Talk about heartless
Aug. 27th, 2008 02:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bladesparkDog owners PLEASE read. Or at least skip to the end. There's a dog toy that's killing dogs out there, and the maker refuses to recall it, so it's on the shelves and you may own it.
Somebody the other day called a friend of mine heartless because she had joked about a human's pain and problems. I was joking too. It was one of those "you have to laugh or you're going to cry" things, because this person was so stupid she was ruining her life. And I couldn't reach through the internet and save her. So I just had to laugh.
I can laugh at people, and I don't feel it's heartless at all. Because people have options. We're intelligent beings and we have choices. Most of the time when we hurt it is, at the very root of it, our fault. Our pain comes from the choices we make, most of the time. Even if we didn't realize the consequences when we chose. And even when somebody else has hurt us and it's not our fault, we are at least capable of understanding why.
Animals can't. They can't understand why they are in pain. And our pets don't have options and choices. We choose for them. We pick the food they eat, we pick the toys they play with, we pick the places they can go and the people they can meet. And so it's not really funny to me when one of them gets hurt. This story is particularly unfunny. Somebody's dog was hurt very badly, his life will never be the same again, and many others have been injured the same way, some even killed, by a pet toy. And instead of doing the right thing and recalling the toy, the company responsible has ignored the situation. Has even lied and claimed that Chai,the dog in that story, was the only one injured that way, when in fact he's one of who knows how many.
So if you have a dog, you're going to want to check all your dog toys. If there's anything made by the company "Four Paws", but especially a pimple ball throw it out now.
Edit: Because apparently this isn't clear enough. The "design flaw" that the blog is going on about (and which the company's press release calls a "manufacturing defect" WTF?) is a pre drilled hole in the ball. The dog didn't chew a hole in it, the ball came with one, single hole that honestly could not be better designed to create a vacuum. You could probably suction the thing on to you skin the way I used to do with the suction cups from snakebite kits. So any rubber ball with one single hole like that could be a danger to pets. But I'm not aware of any other maker that makes a ball with a hole in. (Honestly it's kind of weird.)
Also, to save you needing to read the comments, as of two days ago the balls have apparently been recalled. But I don't know how publicized the recall will be, or how long it will take them to be removed from pet store shelves. A google search turned up the product still shown as being for sale on the fourpaws site as the first result, so... (Here's the press release on the recall. It makes me eye Four Paws, given that they say it's a "defect" causing this, when it's a design feature of the ball, which has always been there. Tisk.)
Oh, and here is a story that shows the "design flaw" very clearly, so you can see the problem.
Somebody the other day called a friend of mine heartless because she had joked about a human's pain and problems. I was joking too. It was one of those "you have to laugh or you're going to cry" things, because this person was so stupid she was ruining her life. And I couldn't reach through the internet and save her. So I just had to laugh.
I can laugh at people, and I don't feel it's heartless at all. Because people have options. We're intelligent beings and we have choices. Most of the time when we hurt it is, at the very root of it, our fault. Our pain comes from the choices we make, most of the time. Even if we didn't realize the consequences when we chose. And even when somebody else has hurt us and it's not our fault, we are at least capable of understanding why.
Animals can't. They can't understand why they are in pain. And our pets don't have options and choices. We choose for them. We pick the food they eat, we pick the toys they play with, we pick the places they can go and the people they can meet. And so it's not really funny to me when one of them gets hurt. This story is particularly unfunny. Somebody's dog was hurt very badly, his life will never be the same again, and many others have been injured the same way, some even killed, by a pet toy. And instead of doing the right thing and recalling the toy, the company responsible has ignored the situation. Has even lied and claimed that Chai,the dog in that story, was the only one injured that way, when in fact he's one of who knows how many.
So if you have a dog, you're going to want to check all your dog toys. If there's anything made by the company "Four Paws", but especially a pimple ball throw it out now.
Edit: Because apparently this isn't clear enough. The "design flaw" that the blog is going on about (and which the company's press release calls a "manufacturing defect" WTF?) is a pre drilled hole in the ball. The dog didn't chew a hole in it, the ball came with one, single hole that honestly could not be better designed to create a vacuum. You could probably suction the thing on to you skin the way I used to do with the suction cups from snakebite kits. So any rubber ball with one single hole like that could be a danger to pets. But I'm not aware of any other maker that makes a ball with a hole in. (Honestly it's kind of weird.)
Also, to save you needing to read the comments, as of two days ago the balls have apparently been recalled. But I don't know how publicized the recall will be, or how long it will take them to be removed from pet store shelves. A google search turned up the product still shown as being for sale on the fourpaws site as the first result, so... (Here's the press release on the recall. It makes me eye Four Paws, given that they say it's a "defect" causing this, when it's a design feature of the ball, which has always been there. Tisk.)
Oh, and here is a story that shows the "design flaw" very clearly, so you can see the problem.