The Mutt / Pure Breed Connection
Meryl has a post up at My Bit of Earth about a new book, "Redemption: The Myth of Pet Overpopulation and the No Kill Revolution in America." She is currently reading it and I'm interested to hear her review and thoughts.
My initial thoughts, from a layman, who has not read the book and only read reviews is that ... well is that there's a big piece of statistical information missing.
Maybe it's in the book and not the reviews. Reviews HERE (San Francisco Gate) HERE (Pet Connection Blog) HERE (Dogged Blog)
I'm not attempting to be argumentative. These thoughts are just too big for a comment and I wanted to share them.
His premise is that the idea of pet overpopulation has been perpetuated by shelters and vets so they can sleep better at night about killing healthy dogs and cats. To quote from the SFGate Article:
First reaction is well yes, that's technically true. But I really do feel that it's more complicated than that.
My question for Redemption is this ... yes you may have stopped the killing of animals in shelters ... but where are those dogs living now? Are they still in the shelters? Did you find homes for them? The review in SFGate didn't quote that statistic, only that in San Francisco they have stopped killing animals for no reason. Which is great, I guess. But that's not the problem.
What are the percentages of "mutt" animals in shelters? According to the Humane Society of the US, 75% of all shelter dogs are mutts. And they have this interesting statistic ...
In my humble experience, which includes my sister working as a vet tech for a year or so and my myself working as a vet tech for a year and owning dogs all my life ... most people don't want rescue dogs. Why? Well, most are over the desired age (6 weeks - 3 months) and with a mixed breed dog, you are not ever sure what you are going to get.
Ask yourself where you got your dog. Did you get your dog from a shelter? Or a breeder? Did you find an ad in a newspaper? Or did you look up shelters who advertised they had dogs available? Most people I've run into look for breeders of dogs they want. American Bull Dogs, Poodles, Shelties, Yorkies, Labs ... people look for breeds they recognize and know what to expect from. If you get your dog from a breeder who knows the lineage and medical history of the dog ... well then you know what you're getting.
From experience, if you get a dog from a shelter ... you have no idea if that dog will be with you in 2 days let alone 2 years.
Mavvy was sick, sick, sick for the first two - three months of her life. And the shelter even told us she was going to die. That's an emotional situation for new pet owners. If you really want a dog to become a household pet - why would you take that risk?
So while yes, I think pet over-population is a story that shelters tell themselves to help them sleep better at night and to save money. I also think that pet owners are the cause of the problem. Not the volunteers and staff directors. Yes they should try and find homes and care for the pets before they euthanize, but until you have pet owners who want mutts and not pure breeds ... well you're going to continue to have mutts that shelters put down.
And about mutts ... Mavvy has gotten a lot of mixed compliments in the past year and a half. "What kind of dog is she? What is that?" Type comments. She's a strange looking dog. :) She's a black dog, who has wiskers and long legs that don't seem to fit her body. And I think a lot of people take a lot of pride in their pure breed animals and the way they look. And that's okay for them. I just think that the problem of shelters is it's mostly mutts and nobody wants mutts.
Sometimes, when I get sad about not doing enough with my life ... Lewis reminds me that I did one good thing that meant a whole lot to one animal. And recently he told me the story of the man that walks along the beach throwing the star fish back into the ocean. Someone told him that he couldn't possibly save them all and the man replied, "No, but it sure means a whole lot to the ones I do save." :)
My initial thoughts, from a layman, who has not read the book and only read reviews is that ... well is that there's a big piece of statistical information missing.
Maybe it's in the book and not the reviews. Reviews HERE (San Francisco Gate) HERE (Pet Connection Blog) HERE (Dogged Blog)
I'm not attempting to be argumentative. These thoughts are just too big for a comment and I wanted to share them.
His premise is that the idea of pet overpopulation has been perpetuated by shelters and vets so they can sleep better at night about killing healthy dogs and cats. To quote from the SFGate Article:
Let's just look at various animals dying in shelters around the nation today," he said on Fry's radio show. "If ... motherless kittens are killed because the shelter doesn't have a comprehensive foster care program, that's not pet overpopulation. That's the lack of a foster care program.
"If adoptions are low because people are getting those dogs and cats from other places, because the shelter isn't doing outside adoptions (adoptions done off the shelter premises), that's a failure to do outside adoptions, not pet overpopulation.
First reaction is well yes, that's technically true. But I really do feel that it's more complicated than that.
My question for Redemption is this ... yes you may have stopped the killing of animals in shelters ... but where are those dogs living now? Are they still in the shelters? Did you find homes for them? The review in SFGate didn't quote that statistic, only that in San Francisco they have stopped killing animals for no reason. Which is great, I guess. But that's not the problem.
What are the percentages of "mutt" animals in shelters? According to the Humane Society of the US, 75% of all shelter dogs are mutts. And they have this interesting statistic ...
Sixteen percent of owned dogs were adopted from an animal shelterOnly 16 percent. That means that 84% of all dogs owned in the United States (and they list that number at 74M) are acquired from some place other than a shelter. 62M dogs are bought from some place other than a shelter.
