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I'm curious about what people appreciate in this essay. In the end, I don't think I learned anything valuable from it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You did not read until the part he starts drawing parallels between Bitcoin and the 2008 mortgage crash.
Nevermind that - what animal abuse? r4unwud, I didn't see any animal abuse mentioned in the article.
>> When the dog gets close to the wire, the receiver starts to beep, and when the dog gets all the way to the “fence” boundary, the receiver generates a small electric zap. I know, I know … it’s negative reinforcement and it’s a shock collar and all that. Don’t care. It’s fantastic for us and our dogs. That's disgusting.
How would you keep a dog from straying into the wild and getting injured? These are pets and not wild animals able to survive in the bush on their own.
There is a good business in hunting feral cats and dogs that were pets and have been left to fend for themselves in the wild because they were no longer wanted.
>> When the dog gets close to the wire, the receiver starts to beep, and when the dog gets all the way to the “fence” boundary, the receiver generates a small electric zap. I know, I know … it’s negative reinforcement and it’s a shock collar and all that. Don’t care. It’s fantastic for us and our dogs. That's disgusting.
It's really sad to see this article about animal abuse on the front page of HN.
I'll be copy pasta'ing this comment to every top level comment about animal abuse here. Shock collars can be used for abuse. But fuck, they can do so much good.
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I'm happy to see you down voted here.
I have had to employ shock collars for foster dogs who were capable of jumping 10 feet fences in the past and these things work a damn charm.
They were the last option available to me after trying every other option. But damn do they work. After a day or two the 'beep' of the shock collar is enough negative reinforcement to stop the dog(s) from retrying the ol' 10 foot pole vault.
And before I let my dog(s) use it I tried it on myself.
The shock it's self was pretty harmless, certainly not comfortable, but the longer I stayed near the perimeter the more often the shocks were deployed. I learnt my lesson quick enough.
Except for one of my foster dogs anyway, he was a 60kg athletic failed pig hunting hybrid mongrol named Loki, looked like a Bull Arab crossed with a Great Dane. I named him Loki because of his tenacity and ingenuity for getting in trouble.
He learnt if he ran up the adjacent wall (attached to the house, that didn't have an invisible fence line) quick enough, he could be mid-flight before the shocks were administered and when momentum is carrying you through the air at 12 feet, over the shock line, the shocks don't do shit. You're already flying. And the shocks stop well before you hit the ground on the other side so you can gracefully land and wonder a few streets to go meet Nani at the local Cafe for free biscuits and pats for an hour. While I rode my bicycle home to 'rescue' him from getting fat.
Alas. Similar to the Cayote. His abuse from prior owners saw him lose the meta-game in the long run. The abuse saw massive changes in behavior between loveable giant to dangerous beast from the smallest changes in environment. Even after 12 months of behavioural monitoring and professional dog therapy from I and his rescue organisation, he was not for long for this world. The level of risk from his occasional aggressive outbursts at times were just too high.
Still one of my favourite dogs. Miss the guy every day.
Anyway. Thanks for reading. And PS, as a last option. Shock collars are great. They save lives.
I really enjoyed this article. Summary Coyotes are too clever because they know that people shaking jars full of coins can’t hurt them. Thus the animal control patrol has to get called and when they don’t shoo, the animal control person who loves animals has to shoot the coyote. Coyotes are winning the mini-game of each human interaction, but they are losing the meta-game of what society will do if coyotes aren’t sca…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is probably a highdea, but what if coyotes are having a tough time in the wild and they are smart enough to see how we treat dogs, so they are actually doing what wolves did thousands of years ago by slowly, cautiously edging their way into human society in hopes that they can integrate with us? They aren't particularly hostile, they seem to just want to survive. There have been maybe a couple hundred reported c…
> in hopes that they can integrate with us I think you can stop right there. The dog thing happened not because dog "wanted" to be with humans. Dogs were clueless about what happened, it just did. The explanation is on a higher level, not in their desires, not even in the desires of the humans who participated in most of the dog domestication (even if some of them may have thought about it, but by then it was already…
"are having a tough time in the wild and they are smart enough to see how we treat dogs".
Its a hypothesis and it doesn't seem unreasonable.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> in hopes that they can integrate with us I think you can stop right there. The dog thing happened not because dog "wanted" to be with humans. Dogs were clueless about what happened, it just did. The explanation is on a higher level, not in their desires, not even in the desires of the humans who participated in most of the dog domestication (even if some of them may have thought about it, but by then it was already…
Selective quoting, you missed out the part where he said: "are having a tough time in the wild and they are smart enough to see how we treat dogs". Its a hypothesis and it doesn't seem unreasonable.
> Selective quoting,
Yes - because that statement does not make sense regardless of context, so I didn't quote the rest. It also saves space. I always only quote the part that I respond to, the rest of the context always still is right there in an Internet forum, unless OP deletes the post. If I quoted in a different place, for example I quote someone in my own blog post, copying from another website, then I would have to provide the context.