Leave it to humans to take magnificent animal like a wolf and turn it into a marshmallow topiary of a dog, like the poodles on the left, shown last night at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. And those are the best of the breed!Hideousness isn't the only calamity that comes with inbreeding dogs generation after generation. It's no secret that "purebred" dogs generally suffer from a host of health problems.
Purebred dogs at even the best of breeders live pretty depressing lives. I dogsat a number of times for a coworker, who was also a breeder of terriers. My coworker really loved her dogs and had a reputation for being one of the best breeders. She and her husband had between 12 and 16 dogs at any given time, depending on whether there were puppies in the house. Only one dog was allowed out of her cage all the time. The rest got fed twice a day and walked a few times a day. They spent the remaining 23.5 hours of every day in small wire cages stacked on top of each other in the sun room.
When I dogsat, I tried to take the dogs on long walks and have a couple of dogs out in the fenced yard at a time. Because the dogs were not neutered and didn't all get along, I could only have a couple of them out of their cages at a time, which meant that even if I had several dogs out of their cages for most of the day and switched them every hour or so, the dogs still spent all but a couple of hours a day trapped in their cages. The dogs would thrash and cry every single time I had to put them back into their cages. Heartbreaking. And those are likely the best of circumstances for breeders' dogs. (I won't even get started on their far worse cousins, puppy mills).
On top of that, the more purebred dogs there are, the less likely it is that animals in shelters will be adopted and the more likely it is that shelter animals will either be put down or live out their lives in shelters. According to PETA, about shelters house about six to eight million unwanted cats and dogs and about half of those animals are put to sleep each year.
What can we do to reduce dog and cat populations so that no animals need to live in shelters or be euthanized?
First, pledge to stop buying pets from pet stores and breeders. Should be the easiest decision you've ever made, but if you're having doubts, just take another look at those fugpoodles above and then check out the adorable dogs on petfinder.com).
Second, spay or neuter your pets. Lots of low-cost options are available for those on a tight budget. Just think of all the money you'll save on diapers for your female dog when she no longer goes into heat.
Third, lobby for or support legislation calling for mandatory sterilization of pet populations, like the bill the City of Los Angeles just passed.
Fourth, spread the word.
2 comments:
You must be kidding! Female dog diapers??? In over 30 years of raising a giant breed and keeping mostly the bitches, only one was spayed (due to medical reasons and not until she was three years old), but I never used anything like a diaper. What happens when they go out to pee? Do people actually change those diapers like sanitary napkins or babies' diapers?
Yuk, yuk. And I notice on the
site you gave for female dog diapers that those fancy and expensive things are sold for female dog incontinence, as well as
being in heat. Do you know the most common reason for female dog
incontinence? Spaying. Twenty
percent of spayed bitches are
incontinent as a direct result of
spaying.
Do you know one of the most
common reasons dogs are turned into
shelters? Not being housebroken.
And about more dogs from shelters being adopted if fewer were sold by pet shops and breeders, well, no. If someone wants a large, hairy, dark grey bitch, who hardly ever barks and
who is naturally outgoing with no
known health problems among her
relatives, and the shelters don't
have such a dog, where is the prospective puppy buyer going to
turn? To the breeder who has
dogs who fit those specifications.
The point is, we have all these
breeds of dogs so there is something for everyone. But dogs are not cookie-cutter, interchangeable models. If the
shelter doesn't have what the buyer is looking for, then no
substitute will do. If you want to get more shelter dogs adopted out and fewer PTS, then your shelters have to do better outreach. There are parts of the country (especially New England)
where demand for dogs exceeds supply. Shelters in other places send a lot of their dogs there,
with good results. Many fewer
dogs PTS.
SookeyCapote
Yes, I think the ridiculousness of the site for dog diapers made it pretty apparent I was kidding about them.
Petfinder.com has dogs of all varieties that need good homes.
And dogs are animals, not designer items that should be built to some buyer's specs.
You cite animals not being housebroken as the number one reason people turn pets over to shelters, yet you breed and sell puppies that are not housebroken? Interesting.
More interesting is that the ASPCA cites pet overpopulation as a primary reason for animals ending up in shelters, and the National Council on Pet Population Study & Policy reports that the number of dogs that end up in shelters because they were relinquished by their owners is half the number that are picked up by animal control.
http://www.petpopulation.org/statsurvey.html
So, your stat may be true in the technical sense that most of the dogs relinquished by pet owners is largely due to incontinence (though I found no evidence to back that assertion up), but clearly far more dogs end up in shelters due to overpopulation.
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