SPRINGFIELD, IL – Legislation creating a task force designed specifically to compromise the rights of conscientious dog owners passed the Illinois State Senate handily last week and has been sent to the House.

In the strongest possible terms, the American Sporting Dog Alliance urges Illinois dog owners to oppose this devious plan to compromise our rights, ask the House to reject the task force resolution in its entirety, and to put pressure on some misled Illinois dog clubs to spurn seats on the task force and refuse to negotiate with animal rights fanatics whose sole purpose is to trample us. 

The entire premise of this task force is invalid, and there is not a single shred of evidence to justify its existence. It is a political dirty trick to force dog owners into a lose-lose compromise position.

It’s not needed. Don’t support it. Don’t join it. Get rid of it.

Under no circumstances will the American Sporting Dog Alliance support any legislation that compromise away our rights as dog owners.

It is quite accurate to call this legislation a dirty trick, and it is the latest of several since repressive and irrational legislation was introduced this year to force dog breeders to quit breeding and make tail docking a felony animal cruelty offense. The sponsors of these two pieces of legislation clearly reflect a radical animal rights agenda, and want to use all of the force and power of government to trample the rights of innocent people who raise dogs.

Senate Joint Resolution 56 was introduced when the sponsors of the bad legislation failed to get enough votes to get the bills out of committee. Rather than concede the defeat of faulty legislation, the sponsors began a series of dirty tricks: Delayed hearings, inappropriate committee assignments, passing empty “shell bills” onto the floor, dishonest backroom negotiations that failed to provide representation for 99% of Illinois dog owners, and then creating a task force that is a stacked deck against dog owners and also is based on totally fraudulent premises.

Behind it all is Rep. John A. Fritchey, a Chicagoland Democrat, who is the darling of the ultra-radical Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) in Illinois. The American Sporting Dog Alliance regards Fritchey as an inherently dishonest politician who continually supports authoritarian measures that show no respect for the Bill of Rights, and who has a long track record of cutting shady deals to advance his personal political agenda.

SJR 56 establishes a 15-member Task Force to recommend legislation to unfairly and illogically persecute people who raise dogs, and also to prohibit tail docking under most circumstances.

Dog owners cannot get a fair shake on the Task Force. It would consist of four members appointed by House and Senate leadership (two of those leaders have a track record of supporting radical animal rights legislation), a representative of the Department of Agriculture (which has a vested interest in increasing the size of its staff and budget with new laws), five members of national animal welfare organizations (most of these will be from animal rights groups or animal sheltering organizations – none of whom would be qualified to discuss the breeding of dogs, while also often holding anti-breeder viewpoints), and a representative of veterinarians (the only qualified and fair appointment of the group). There would be four more appointees that are supposed to represent dog breeders (one small breeder, one commercial breeder, one pet store representative and one for sporting dogs), but these four people would be hopelessly outnumbered on the Task Force.

It is a set-up to steal our rights.

Moreover, the entire list of premises behind SJR 56 is false and fraudulent:

* It says that dogs are not a commercial crop. However, all of the legislation was directed at small hobby breeders. Existing federal laws already cover commercial kennels and the pet trade, and existing state kennel and animal cruelty laws already fully protect all dogs owned by hobbyists and are among the toughest in the nation.

* It says that Illinois residents have the right to purchase quality purebred dogs. However, this implies that the dogs purchased now are of inferior quality, which simply is a lie. Illinois breeders produce some of the finest dogs in America.

* It says that “poorly or improperly run” breeding facilities endanger dogs. However, there is no evidence whatsoever that such kennels exist in Illinois. In fact, a review of all kennel law and animal cruelty law citations for the past three years shows that there were very few (about eight) bad situations. Moreover, in all eight cases, the dogs were rescued and the kennel owners were either successfully prosecuted under existing laws or the cases remain before the courts.

* It says that Illinois kennels are overcrowded, unsanitary and lack proper care, and fall below minimal humane standards. This is another bald-faced lie. There is no evidence that such conditions exist, except as a tiny minority, and no evidence that existing laws cannot completely deal with those few situations.

* It claims that those alleged conditions cause health hazards to humans and contaminate groundwater. This is another lie. No evidence exists to support these absurd and pandering accusations.

* It also claims that taxpayers are burdened by having to care for dogs produced by irresponsible breeders, which completely flies in the face of fact. Actual statistics show that only a tiny percentage of shelter dogs are truly purebreds, and most of these entered the shelter for the specific purpose of euthanasia because of severe illness or injury, or extreme old age. Nationwide, only 22% of the dogs owned by Americans come from breeders, pet industry research shows.

Every one of these alleged reasons for new and repressive legislation is a lie. It is a deliberate lie in order to pressure the Legislature to pass laws that are meant to drive out good breeders by creating unfair and unworkable requirements, along with frightening liabilities and penalties.

Here is a link to the actual legislation. Please read it yourself.

The American Sporting Dog Alliance is alarmed that some Illinois dog owners groups are seeking to be a part of this dangerous task force. At least four are represented by lobbyists, whose job is partly to negotiate and cut deals. Some of the groups say they want on the task force in order to stop bad legislation, but we can see no way that this can succeed because the committee is strongly stacked against dog owners.

We also offer this piece of advice: You can’t dance with the Devil without getting burned.

From the point of view of people who love dogs, Rep. Fritchey is the Devil.

If this resolution passes the House, it will become final. If this happens, the crooked and stacked task force will decide the fate of every dog in Illinois.

Please oppose SJR 56 vigorously. It will destroy your lifelong labor of love with your dogs.

Thus, we are asking all Illinois dog owners to immediately contact House leaders and ask them to assign this resolution to the House Agriculture and Conservation Committee. This committee is the only one that is qualified to understand the meaning of animal welfare and animal rights legislation.

