Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: What's up, guys? Welcome to another episode of the Parish Circuit. Today we're talking about recent dog attack and killing, Right?
[00:00:11] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:00:11] Speaker A: In the city of Opelousis. This brings up a lot of things in terms of biblical law, but let's just kind of review generally what's going on here first. So inside the city of Opelousis, I don't know the details of exactly how this came about to happen. I haven't seen any details come up in any of the news reports yet so far. But somebody got home around midnight.
They had their dogs with them in the car. They let their dogs out of the car.
It seems as though it was not necessarily intentional at this point, although there's some dust over that. We're not entirely sure what's going on, but their dogs attacked somebody who was walking by or who was nearby at the time and actually killed him. Yeah.
And so 69 year old man. Yeah. The.
The woman who owned the two dogs, Kimberly Falk is her name, she's been arrested, charged with.
Man. What exactly was it? What. What was it that she was for? Not restraining her animals. Is that what it was?
She was unlawful restraining the dog? Homicide, Negligent homicide. That's it. Yeah. Okay.
So which, you know, that's a, That's a good law.
I think that's a. That's a Christian law, good biblical law. It's based on Old Testament passages that talk about if your ox is known to gore and you don't restrain it and it gores somebody, then you're responsible.
And even, you know, by execution, like you would. You would pay the ultimate price in some instances if you knew your animal was.
[00:01:44] Speaker B: Yeah, it's kind of like a maximum penalty.
[00:01:46] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:01:47] Speaker B: Depending on the situation. Yep.
[00:01:49] Speaker A: So I would say this is a good act so far as a good application of law here in our area. You have responsibility for the animals that you own. That's good and right and true and it's a shame. But it also opens up a much larger conversation about a lot of things, I think, like what kind of dogs you own, you know, what is the purpose of these animals. So it's been confirmed that the breed of dog. It's two pit bulls, right?
[00:02:18] Speaker B: Yeah. That's what the police chief reported. That. That's what was told to him by Animal Animal Control. So that sounds like pit bulls.
[00:02:25] Speaker A: Yeah. And pits have this reputation, you know, like this, this particular breed of dog has a violence orientation to it.
Right. Now I can already hear people saying it's not the. It's not the dog, it's the owner.
Pit bulls are really nice dogs. I've seen these arguments before. Pit bulls are actually really nice dogs if you treat them correctly, you know, if you. If you care for them. Right. They're good animals, good pets. It's not the breed. It's the circumstances surrounding the breed. And to which I'd be like, yeah, I bet that's partly true. I bet that is partly true.
In a city like Opelousis, dog fighting is a thing that happens here.
I mean, I'm not saying anything that people don't know already. Right.
This is not new information.
[00:03:10] Speaker B: Right. I don't think that shocks anyone.
[00:03:12] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Dog fighting happens here. You can drive around and you can see it.
Dogs that are bred for fighting are obvious. They're left chained up in the backyard.
They're always pit bulls. You know, they. They have particular types of chains that they wear.
This is a normal thing.
[00:03:29] Speaker B: So anyway, would you say it's biblical for stereotypes to exist for a reason?
[00:03:35] Speaker A: Yeah. Cretins.
[00:03:38] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:03:39] Speaker A: Paul says they're always liars.
[00:03:42] Speaker B: Come on, Paul. That's not very nice.
[00:03:44] Speaker A: Yeah.
So the deal is here.
Yeah. And you see lots more generalizations in the Bible and lots of using generalizations and bad examples that are visible to instruct and educate your children. Go read the book of Proverbs that's present throughout. So, yes, absolutely.
[00:04:04] Speaker B: It's not to say there aren't exceptions, but it's to say a general truth. You should be able to accept that and act accordingly.
[00:04:12] Speaker A: Yeah. Get used to generalisms. If you can't handle generalisms, the Bible is going to make you real sad, mad, agitated. I don't know. Pick your emotional response.
But yeah. So we've got this issue going on with this particular dog breed, and we've also got this issue going on at a local level in Opelousis.
This is something that should probably be addressed much larger than just this one instance.
Like, the dog fighting needs to stop.
[00:04:39] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:04:40] Speaker A: Right.
[00:04:40] Speaker B: See our cockfighting episode.
[00:04:43] Speaker A: Yeah. Well. And that's largely stopped because our sheriff's department is actually enforcing that law now. Like, there was recently a bust that happened.
[00:04:51] Speaker B: There have been a couple big busts.
[00:04:52] Speaker A: Yeah. That have been against the cockfighting setups.
But my next statement is like, okay, well, dog fighting has been illegal for a long time, but it's still very much happening here. We got to deal with this.
