Well written

On Mary Scriver's prairiemary blog, a fine essay on symbiosis. Excerpt:

The business of animal control (or the function that we currently call by that name) is NOT to number, sterilize, and supervise every animal in America, but rather to work through problems as they arise. It is a great mistake to alienate and polarize whole populations of animal keepers and lovers, but it is often a mistake thrust upon animal control by over-reaching humane societies. The misunderstandings are fed by the narrowness of experience of many people, who only know about animals from television, their dinner plates, and maybe their childhood pets. The use of animal aggression for gaming and gambling, an ancient practice, is (and I’d say SHOULD be) hypocritically demonized in this country. (I have a hard time seeing the difference between Vick fighting dogs against each other and Vick himself courting concussion and joint damage in a football game.) But my prejudice is that we’d do more good to try to uncover the causes of such behavior than by simply passing laws. Education, the creating and pointing out of better ways, has got to be a big part of animal control.

She writes with such clarity. Read more of her work here. Her comment that "misunderstandings are fed by the narrowness of experience of many people, who only know about animals from television, their dinner plates, and maybe their childhood pets" reminds me of a comment by Donald McCaig:

[T]he laws that most affect America's dogs are often made by those who fear them, sentimentalize them, or are only interested in their suffering. Dogs and dog owners endure an ever more dog-hostile culture without a champion.

[Cue William Tell Overture, Nathan Winograd, Richard Avanzino...]