It’s often said you can tell a lot about a person by who his or her enemies are.
Or to put it another way:
“When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.”
–Jonathan Swift
It’s no secret that I have exposed the dog fancy’s sins time and again on this blog, but generally the main perpetrators of the crime have either been too ashamed to bother with my piddling piece of work.
Or they are of that generation that has no idea how to turn on a computer.
The only thugs I’ve ever dealt with are the bulldog mafia, but their arguments are so bad that they are nothing more than a minor nuisance.
If I had a dime for every time I got the following argument from bulldog owners, I’d be pretty wealthy man. It goes something like this:
My bulldog is entirely healthy! You’re mean!
Lots of data to work with there, eh?
I’ve written much more scathing posts on other breeds, especially Neapolitan mastiffs, a totally fantasy breed that its fanciers swear is the ancient war dog of the Roman legions.
It is, of course, nothing of the sort. It was created by a Swiss writer named Piero Scanziani (he was Italian-speaking Swiss), who wandered around Southern Italy after the War and began collecting farm mastiffs. As a writer of religious fiction, Scanziani wrote a fiction that these dogs were somehow connected to the ancient war dogs of Rome, and the ideas he expressed wound up gaining currency with many nouveau riche Europeans, who began flocking to Southern Italy in search of a “real Roman war dog.’
And the Italians began to breed dogs solely for this market, and it wasn’t long before some of these local dog dealers began to select for very extreme traits– excessive skin, hanging eyelids, and massive size.
And moronic Northern Europeans and the North Americans bought into the delusion. The Romans actually had a freakazoid dog with a litany of health problems to serve them in war.
I don’t know who would think such a fiction possible, but the Neapolitan mastiff fanciers certainly do.
Which leads me to the attack I received today.
I woke up this morning to several bizarre comments that I absolutely would never approve on this blog.
If hell were frozen over, I would never approve them. They included several personal attacks on other people who had commented on the blog. I guessed that this person had watched too much Fox News and thought that was how we do business on this blog.
Wrongo.
I banned the comment-maker.
And it normally ends there. I probably have to do this maybe twice a year, but normally I don’t hear anything back from these people.
But not this time.
Around noon today, I received an e-mail threatening lawsuits and calling me an idiot, which is to me the sign of someone with a severe mental disorder or a chemical dependency problem.
The person in question was Anne Latimer Goetz, a Neapolitan mastiff breeder, a science-denier, and a Grade-A Moron.
I need to tell Ms. Goetz something.
Apparently, she thinks she can get her way by bullying other people and screaming like a banshee.
Others, I guess have cowered away from her.
Well to quote Walt Kowalski in Grand Torino:
Ever notice how you come across somebody once in a while you shouldn’t have fucked with? That’s me.
Ms. Goetz has had the gall to ask me to retract a blog post.
For real.
Me? Retract a blog post?
In your dreams!
This was the e-mail I received:
I have a photo of the internet posting that states that MY image of Magic standing on a rock by a river, is your original photo on retrieverman.whatever your blog is…..
Print a retraction.
Anne Goetz
Centurian Mastini
I’m sorry, Drama Queen.
We don’t roll that way.
If you don’t like what I write, then tough shit, Princess.
Not only does she have the temerity– that’s a big word for cajones– to demand that I retract what I wrote about freakazoid breeding Neapolitan mastiffs.
She has no moral authority to stand on.
None.
0.
Let me show you:
See, this crazy bint has her own blog.
A blog that, unlike this tome, has very little readership.
It’s called Neo News, and it’s very revealing about Neapolitan mastiffs and the culture of their breeders.
The most recent blog post is lamenting the death of a dog she produced. It died of osteosarcoma at the ripe ol’ age of three, and it’s full of woo and science denial.
We kept trying to get the pup back, and when we finally did, his joints were RUINED, btw, he was diagnosed with elbow dysplasia, by Dr Allen, who asked, as we had done, that the puppy be off the concrete! And, she advised high quality food, and medications, and supplements, and the Garcias ignored every one of her recommendations. So,this poor puppy stayed in these conditions for about 6 months. Outside, on concrete, Ole Roy food, no supplements.
