The other day Alan Friswell, the bloke who made the CFZ Feegee Mermaid and also the guy responsible for some of the most elegantly macabre bloggo postings, wrote me an email. He had an idea for a new series for the bloggo. Quite simply he has an enormous collection of macabre, fortean, odd and disturbing magazine and newspaper articles, and he proposed to post them up on the bloggo.
Alan Writes: "Yes! Welcome to Friswell's Freaky Features, an ongoing spot on the CFZ blog page where you will encounter the fun, the freaky, the frightening and on occasion, the downright horrifying. Many of these items are from almost forgotten archives and no doubt should, in many cases, have stayed forgotten. But no chance of that on this site! So be prepared to be amazed by the bizarre manifestations of nature, the abberations of the natural world and the complete (on occasion) mind-bending insanity of collective humanity. Read on...."
What a smashing idea, we thought, and so with a burst of alliteration that will - I hope - make Dr Shuker proud of me, here we go....
The headline of this article from August 1960 is surely sickening enough but it's only when you read the text that you can more fully appreciate the horrifying mentality of the charming individuals who invented this 'device'. I can only say that these bastards probably missed their true vocation by being born too late, because had they been around a few years earler, they would most likely have gone down a storm in Auschwitz or Dachau....
EDITOR'S NOTE: I'm not sure that I agree. I was, after all, woken up at six this morning by an earnest young border collie rooting through the waste bin in our bedroom, and deciding to growl noisily at something insubstantial outside the window - probably a rook. I think electronic leashes sound a jolly good training option....
Believe it or not, but virtually every single gun dog in the US is trained using this device, which is called an "e-collar." I'm not a fan of the device, but to train a working retriever for trials and tests in this country, you almost have to use them. In the UK and all of Europe, this is not the case.
ReplyDeleteI have books on working retrievers, which suggest the following methods:
shooting them with a sling shot or bb gun, taking a whip or riding crop to them, slapping them around with a bamboo pole, and using a livestock electric prod to their backsides. As a result of breeding for dogs that put up with these methods, most working retrievers bred in this country are tough and very wild dogs.
I wouldn't use those devices on a dog like a BC.
ReplyDeleteWhat a fantastic device.
ReplyDeleteIt could be used on small children, to train them to become civilised human beings, instead of Chavs, chavettes and hoodie wearers.