Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Dogs - love them, don't traffic in them






I finally got a camera. These are my dogs now. In the first picture Maddy is wet because she got knocked into the river while they were playing.

All of my dogs and cats are "rescues". I wouldn't have it any other way.

I have gotten all caught up in the story of a number of dogs in a shelter in Georgia who are going to be put to sleep on Friday. I am hoping to try to help save some, but I am starting to think there's not much I can really do.

There are so many people who work so hard on saving these animals (there are cats who will be euthanized too - all healthy, and seemingly lovely animals) and so many animals that are scared and facing death (even if they don't know it)

It just occurred to me to ask here, though it seems a bit weird, that anyone reading this seriously consider adopting a shelter animal if they plan on getting a pet. Buying animals (and thereby paying people to breed more) while so many die seems to me to be something horrific beyond my ability to say it. If I used the word "sin" this is one of the places I think it would apply.

This is one of a number of areas where I'm hesitant to speak, because I am sort of single-minded on it, and get labelled a hardass more often than I actually inspire any actual changes, but I feel like I had to say something.

5 comments:

Plain Foolish said...

All our dogs and cats when I was growing up came to us as strays, except for one who came to us because she was from a breeder/trainer who raised dogs for hunters, but wound up with one who was perfectly friendly but did not want to be a hunting dog. So we got her. My parents' most recent dog was a rescue, but since the war, they just don't feel that they can provide a stable environment. And my apt. building strictly bans anything other than goldfish.

ef said...

I just committed to adopting one of the two dogs I want to save. I think I have to let the other one go. They're euthanizing 8 of them tomorrow. Apparently shelters all over the place are because staff is so low over xmas.

Great holiday spirit :(

I can't believe my city has pretty strict restrictions on dogs and cats - you can only have 3 total, which seems crazy to me (having grown up with 3 cats and 2 dogs - in a city where you could have 12 total, which is an awful lot, but seems a more reasonable cutoff to me)

ef said...

Anyone in the Atlanta area (specifically SW of Atlanta) want to help me coordinate getting the dog here? I still don't have anyone there to make sure she has what she needs and get her on a plane or whatever I end up doing.

Thanks!
Pam

Plain Foolish said...

3 total?! Yeesh. I grew up in the country, and we had 3 dogs, usually and a herd of barn cats that did their level best to keep down the mouse and squirrel population, and would proudly submit examples of their work.

ef said...

I only had one indoor/ourdoor cat, even when we lived in the suburbs and had a lot of room (for us, anyway) - he loved bringing halves of animals, and occasionally a whole one.

Still, I've lived a lot in old houses in the city, so there are plenty of mice. The house I lived in the longest usually provided them with at least a mouse a week to leave (part of) in the bathtub for me - the first one my oldest cat ever caught went under my pillow -aaaawwwwww!