We sent a friend to meet Mr Garcia when he finally decided to return our puppy and wait for another litter, (yes, I told him I would replace Blue. I would have done anything to get my dog away from these assholes) And, Mr Garcia met my young, pretty young female friend, and he was so sexually suggestive in his convesation [sic] and interactions with her, that she was frightened. And, the vet records he supplied, were actually, the vaccines we had given Blue prior to our shipping him, to them!!! He received no vet care at the Garcias, until we insisted he be taken to Dr Allen.
Blue is no longer with us. I blame the Garcias. I have to wonder if they are to blame for Moose’s death, also.
So, no, we did not supply them with another male to ruin. And, it won’t happen. Yes, they did take us to small claims court, and we told our story, and the court found against us.
The object of this post, is that we are warning anyone with a litter of neo pups to avoid the Garcias of New Jersey, like the plague.
In that blog post, she blames a dog’s death of osteosarcoma– a cancer with a very strong genetic basis— on vaccines, diet, and keeping the dog on concrete.
But the truth is the reason why the dog died of osteosarcoma is because it was the breed it is.
And a breed is only produced by a breeder. Concrete, vaccines, and cheap dog food won’t make a dime’s worth of difference.
And anyone who tells you otherwise is not a vet.
And it’s not just people like me, who hate the dog fancy, who have problems with Ms. Goetz.
It turns out that she is a dog dealer of the worst sort. On the Spanish Mastiff blog, she is attacked for being an inbreeding apologist and a person who crates her dogs too much. She also produced a litter of Spanish mastiffs, and she found out that she couldn’t sell them for exorbitant prices, so the poor mastinos would be living in cramped cages without enough access to food or water.
Now, it can be debated on what kind of condition the mastinos were in, but I can tell you that Neapolitan mastiff breeders, who are “breeding to standard,” as if that were some sort mission from God, have absolutely no moral authority in the world of dogs.
They continue to produce dogs with ectropion and entroprion. Dogs with bad hearts. Dogs with a very high incidence of cancer. Dogs that spend their entire lives in misery.
Dogs that die before they are 7 years old. It’s very telling that there has never been a dog longevity study on this breed, but most vets will tell you that these dogs are not long-lived. The Kennel Club (of the United Kingdom) did perform some longevity studies on its breed. The median age of death for Neo mastiff is a ripe old 2.33.
That’s pathetic.
But don’t blame the dog breeders, like Anne Goetz.
They are doing their best to “improve the breed.”
By “improve the breed,” they mean “win dog shows.”
And the other part of winning dog shows is to truncate and concentrate the gene pool as much as possible.
It’s pretty obvious to anyone with two or three functioning brain cells that Neo mastiff conformation isn’t healthy, but when you start paring away all that genetic diversity– not that there was much to start out with– you’re playing with fire.
This is the tragedy of the modern dog fancy, It allows scum like this to thrive, when they should be ostracized as much as possible.
In fact, if the AKC, KC, and FCI were worthy of the name of institutions that truly cared about the future and welfare of dogs, they would deep six the entire Neapolitan mastiff breed until someone with a bit more empathy or brains takes the helm.
This is a breed created because of fantasy, and its breeders live in a fantasy world in what is objectively objectionable is celebrated as virtuous.
There is no moral authority here. There is only claimed authority.
And there are too many totalitarians in the world of dogs for this sort of authority to go unquestioned or allowed to run amok in the already compromised gene pools of our domestic dog breeds.
So Ms. Goetz, my advice to you is to find another hobby.
You can continue to lambaste me on Facebook. Among the other things this child attacked me for was the fact that I am single.
I am single by choice.
I am happy as a single person, and I cannot think of anything lonelier than to be a relationship with a person who is totally wrong wrong me.
So if my regular readers can forgive me for my somewhat stroppy post this evening, please understand that the dog fancy has too many people like this.
They very rarely get to me. Otherwise, I’d stop writing about these issues.
But in the face of a cowardly internet bully who argues like a Fox News commentator, I have to turn upon the jackal as a good leopard must.
And do a bit of savaging.
Now, back to your regular programming.
***
Ms. Goetz is also one of those dumbass breeders who thinks that “incest is best.”
Check out the pedigree of the dog above, which she bred.
Click to make larger.
Natural History 