Great Find by Digby

He has far more detail on this than I'll regurgitate.

You can tell a LOT about a person by how they treat their pets and how their pets treat them.

But what does it say about a person when he needs the assistance of a BELT to control his 12 pound dachshund?

Well, if it's Dobson, it says something we already know, that he is a belligerent, abusive, prick.

"When I told Sigmund to leave his warm seat and go to bed, he flattened his ears and slowly turned his head toward me. He deliberately braced himself by placing one paw on the edge of the furry lid, then hunched his shoulders, raised his lips to reveal the molars on both sides, and uttered his most threatening growl. That was Siggie's way of saying. "Get lost!"

"I had seen this defiant mood before, and knew there was only one way to deal with it. The ONLY way to make Siggie obey is to threaten him with destruction. Nothing else works. I turned and went to my closet and got a small belt to help me "reason" with Mr. Freud."

What developed next is impossible to describe. That tiny dog and I had the most vicious fight ever staged between man and beast. I fought him up one wall and down the other, with both of us scratching and clawing and growling and swinging the belt. I am embarrassed by the memory of the entire scene. Inch by inch I moved him toward the family room and his bed. As a final desperate maneuver, Siggie backed into the corner for one last snarling stand. I eventually got him to bed, only because I outweighed him 200 to 12!"

Like many, even most, people, I have a real affinity for animals, and am first and foremost a dog-person. I also know, because of the nature of who in my family, likes which dogs, what a dachshund is like. They can on occasion be ornery little buggers, rather hyper and sensitive (small dog syndrome). But they are LITTLE dogs and they are only ornery when they feel threatened, usually by little kids who don't know better yet (why they aren't generally great family dogs [obviously there are exceptions]) or more often pricks who think they can push them around. I think it's fair to say Mr. Dobson is the latter.

Who the fuck needs to abuse a small animal, one you outweigh by a factor of 15 to 1 or better, with a fucking belt?

A goddamned monster that is who.

God forbid you pat the animal on the head, pet it for a second and then pick it up (it's 12 goddamned pounds) and carry it towards its bed. That animal isn't baring its fangs to you unless you well deserve by nature of your past practice a-hole!

And thus we have the great philosopher of parenting of the Bobo's worlders.