The Partisan Divide on Issues

[pbrower2a]

(07-04-2020, 12:43 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(07-03-2020, 08:23 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Want a real defense of your property?

Again, you get the basic partnership rules wrong.  In the hunter gatherer days, the dog had superior ability to run an animal down, and had superior smell and other means to detect the approach of an enemy.  Man, specifically an armed man, had the superior combat ability.  While either might succeed on their own, together they were a most formidable pair.

By expecting the dog to have superior combat ability to an armed man, you are breaking the contract between species, putting the dog in a situation where he has no chance.

In the case of the dog as a defender, the dog is protecting firearms from thieves. If the dogs get to the would-be gun-thief before the gun-thief can get to the guns, then the would-be thief gets to experience an animal that has much in common with a lion, the Big Cat most similar in behavior to a large dog. Dogs can also bite the wrist attached to a hand in possession of a gun... and even the most dedicated criminal wimps out. Firearms are expensive in South Africa, and they are obvious targets for theft as the capital investment for violent criminals. 

The dogs are protecting guns locked down, but as everyone knows, any crook who has the time in which to defeat a lock can get what he wants. A dog takes away that time and turns a seeming opportunity into a consummately-dangerous situation. 

Dogs may be Man's Best Friend, but they are among the last enemies that one one would want -- especially if the dog is in a pack.   Dogs have far keener senses, and they know how cowardly, clumsy, and vulnerable we really are in ways that even bears and Big Cats don't know. 

So here is how the food chain lines up between three large predators in South Africa

day  night  urban

gun* lion   gun*
dog  gun*   dog
man dog    man
lion  man    (no lions)

"Gun" is shorthand for "armed human", the definitive superpredator in all land environments.

Lions fear humans by day.  Even before there were firearms, they dreaded spears. Color vision makes humans able to see well-camouflaged creatures  (at least for color-blind animals such as the deer-like creatures that are the bulk of lion food. But the tables turn at night, when humans with very poor night vision become easy prey for lions. Almost all incidents of man-eating by lions are at night, especially when the moon is set. Lions flee humans by day, because humans in lion country often have firearms. 

"Armed human" is the top predator in practically all environments unless something can disarm the armed person. Ordinarily the dog is a collaborator in a hunt with an armed human, so the dog will not get in the way. South Africa does not have tigers or bears, but it does have lions. 

If a dog is unlikely to bite the hand that feeds him, it will bite the hand (or wrist or forearm) of someone who intends to do harm.  Or -- multiple dogs can overpower a man, knocking him to the ground much as would a lion. Whether humans are on the dog's menu or not is ambiguous at best, but being overpowered by animals that can inculcate that fear and in the meantime make life unpleasant with bites and barks... well, a crook is going to need to be rescued. Better the police than Canis leo, Canis puma, or Canis ursus.  

Criminals fear dogs, which explains the effectiveness of K-9 units in arresting criminals.