I think you might have a hard time convincing a human rights court that calling a dog a "loud stupid baby" and verbally insulting a psychiatric patient are one and the same thing.

  They're animals.  They used to be useful, now they are just nice for some people to have around.  They certainly aren't that tasty.

I would sling with my dog but she's a Greyhound and would want to take off after it. I don't have any place where I can let her run without a leash but if I did she could probably be there waiting to catch whatever I slung before it hit the ground.

We have a st.bernard girl living with us at the time(trying to mate Eldar:-)
She is completely psycho when she sees my slings,I have to avoid slinging when she is around she keeps trying to catch the stone or tennis ball in the air..seems like a bad idea..

[quote]Is it an insult if the object of the insult is not insulted[/quote]
The object of your insults are quite clearly dog owners - most dogs don't read this forum ;-) That's simple enough for you to understand surely ?
The only reason you're posting in this topic is to insult dog owners - they disagree with your opinion and you only seem to have one response to that - belittle people who disagree with you.

Okay - a few points.

Dog owners (scientifically proven over many surveys) live longer, are healthier and suffer far less stress that non-dog owners.
In our modern soceity that alone is a good reason to have dogs.
On top of that houses with dogs are considerably less likely to be burgled - again proven fact. And again a very useful purpose in modern soceity.
I know a lot of people who go game shooting. Dogs retrieve the birds - many of whol would never be found by people and would have suffered much longer (okay the shooting in the first place is arguable - but ameliorating any animals suffering is never a bad thing (in my opinion as I care for other things than myself).
There are many cultures where dogs still fulfill their traditional working traditions.
In greece and turkey traditional (and we're going back to roman times for some breeds) mastiffs still roam around flocks of sheep and goats protecting them from wolves, rustlers, tourists etc.
Quick pointer - if you're ever walking in turkey and a large brown dog appears in front of you - just be aware there are at least 2 others watching you as well and you only see the one as a warning to backtrack.  

Those are the reasons you might understand. There are many others that I'm certain you will never understand - so no point mentioning them.

Couple of other points. Most dogs are housetrained in under 2 weeks - human children take up to 2 years and sometimes longer. You are far more likely to have a child mess on your floor than dog.
Human children tend to scream louder and longer than dogs - you don't tend to see people taking their dogs to the supermarket to smack them ;-)

No dogs aren't people - so why do you compare them to people ?

If you have a single piece of actual evidence for any of your statements I'd love to hear it :-)
 

Ahh,great to hear from other animal lovers,especially such good arguments curious_aardvark
I have brought my dog with me to work a few times(I work at a mental institution) and no matter how aggressive or anti-social the pasients are they all flock around him to pet and talk to him.Strange how a dog can make someone open up,have a pasient who don´t talk at all,refuses to speak to humans,but when he gets to pet a dog he never shuts up

How someone can say dogs are useless I´ll never know.
Funny story:
Had a friend who claimed he could defeat a dog in a fight because dogs were so simpleminded and weak(whaaaaat )
He said this to a friend of mine who trains dogs for the Norwegian Army,who challenged him:
My friend in a protective suit vs one of his 2 trained dogs,Rottweiler or German sheperd. he wasn´t quite so cocky when he cried for help and crawled back out(we actually waited for 5mins before we let him out..call it a mean streak..).

seriously believe that if people realized what a dog could do to you if it wanted,they would be much kinder to them.That is what I tell my son when he hit our dog while they played: "He could crush your arm if he wanted,but he doesn´t.That is because he loves you.so why do you hit him?"

Yeah,that is the great thing about dogs,they always show how happy they are to see you again

My st.Bernard is far from trained, he has learned to sit and lay down,and that´s basically it,he´s so lazy I see no point in training him further

Monster wrote on Jul 30^th, 2007 at 8:50pm:

The dog might run to catch the "ball".