I’m a reddit refugee considering spinning up a lemmy instance. I’ve always been a lurker and I want to be more active in this new community. My biggest deterrent in starting an instance and adding some communities (I know I don’t have to have communities on an instance, but I want to!) is moderating users and posts. How much time does it take? How often do trolls need to be dealt with? What are the other things I’m not thinking about? Am I overthinking this?
I agree with your reply. I completely agree with breeding restrictions and laws regarding not only big dogs, but all of them. There are way to many unintended dogs, and backyard breeder rejections in this world. With that, no one should be able to make a living breeding pets, that only creates the issues we have now. You can pay thousands for a pure bred dog, or you can pay a few hundred from a backyard “my dog isn’t controled and knocked up/got knocked up by the neighbors,” or you can be like me and just pick up the pieces and adopt from the local shelter.
I also know the stats about fatalities, and also understand that they are one of the largest “breeds” without a clear definition. They are also the “breed” assigned to all medium to large, short hair, with a medium to long snout dogs by most animal control entities in the US. I am not trying to minimize, or hide anything, I just wish there was a clear definition of the breed, and a way to stop the unethical breeding, treatment, and abuse of them.
This is how I look at all pets, mine, and everyone else’s I come across. They are all beautiful, sentient, intelligent, and self aware beings. They have urges, fears, irrationalities, instincts, and self preservation feelings like every other animal on this planet. They deserve and need to be treated with the same respect you would treat any person.
I actually believe you should be able to breed if you’d like, people should be free to do that… I just think the licensing requirements should be very very strict.
For venomous snakes, for example, you have to spend 1,000 hours being mentored in order to work with them… these are usually unpaid hours where you have to beg to work with someone, and it’ll take around 5 years, if you also have a job. If something like that existed for dog breeding, that would weed out all the horrible people, without punishing those who really have a passion (although it is quite the hoop!).
I understand wanting to line breed for a trait, we’ve bred dogs for generations to enhance traits, but man, what most breeders do is just fucked up these days, but I don’t want to punish genuine people with a passion who do the right thing, y’know?