Folk remedy
A chap I met at one of the endless Christmas parties related the following solution for keeping your dog from attacking the chooks, suggested in all seriousness as recommended by his old father.
You will need:
- Your dog,
- A large Hessian sack,
- A mature chicken (alive or dead, but whole including plumage); and
- A length of irrigation hose.
Method:
- Place the dog in the sack.
- Throw the chicken into the sack on top of the dog, briskly closing the sack into a tidy bundle.
- Soundly thrash contents with the hose, ignoring sundry yelps and various other noises and signs of distress.
- Release your dog from the bag.
If and when your dog emerges from under the house in a day or so, he will now think it was the chicken that beat the shit out of him, and should never trouble the chooks again.
Note: If this remedy is not effective, you’ll have to think of something drastic to solve your problem.
Labels: chooks, dogs, folk remedies
posted by Jacob A. Stam at 12/26/2007 11:00:00 AM
4 Comments:
Too funny Jarcob!
I guess it is funny in a perverse kind of way. (Sick, very sick...)
The remedy itself seems well founded in principles of behavioural psychology. In this case, we may see the salutary effects of negative reinforcement.
Oh well, no pain no gain!
Surely the guy must have been joking Jacob.
Who on earth would actually do such a thing to an animal?
If he wasn't joking, then he'd be a real mongerel then, I reckon.
That's what's really funny (in a sick, very sick way), Kath. He -- or rather his father -- was apparently quite seriously suggesting this as a respectable practice in animal husbandry.
Should we be surprised, when a practice like mulesing is advanced as done for the sheep's own good?
Animal husbandry has its own internal logic of cost-benefit transactions that has little to do with 'contemporary' standards.
Post a Comment
<< Home