We got to figure these things out and go find them and deal with them.
Now that opens up that conversation. That's good.
Deal. With it, we should talk to our police department. Police chief, what's your plans for dealing with the dog fighting and Opelousis? Those would all be great questions, but it also opens up a larger conversation just about the breed in general, I think, you know, like.
And again, I can hear. I can already hear the rebuttals to this argument. It's not the breed. It's the owner. It's not the breed.
It's the environment that they're placed in. You know, and I do think that's partly true, like I said before.
[00:05:41] Speaker B: Yeah. But there are.
But everybody knows that certain breeds have certain instincts and inclinations.
[00:05:48] Speaker A: Agreed.
[00:05:48] Speaker B: That's true across the board. You get different dogs for different things, for different.
[00:05:52] Speaker A: Yeah, shepherds.
A Great Pyrenees kills coyotes. And there are other breeds that do
[00:06:00] Speaker B: that and stays awake all night.
[00:06:01] Speaker A: And they just know that.
They just are wired. They protect the flock and kill the coyotes. They just have this instinct about them.
That's a thing that happens with these animals. Healers heal.
You know, like, the same principle applies here.
I would argue that there are dogs that are bred for a particular purpose, and that's not good.
We should deal with that specifically.
[00:06:31] Speaker B: And now, to avoid just, like, putting this woman on the judgment seat for public opinion, we aren't saying that we know for sure that these particular pit bulls were being trained.
[00:06:46] Speaker A: Oh, we're bred to fight.
[00:06:47] Speaker B: To bred to fight.
[00:06:48] Speaker A: Yeah. We don't know that.
[00:06:49] Speaker B: We are describing a broad issue that is present in Opelousis of lots of pit bulls. There's dog fighting, and there's a lot of. Look, there's a lot of dogs that wander around. I live a few blocks from where this attack happened, and there have been times where I lived at my house where there would just be these small gangs of stray dogs, and maybe someone owned them, I don't know. But they would just come running through our yard, running down the streets.
So in this context, there's gonna be danger and stuff like this is gonna happen.
[00:07:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
Yes. And so I would argue we should probably eliminate the breed that. Let's sit on that one for a little while.
[00:07:34] Speaker B: No pun intended.
[00:07:35] Speaker A: We should probably eliminate the breed, and then we should also continue. I say good on this law. Continue to hold people accountable for the actions of their animals and deal with people about the mistreatment of animals. That's a huge deal, man.
And Opelousa specifically, St. Leger Parish as a whole. But Appaloosas specifically has this particular issue of not caring about animals, and that's just not what the Lord has put us here to do. We should be good stewards of creation.
He's put us here to care for it and to help it to be fruitful and help it to grow and thrive and flourish. So we don't just sit back and say, nah, we're not going to do that here. We should make sure that we are obeying and working well to honor the Lord in this space. Does this make sense? Am I talking in circles? I feel like I'm not saying anything crazy. Am I saying anything crazy?
[00:08:30] Speaker B: No, it seems normal, pretty straightforward.
[00:08:33] Speaker A: Okay, so nothing crazy. So that's good to know. That's good to know. So then from here, Dave, like, where do we go deal with the animal control issues on a local level? Yeah, talk to your government officials.
[00:08:47] Speaker B: Right. And like, look, some. Some kind of moral issues in a society. It's going to take repentance, individuals, groups, and let's push for a better and more flourishing, safer apelousis in the realm of animals, specifically dogs. And hopefully this sort of thing doesn't happen again.
[00:09:09] Speaker A: Yeah, and we can also say that there's a degree in which you can take a lot of this responsibility yourself.
You know, like, we've had dogs come to our house before that have been problems. They've come into my yard, they've nipped at my kids.
Deal with it.
That's easy enough, right? Like, I've taken dogs and thrown them in the back of my truck and taken them to the animal shelter. But like, here you go.
Thank you. See you later. You can take initiative with these animals yourselves. You don't have to kind of play the victim card.
You don't have to necessarily call somebody else and wait for them to come and fix it. You can take the initiative and fix it and deal with it yourselves. If we're thinking about localism here, I think that's strong and easy play for us to make. And then we can also say and talk to your local officials and let's push for this thing to get cleaned up and dealt with.
[00:10:04] Speaker B: Well, yeah, it'll be interesting to see what the kind of public response is here towards our authorities.
If there's a call for something to happen here, I kind of hope there is.
[00:10:13] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.
All right, guys. Well, thank you all so much for listening to another episode of the Parish Circuit. You can go to the parishcircuit.com, read more of our articles, subscribe, support, and keep listening. Thank you guys so much. We'll see you next time.
