It’s also a misapprehension to think one cannot get purebred dogs from shelters or rescues. Every breed has breed-specific rescues that are just dying to hook you up with a purebred whatever.
And buying a nonpedigreed mutt from a backyard breeder is contributing just as much to the problem as buying a purebred, really.
The key word the two scenarios have in common is “buying”, not “purebred”. Adopt, rescue, foster!
Sailboat
I would have to know the details, but generally speaking it won’t take much to convince me that a potentially dangerous dog should be euthanazied.
How many other dogs are every year, anyway? Why should I care much about those? Wouldn’t the efforts involved in rehabilitating them be more productive if they were put into taking care of dogs that aren’t dangerous to begin with, hence would individually require less care?
Well if you’re arguing that these particular dogs are being saved from a date with the needle because of the high-profile of the case, then yes, you probably have a point. Although since Vick is paying for it, the dogs he abused should probably be the ones to benefit. Best Friends does lots of work with non-famous animals, including going out and providing free spaying and neutering. They’re main aim is taking in animals that other places view as unadoptable. They’re getting a lot of exposure with the show about them on the National Geographic channel, so if that leads to an increase in donations then the whole thing will be helping plenty of animals.
The main problem with PETA’s position is that their knee-jerk reaction with fighting dogs(and pit bulls in general) is too give up. This wouldn’t be that bad except that they go out and rationalize their actions in the press by telling everyone that these dogs are just not worth saving and that they can never be helped. These statements are simply not true, and dogs are dying because of the attitude PETA promotes.
So, the starving/dying strays I see every day would really be OK if we just left them alone outside where their people dumped them when they moved, because “cats can take care of themselves?”
I guess I don’t get the argument that our pets are slaves. I get it a little more when it comes to animals produced for meat and by-products, but the human-animal bond when it comes to housepets is mutually beneficial, the cats that hang around where people feed them lends to that view at least a little, no?
Most dogs are actually pretty unhappy without human contact. But hey, I’m sure it won’t take long for them to reverse the 10,000 years they’ve been living around and with us.
The main difference between dogs and wolves comes from dogs retaining a lot of their puppy looks and behaviors into adulthood. A great trait for adapting to human living, not so great for living in the wild. It would be downright cruel to separate them from people now.
…
Someone tell me I’ve just been whooshed. That’d be great, really.
This is a fucking joke, right? Yes, because my cats and my dog are exactly in the same position as slaves were back in the antebellum south.
Did anyone else see “The Secret Lives of Women?” It aired a few weeks ago and had a rabid vegan who was very active in PETA in her area. I found the episode disturbing. Now, as I understand it, PETA is against the exploitation of animals, I’m assuming this does not include humans. My defense:
The show had a mid 20ish rabid vegan who participated in virtually every PETA protest in her area and was on the show, congratulated by the local PETA rep for her dedication and devotion. The girl volunteered at no kill shelters also. It showed her crying at the plight of the poor defenseless animals who suffer every day with no one to speak out for them, or no one to defend them. How afraid and alone they must feel, yadda yadda, yadda.
Now, get this, the Rabid Vegan is the younger sister of a girl that had been brutally raped and murdered. Evidently, the older sister had gone out walking or what-not and had been kidnapped, kept alive, brutalized, raped, tortured and ultimately killed. HOLY CRAP! That had to have scarred the RV. I mean, her poor defenseless sister, who suffered every day, with no one to speak out for her, no one to defend her. How afraid and alone she must have felt.
The girl needed therapy, and lots of it. She didn’t need the fucked up PETA rubberheads using her pain, suffering and mental agony to their own ends.
That girl was seriously, seriously wounded by what happened to her sister, it obviously manifested itself in her animal activism. Those fuckers.
I went to the grocery store yesterday and picked up the current issue of Dog Fancy. (Didn’t buy it; just wanted to see the ad.) I don’t know what issue the ad appeared in, but in the October issue, the editor devotes a full page apologizing for the error in letting the ad get in, but also apologies throughout the magazine. PETA alone is responsible for the ad, and Dog Fancy ought to sue them for fraud.
My daughter enjoys visiting a website that features online games aimed at elementary school and middle school girls. The other day I found her at the computer, playing a game from that site - I think it was called “Super Chick Sisters.” It was a Super Mario Bros. parody in which a baby chick wearing a Mario-style cap runs around saving the chickens of the world from the evil Col. Sanders and the death camp that is KFC. I’m not kidding, when the chicken finally reaches KFC, the bucket-shaped sign is dripping blood. :eek: At the end of each level, the chicken pulls down a KFC flag and replaces it with a flag for, you guessed it, PETA. I vaguely remember a picture of the Colonel with a bloody axe, but don’t want to check right now because I’m kind of squeamish. Needless to say, my kid isn’t allowed to play that game anymore. She knows on some level that you have to kill animals in order to eat them; I mean, she’s been to Red Lobster and at least one other restaurant where you pick the fish you’re eating for dinner out of a tank. Still, I don’t think she’s ready to see the full gory details of it, or for the implication that all carnivores are murderers. I can think of less graphic ways to teach children to reduce or eliminate meat consumption, or at least ones that don’t involve bloodied cartoon characters.
