Perception Part IV

Perception and emotion play a HUGE part in how we view the universe and the people and other entities in it. When your emotions are negatively involved, your perceptions and how you deal with the truth and the lies changes - often times for the worst. Then you start looking at the actions, the products, the results of the actions of the people around you and you realize you were wearing rose colored glasses.

A quote a friend posted on Facebook this morning got me to thinking about this post. It's gone through a couple of edits already. Maybe this will be the last one. The quote:

"Those who force, prove they can conquer. Those who ask for and receive, demonstrate they can communicate." - Emma Massingale

Definitions of evil vary as do the reasons for it; however, general actions commonly considered evil include:

• conscious and deliberate wrongdoing
• discrimination designed to harm others
• humiliation of people designed to diminish their psychological needs and dignity
• destructiveness
• acts of unnecessary and/or indiscriminate violence that are not legitimate acts of self-defense but aggressive and designed to cause ill-being to others.

What would you think of a person, and a group trying to change perceptions who vouch for this person, who practices the following? These actions fit the above definition of evil. They also fit the definitions of abuse I listed in a prior post.

1. Jerking and yanking on the leash and actually hanging a dog from the leash off the ground, so hard, the dog vomited all over itself and then shut down completely. 
2. Shocking a dog so many times it groveled on the ground in front of hundreds of people. See the original Perception post.
3. A shock collar on a dog who I knew to be only mildly reactive, and only in certain circumstances and only on a leash. 
4. A dog that only knew how to sit on command after a 6 week obedience class and the owners told to put a pinch collar and shock collar on the dog for reactivity. 
5. A dog (and it's owners) that had learned absolutely nothing after two 6 week obedience classes.
6. A dog that was still attacking and trying to kill another dog in the household after spending a month getting shocked and supposedly rehabilitated in a board and train situation and 10 months later is still attacking the other dog.
7. Dog killed in this persons care, cause unknown and no attempt to find out.
8. Foster dog mauled by this person's dog. The dog was mauled so bad she was put to sleep.  She was put to sleep so others wouldn't find out what had happened, not because she was fatally injured.
9. A dog so badly mauled by this person's own dog (same dog as #8), right in front of the owner of the injured dog, that it spent months in rehabilitation.
10. A dog attacked in public because this person's own dog (same dog as 8 and 9) was off leash and not under control.

There is more, but I think this should suffice to show conscious and deliberate wrongdoing, acts of unnecessary and/or indiscriminate violence that are not legitimate acts of self-defense but aggressive and designed to cause ill-being to others, discrimination designed to harm others, humiliation of people designed to diminish their psychological needs and dignity, and destructiveness.

So when it comes right down to it, what is perception without knowledge? What is perception if you ignore the effects you are causing? How is the perception that others have of a specific breed changed when the methods that are used for controlling the nature of that breed are so harsh? Why would anyone want a breed which can only (or so it seems with these methods) be controlled via pain and fear? Why would insurance companies, apartment managers and managment companies, police and other first responders change their perception of dogs and specific breeds when the people who are trying to change those perceptions use training methods that would make most people sick.

How can you change others perception when YOUR perception is that a specific breed is dangerous and needs special, harsh, abusive control?