it is more about culture and economy and need that determines the human capacity for barbarity and BBQed dogs. Werelore, and even human history, makes it very clear that all humans will eat whatever they have to stay alive, including other humans. This is true for all species.

But that does not lessen the horror of seeing a dead dog hanging from a meat hook, which I have seen.

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