In my humble experience, which includes my sister working as a vet tech for a year or so and my myself working as a vet tech for a year and owning dogs all my life ... most people don't want rescue dogs. Why? Well, most are over the desired age (6 weeks - 3 months) and with a mixed breed dog, you are not ever sure what you are going to get.
Ask yourself where you got your dog. Did you get your dog from a shelter? Or a breeder? Did you find an ad in a newspaper? Or did you look up shelters who advertised they had dogs available? Most people I've run into look for breeders of dogs they want. American Bull Dogs, Poodles, Shelties, Yorkies, Labs ... people look for breeds they recognize and know what to expect from. If you get your dog from a breeder who knows the lineage and medical history of the dog ... well then you know what you're getting.
From experience, if you get a dog from a shelter ... you have no idea if that dog will be with you in 2 days let alone 2 years.
Mavvy was sick, sick, sick for the first two - three months of her life. And the shelter even told us she was going to die. That's an emotional situation for new pet owners. If you really want a dog to become a household pet - why would you take that risk?
So while yes, I think pet over-population is a story that shelters tell themselves to help them sleep better at night and to save money. I also think that pet owners are the cause of the problem. Not the volunteers and staff directors. Yes they should try and find homes and care for the pets before they euthanize, but until you have pet owners who want mutts and not pure breeds ... well you're going to continue to have mutts that shelters put down.
And about mutts ... Mavvy has gotten a lot of mixed compliments in the past year and a half. "What kind of dog is she? What is that?" Type comments. She's a strange looking dog. :) She's a black dog, who has wiskers and long legs that don't seem to fit her body. And I think a lot of people take a lot of pride in their pure breed animals and the way they look. And that's okay for them. I just think that the problem of shelters is it's mostly mutts and nobody wants mutts.
Sometimes, when I get sad about not doing enough with my life ... Lewis reminds me that I did one good thing that meant a whole lot to one animal. And recently he told me the story of the man that walks along the beach throwing the star fish back into the ocean. Someone told him that he couldn't possibly save them all and the man replied, "No, but it sure means a whole lot to the ones I do save." :)
Comments
After finishing the book (once I got going, I really got going), I'm actually even more sold.
I don't know if it's really possible to have a true no kill shelter absolutely every where, but he's definitely advocating a step in the right direction.
I don't feel like I can adequately explain each good point in the book in a comment, or even a blog post, but here are just a few thoughts....
1. I have to say that it's a little crazy to me that parts of this book are being received as being so contoversial (see the comments section in the SFGate review that's linked in the main blog post). For example, Winograd advocates doing things like off-site adoptions (e.g. at PetCo), having shelters open during hours when working people can actually get there, spaying/neutering all animals that are adopted from shelters--are there really shelters out there that AREN'T doing those things? Voluntarily? Because if there are, that's actually a little scary to me. And (as he says only slightly more politely in the book) it's stupid and lazy. Basically this book is advocating that shelters try new things, brainstorm, be creative rather than just throwing their hands up and saying "People are so horrible, they're making us kill their unwanted dogs." He argues that shelters are there to humanely (not by killing them) take care of just that problem (dogs and cats people don't want) and to the extent they aren't doing that they are failing in their job. If a human doctor said, "Well there's not anything we can do for you, so instead of trying some different stuff we're just going to kill you," we'd think they were insane, but that's effectively what's happening.
2. Stacy posts, what about the mutts? (see: http://bellsforstacy.blogspot.com/2007/10/mutt-pure-breed-connection.html) I.e. she argues that the public doesn't want mutts which are the majority of dogs in shelters. Again this is my poor summary, but basically I think all of the above apply. If the public doesn't want mutts, you need to market them more, have better community outreach, foster care, etc. to expose people to said mutts. He gives examples of "big black dogs" or dogs with health problems or what-have-you, that were adopted because they were essentially marketed well.(E.g. An ad in the local paper along the lines of "Hi, my name is Fido. I'm blind and old, but I just want to spend my last years with someone who loves me.") Pet stores and puppymills don't just sit back and let buyers come to them, they actively advertise and market their dogs--he argues that shelters need to do the same to be sucessful.
3. This is kind of a tangent, but I really loved it. He talks quite a bit about trap/neuter/return (TNR) for ferral cats (more info here if you're not familiar with the concept:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap-Neuter-Return). One of the big arguments against TNR is that feral cats (an animal that was brought here "artificially" by humans) kill "native" wildlife, and so should be killed. But (Winograd asks) what is "native"? How long do you have to be somewhere to be "native"? For example, horses were brought to the Americas hundreds of years ago by Europeans--so technically they aren't "native". For that matter (although this is my extrapolation of the argument) humans aren't native to the Americas either, we all started out in the Middle East thousands of years ago--is that the only place we should now be allowed to exist? So at what point do feral cats become "native" (200 years? 300 years?) and thus worthy of protection?
4. He also talks about weighing alternatives. For example, say a shelter is killing cats for space, but won't adopt to people who won't promise to keep the cat inside all the time because of the dangers free-roaming (but otherwise well taken care of) cats face. Well, what's REALLY worse for the cat in that situation? A basically good life with some risk? Or certain death?
I could go on and on, but really, just go read the book!
Hugs to Mavvy--she really is a lucky pup!