Here is a listing of House leadership from both parties.

Also, please contact your own legislator and ask her or him to oppose SJR 56. Here is a list of each legislator, that also provides contact information for House leadership.

In addition, please contact members of the House Agriculture and Conservation Committee and ask them to request jurisdiction over SJR 56.

The American Sporting Dog Alliance represents owners, breeders and professionals who work with breeds of dogs that are used for hunting. We also welcome people who work with other breeds, as legislative issues affect all of us. We are a grassroots movement working to protect the rights of dog owners, and to assure that the traditional relationships between dogs and humans maintains its rightful place in American society and life. The American Sporting Dog Alliance also needs your help so that we can continue to work to protect the rights of dog owners. Your membership, participation and support are truly essential to the success of our mission. We are funded solely by your donations in order to maintain strict independence.

Please visit us on the web at http://www.americansportingdogalliance.org . Our email is asda@csonline.net .

PLEASE CROSS-POST AND FORWARD THIS REPORT TO YOUR FRIENDS

The American Sporting Dog Alliance
http://www.americansportingdogalliance.org
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Yes, you read that right.  Many BSL fighters have long known that animal rights activists often stage so-called “pit bull” attacks in order to push for breed-specific legislation on the state and municipal levels.  We’ve also long known that animal rightists ship dogs and cats to shelters in order to pad numbers so that they can claim an “overpopulation” of domestic pets and push for mandatory spay/neuter laws.  In their twisted thinking (and what of theirs isn’t twisted?) if you can wipe out all the domestic pets then they can’t “suffer” at the hands of their owners who care for them and love them. 

But wait, that’s not all.  “Pit bulls” and mandatory spay/neuter laws are only the beginning.  In the interest of burning the animal rightist candle at both ends, breeder bills (often incorrectly referred to as “puppy mill” bills) have been introduced far and wide this legislative session.  When these breeder bills pass, they don’t put an end to abusive breeders or so-called “puppy millers.”  On the contrary, these bills only end up adversely affecting breeders who were already abiding by the law.  The end game, in case you were wondering, is to so severely restrict domestic pet ownership — whether you own a “pit bull,” a Rottweiler, a lap dog, cats, or a myriad of dogs and cats that you breed and sell for, horror of horrors, profit — that good folks no longer engage in it.

Why you might ask?  Simple.  Because many animal rightists and environmentalists believe in a little thing called “nativism.”  As Nathan Winograd, author of Redemption: The Myth of Pet Overpopulation and the No Kill Revolution in America notes, nativism is the “belief that the value of an individual animal comes from lineage and that worth as a species stems from being at a particular location first” (79). Winograd is fearless to point out, since most animal rights activists won’t, that nativism, as well as environmentalism and animal rights as concepts, had their roots in Nazi Germany. What Winograd can’t or won’t say, or is afraid to admit, is that some shelters and animal rights organizations (or so-called “humane” organizations which have been infiltrated with animal rights activists or by the animal rights mentality) are adherents of nativism and may not have an interest in saving pets’ lives, but may in fact be wilfully seeking to exterminate them. To many animal rights activists and environmentalists who subscribe to nativism, domesticated pets represent a violation of “Mother Nature,” or the living Gaia, which to them is the natural order of things.

The essay “The Ethic of Care and the Problem of Wild Animals” sums this view up tidily:

“Without addressing the difficult issue of the rationality of nonhuman animals, the autonomy and independence of at least wild animals can be and has been defended. In fact, environmental ethicists have long emphasized the difference between wild and domestic animals along these lines: Aldo Leopold wrote that the essence of environmental ethics was “reappraising things unnatural, tame, and confined in terms of things natural, wild, and free” (Callicott 1992, 67). According to environmental ethicist J. Baird Callicott, wild animals are autonomous and independent, while domestic animals are human creations which are metaphysically unfree. By this Callicott means that domestic animals are nothing but what we have selectively bred them to be, such that it is as meaningless to speak of setting free domestic animals as it would be to speak of setting free a chair.”

So in the minds of many environmentalists and animal rights activists, since you can’t set domestic animals free (after all, they are, according to them, unnatural human creations), you must necessarily “humanely” euthanize them. In other words, in order to return to the “natural order” of things, indigenous species should take precedent over human encroachment, which includes human domestication of animals, because wild (i.e. natural, indigenous), animals were there first.

Now, back to “pit bulls.”  What do you think would happen if you dumped an unsocialized, near feral pack of dogs (of any breed) in a municipality?  How long before one or several of those dogs attacked a domestic pet or person?  And when that happened, how easy would it be to blame that attack on a “pit bull” problem, a dog fighting problem, a pet “overpopulation” problem, or an irresponsible ownership problem?  And when that happened how easy would it be for an animal rights group to swoop in and offer the “cure” in the form of more nanny state-style legislation like a breed ban, a mandatory spay/neuter law, a breeder bill, or even a dangerous dog law.  And soon, whether pet owners know it or not, will be pet guardianship laws.  (Read about “guardianship” here.)  The end game is the loss of your right, that’s right, to own, breed, hunt with, compete with, etc. your pets.

Had I not seen animal rightists attempt to pass a breed ban (TWICE)  in my home town some years ago, and had I not done some investigating, researched the alleged incident, requested key animal control reports, and debunked the alleged incident I might not believe all I’ve said here either.  But others and myself have fought this battle too long now and seen too much to not believe these things go on.  While the hour is getting late, there is still time to join us in our fight for our constitutional right to own our property, our pets.  Join us won’t you?

Welcome to our new home on the web.  We’ll be posting shortly so we hope you’ll come back and visit us again.