I would say that PETA should be drenched in a giant deluge of rancid yak come, but I think they’d actually LIKE that.
That depends, would there be cameras around? If so they would love it.
While it may be possible to rehabilitate some fighting dogs, I can understand why most people don’t even try and just euthanize the dogs. It’s a very expensive endeavor and any failure can result in a lawsuit. For an organization with limited funds, there are more productive uses for their money.
That said, PETA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be first against the wall when the revolution comes.
Someone please inform me. I could care less if my dog is pure-bred, mixed breed, or half goat. Here’s what I care about:
AFAIK, if I buy from a responsible breeder, I can ensure these things. If I adopt from a pound/breed rescue program, I can’t.
So what am I supposed to do? Adopt a potentially defective dog? Get over the fact that the adopted dog may require considerably more training than a well-bred (not purebred, WELL-bred) dog, and may have irreversible health or temperament problems? Any solutions?
FWIW, I do want to buy (or adopt, if you can convince me) a dog in the near future, so this isn’t just a devil’s-advocate-argument.
It’s going to have to be a very long wall, because I have a large number of jerks on my list I promised “first-wallsies.” But, to be fair, PETA is well represented in that group.
Now excuse me while I pet my cats and belch. Tonight’s porkchops were delicious!
I was surprised and impressed by the amount of history my local greyhound adoption group was able to give me on both dogs I adopted from them, but I think groups that are placing ex-racing dogs are slightly different from most breed rescues. Not to say that we haven’t had our issues, but they were issues we were warned about in advance.
No, it’s not a joke. And I’m not advocating letting pets loose. In a sense, the opposite – I’m addressing the “we’d have to let them all loose” attack on the position as false.
In fact, my point wasn’t really about pets per se.
I am pointing out that every time anyone brings up an argument – any argument – about reducing or ending some practice with animals (selling them, eating them, zoos, what have you), someone ALWAYS says “but what will we do with the ones already in the system? There’s too many. We can’t just turn them all loose, obviously, so there’s no possible way this can be done.”
That IS, in fact, an argument made about human slaves. It is also made whenever vegans discuss ending factory farming of food animals…“whatever would we do with the billions of them iof we don’t kill them?”
Yet we somehow transitioned from horse-based transportation into the modern combustion-engine-based system. Somehow the freed slaves got by.
It is a distraction – usually a deliberate obstacle – to the issue of whether something SHOULD be done.
As I said, it is very much a classic rationalization for inaction presented by people who want to prevent the action in question.
I do not by any means advocate setting all the animals loose willy-nilly. But if we were to reduce and/or eliminate our exploitation of food or even companion animals, we could find a way to deal with extant populations, if we felt the issue was pressing enough.
Sailboat
Sure. But “responsible” is kind of a subjective word. A lot of people express surprise every time puppy mills are exposed, having thought a “responsible” breeding operation was going on. A lot of backyard breeders and vanity breeders are not actually as careful about record keeping and socialization as they want you to believe. A great deal of the assurance you derive from purchasing from a “responsible” breeder is either illusionary or fragile, dependent on one individual actually being what he or she seems, which is not as common as most people think.
Modern rescues spend a great deal of effort assessing the temperament and stability of the dogs the re-home. It’s a buyer’s market; the never-ending flood of dogs going into shelters (incidentally, almost entirely the fault of breeders of varying degrees of responsibility) guarantees that they can offer the very best ones for adoption…as long as they’re only adopting out a fraction, they might as well offer the best possible candidates.
To tell the truth, even in a theoretical perfect breeding program, temperament is a crapshoot. You never know for sure how a puppy will turn out.
An adult or young adult dog, assessed by experts who’ve seen hundreds of dogs pass through their rescue, is a much more reliably known quantity.
Sailboat
Except that an “expert” rescue is just as subjective as a “responsible” breeder; just as you get the BYBs and puppy mills who masquerade as legitimate breeders, you get the hoarders and well-meaning ignorants that try to pass themselves off as knowledgeable rescue groups.
Being able to trace the animal’s health isn’t a small matter, considering how many purebred dogs are at risk for breed-specific health problems. No matter how good the rescue, there are certain breeds that I simply wouldn’t want to risk adopting unless I had assurance that they came from healthy lines and the breeder had the papers and test results to prove it. I’d also say that someone who’s known the dog since birth and has experience with the last few generations which ultimately produced that animal would have a much better grasp of personality and potential problems than rescue people, however experienced, who’ve only known it a relatively short time would. So long as the potential adopter educates himself on what constitutes a responsible breeding program and is honest with himself about what he wants in a pet, the odds of getting the animal that’s best for you are optimal when going to a breeder.
I’m not trying to knock legitimate rescues or the good work they do – with the exception of one doorstep adoption, all of my current pets come from rescues. However, if you’re trying to minimize the chances of unwelcome surprises during the animal’s lifetime, going to an ethical breeder is still your best bet.
But they actually did end up letting all the slaves loose, didn’t they?