Blasphemy

Against my better judgement I ended up having an online
discussion about the dangers of using treadmills to exercise your dog, on a
very well known celebrity dog trainers website. This is something I very rarely
do but in this instance I simply couldn’t help myself, as I absolutely hate
treadmills.They are dangerous and a product of our egocentric consumer lifestyles. What is wrong with taking your dog out for a lovely walk? Anyway I digress.Whilst reading the diatribe of abuse that came my way for daring to challenge this certain dog trainers views I was amazed at the zealous nature of it all. It was as if this person was some sort of messiah and as soon as anyone dared to challenge him an army of devoted followers rose up in response. A scene in Monty Pythons “The life of Brian” came to mind http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIaORknS1Dk
However, there is a more serious side to this and I was thinking how could so many people in the face of so much good scientific evidence to the contrary continue to believe such outdated and hazardous views and I came to this conclusion:
These dedicated followers are going to be very nice people and love their dogs dearly. If they stopped believing in what they were being told they would have to conclude that what they had been doing was in all probability detrimental to their dogs welfare. In other words they may have been cruel to their dogs and that is going to cause them a great deal of distress and huge feelings of guilt.So they hang on fervently. All I can say to these people is that we all fell for the
same principles initially even the scientists. So please take some time and
read this:
http://www.dogwelfarecampaign.org/index.php
It may change your dogs life.