It all started with my assigning a very eye-opening task to all my students and just about anyone else who happened to be around me at the right time. The task is a simple one. At least it appears to be simple on the surface. Now I'm assigning it to all of you as well. Not only that but I shall take a page out of Sam's book/blog and call it a contest. As is true of all contests there will be a prize for the first person able to complete the task.
The Task
All you have to do is to go out and find 10 dogs 1 year of age or older. Five must be intact dogs and five must be intact bitches.
The Reason
This task didn't come about on a whim. Nope, not at all. It got started because I shared some figures with a couple of my classes. The figures? It depends on which group you want to believe but here they are:
Coming straight from the mouth of the beast, also known as HSUS http://www.humanesociety.org/issues/pet_overpopulation/facts/pet_ownership_statistics.html75% of all owned dogs have been rendered sterile. On the other side of the field is the American Pet Products Manufacturer's Association. Take a gander at what their figures show: 72% of all owned dogs have been rendered sterile. http://charityguide.org/volunteer/fewhours/spay-neuter.htm
About 20 years ago HSUS gave us "Spay and neuter until there are none". A result of the "...until there are none" campaign has been to all but eliminate litters of puppies or even the odd one or two pups available at the local municipal shelter or humane society shelter.
What one finds at the shelter will be a heavy preponderance of dogs from about 9 months to 28 months of age. These dogs have lost their homes for pretty much the same reasons. Lack of training, lack of any place for the former owners to get meaningful help with training. These are the bullies, the fighters, the biters, the failure to housebreak and a host of other similar issues and they do NOT represent a problem of over breeding. These dogs all represent a problem of retention. They are unable to stay in a home because the lazy, permissive cult of the furchild has doomed them to failure.
The fact that breeding stock numbers have now fallen below a sustainable population level has given rise to a new breed of human. As they campaign to kill via desexing on the one hand they are becoming more vigorous at importing strays/mutts/street dogs from all over the world. http://www.naiatrust.org/resources/foreign_strays.htm After all, they have to find the poor waifs to raise the money necessary to keep those fancy new shelters open.
The Burning Question
Are dog owners all too stupid and lazy to behave in a responsible manner when it comes to the ownership of their dogs? Or to put it another way, since when is maiming and restraining actually more humane than supervision and training? Leashes have been used as successful birth control devices for eons. Real training, the sort that teaches a dog to be responsible for its own behavior is yet another form of birth control that seems to have been tossed out the window. Why?
Whispher, Echo, Lyric - intact female greyhounds
ReplyDeleteXena - intact female Ridgeback
Fiona - intact female American Eskimo
Luc, Falco - intact male Ridgebacks
Timber - intact male beagle
Max - intact male American Eskimo
Neighbor's aggressive mix - intact male
Did I win? :-)
"Are dog owners all too stupid and lazy to behave in a responsible manner when it comes to the ownership of their dogs?" There are stupid and lazy owners. There are uneducated owners who were never taught nothing about dogs. There are also responsible owners. Unfortunately, the first two groups seem the most common.
ReplyDelete"Or to put it another way, since when is maiming and restraining actually more humane than supervision and training?" It's not, but can you imagine having a clientel of all intact dogs in your yard during business hours. I have a couple in there, but I am sure glad not all the males and females that come here are in tact. I can go get a coffee every now and again.
"Real training, the sort that teaches a dog to be responsible for its own behavior is yet another form of birth control that seems to have been tossed out the window. Why?" I would be the wrong one to ask, as one of this human couple got neutered. I don't know that training would help stop the urge to mate. I occaisionally find a neutered dog on top of another, though they don't really seem to know what to do with the pink pickle. If every dog was unneutered, it sure would keep my job a lot more exhausting and busy.