8 Reader Responses

1. jp Says:
   October 28th, 2005 at 4:32 pm

   silly antidog people!

   a dog makes life better. i prefer milan kundera’s quote: “Dogs are our link to paradise. They don’t know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring–it was peace.”

   btw, at least one middle eastern religion, Zoroastrianism, holds dogs in the highest regard:

   http://www.hinduwebsite.com/sacredscripts/zoroscripts/venfar_10.htm#frg13

   http://www.cais-soas.com/CAIS/Animals/dog_zoroastrian.htm

   Gratitude is required of men toward the herd and house dog, for Ahura Mazdâ (q.v.) is represented as declaring: “No house would stand *firmly founded* for me on the Ahura-created earth were there not my herd dog or house dog” (nôit mê nmânÉ™m vî’âtô hiÅ¡tÉ™nti za…m paiti ahura’âta…m yezi mê nôit Ã¥; Vd. 13.49). Responsibility toward dogs is repeatedly linked with responsibility toward humans. In the Huspârâm Nask the proper quantities of food are listed for man, woman, child, and the three kinds of dogs (Dênkard 8.37.1). A sick dog is to be looked after as carefully as a sick person (Vd. 13.35), a bitch in whelp as solicitously as a woman with child (Vd. 15.19). Puppies are to be cared for for six months, children for seven years (Vd. 15.45). There is a partly playful account of how the dog combines the characteristics of eight kinds of people (Vd. 13.44-48), and a description of him as created by Ahura Mazdâ “self-clothed, self-shod, alertly watchful, sharp-toothed, sharing the food of men, to watch over (man’s) possessions” (hvâvastrÉ™m xúâ.aoθrÉ™m zaêni.bu’rÉ™m ti‘i.da…surÉ™m vîrô.draonaηhÉ™m gaêθana…m harÉ™râi; Vd. 13.39). “Having/sharing the food of men” (vîrô.draonaηhÉ™m) is to be taken literally. In Vidêvdâd 13.28 it is enjoined that a dog is to be given milk and fat together with meat (xÅ¡visca âzûitiÅ¡ca gÉ™@uÅ¡ ma†), staple articles of the diet of pastoralists.

   According to a lost Avestan passage, preserved through Pahlavi translation in the BundahiÅ¡n (tr. Anklesaria, 13.28), the dog was created “from the star station . . . for the protection of beneficent animals, as if blended of beneficent animals and people” (az star pâyag . . . pânagîh î gôspandân rây, chun gumêzag az gôspandân ud mardôhmân). Because he was held to be of moral character, his corpse was thought to be surrounded, like a good person’s, by triumphant evil powers, and so was highly contaminating. Hence one of the places where earth suffers most is where the bodies of men and dogs are buried (Vd. 3.8). If a dog dies in a house, fire is to be taken out of that house, as when a person dies (Vd. 5.39-40), and the dog’s body is to be carried like a human’s to a place of exposure (Vd. 8.14).

2. hebrides Says:
   October 28th, 2005 at 5:18 pm

   The Zoroastrians regarded dogs very highly. In fact, for this reason, after the Muslim conquest, I’ve read, those who wanted to torment the remaining people of the “Good Religion” in Persia, were known to sometimes slaughter dogs and throw them on the doorsteps of Zoroastrian homes.

   Poor dogs

   I love dogs!

3. Ryan Brown Says:
   October 28th, 2005 at 6:05 pm

   Don’t know if any of you know about the Ya Ho Wa 13, aka the Source Family , but they were a group / cult in the late 60’s early 70’s who also had a pretty awesome improv rock band, and they were all about dogs.

   YAHOWA :
   THE STORY, THE RADIOPROGRAM, CHRONICALLY WITH DISCOGRAPHY

   “In 1969 To Baker, a middle aged follower of the Yogi Bhajan a Kundalini yoga master and health food prophet who came to the US on the heels of the Maharashi. When Bhajan declared that he was not God, Baker assumed the mantle himself. He gathered a group of acolytes who became known as The Source and opened a health food restaurant, The Aware Inn, in Hollywood’s Laurel Canyon. Eventually dubbed Father Yod (later changed to Yahowa), Baker espoused a philosophy dictating kindness to animals, a rw fruit and vegetable diet, wearing the white cotton clothes, and sex without orgasm. Apocryphal stories about The Source’s practices abound. The most persistent was based on the similarity of the spelling between god and dog. Among the faithful who toiled at the Aware Inn were a number of musicians, whose talents Yod enlisted when the tapes began spooling.”

   taken from http://progressive.homestead.com/YAHOWA.html

4. Tim Boucher Says:
   October 28th, 2005 at 6:11 pm

   plus theres the link to sirius the dog star

   http://fusionanomaly.net/sirius.html

   jeff also had some stuff about that a while back in relation to (oc)cult sacrifices of dogs

   http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2005/06/americas-dog-star-days.html
   http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2005/06/hope-you-guess-my-name.html

5. James Russell Says:
   October 29th, 2005 at 4:24 am

   Blaise Pascal was right about dogs. The more you learn about people, the better you like dogs.

6. alistair Says:
   October 29th, 2005 at 9:44 am

   dog are good people. what we say about our loyal companions is what we say about ourselves. they are a mirror to our souls. cats on the other hand are assholes.

7. watch dog Says:
   October 30th, 2005 at 4:58 am

   Well, I wouldn’t mind to be a watch dog in the field of justice.

   Recently, I read news about an Australian boy who smuggled drugs to Singapore and will receive a punishment of hanging to death.

   One thing that it confuses me is that Singapore has the major religions of Hindu and Buddhism which never encourage to use this kind of punishment.

   To my knowledge, the person to to be executed using this method actually receives double punishment, one is death and another will most likely to go to hell or reborn in the animal realm. Why?

   Because, if his/her sould is released from the body before the execution is completed, then most likely his or her soul will be released from the positions of throat downwards, where these soul exits are not very humanitarian way.

   In this regard, if the capital punishment can not be dispelled, then a humanitairan method, such as lethal injection, should be used.

   I feel amazed that Singapore is a relatively developed country but are still using an undeveloped justice system

8. watch dog Says:
   October 30th, 2005 at 5:12 am

   And yet,

   If the hanging mark is deep enough to block the throat airway, the soul will never get chance to be released from the exits above the throat even after the execution.