Umm...what about the pets here?

Pofi- It's in several of the articles in the magazine, which I don't know if are printed on the website- I came across them while looking for the email address for their donations contact people. Feb 04 was the one that particularly annoyed me. 'why you should adopt a shelter dog' type article, except that rather than talking about the positives of adoption, it mostly just bashed purebreds as unhealthy, inbred, status symbols.
 
Cait

While I agree with a lot of what everyone is saying about dogs here, keep in mind that in some areas dogs do have it harder than strays around here.

Yeah, I've seen abandoned, skinny dogs with mange running around here, but in nowhere NEAR the proportions as I saw when I was in the South Pacific.  Dogs here can go trashpicking and are generally ignored by people.  Dogs there were a nuisance, only good for finding eggs.  They would get hit with machetes if they were doing something that wasn't along the lines of sitting in a corner far away from all humans, and the only dogs that you COULDN'T see the ribs of were the ones that were cared for by the Peace Corps members.  I saw a dog with its nose literally chopped off before.  It's incredibly heartbreaking.

I don't want to cause a commotion or make everyone angry, but on a personal level I wouldn't mind having my money put toward saving other dogs that really need it too.

US strays are typically icked up and placed in shelters....they may not be starving in front of you, but they are in just as real danger of dying, most of them. 3-7 days is NOT a long time to find a home...if they aren't killed immediately simply because they "look" like a difficult breed.
 
I guess "out of sight is out of mind?"...
 
I'm all for helping the world's dogs....once ALL of our own are out of danger.

Personally I disagree with the elitest attitude of "ours."  The dogs can't control where they're born.  To me that's like saying no one should adopt foreign children until all of the mistreated ones in the US are taken care of (which many people believe anyway, but I think less view that as an issue).  I don't think that being born into a certain horrible situation should prevent you from never being able to live a decent life.

Taking in the so many more US animals won't make a difference if they have no place to go.  Most good homes don't have anymore room, and when they do it's not as often.  Alternatively, needing to find homes for so many animals can lower the standards of who can adopt.  And yeah, I'd honestly rather see an animal put down than in a situation where it will suffer even more.  From personal experience, I'd rather see someone I know's dog put down than , if it had nowhere else to go, have to deal with being locked up in a too small crate for 23.5 hours of the day, completely ignored, with no water, not house broken, not trained on any level except to not go right for the water, etc.  And yeah, he shouldn't have been allowed to adopt, but the shelter was overcrowded and just wanted to get the animals "homes."  I'm sorry,  that's not a home, that's worse than death--especially for a puppy.

Three hundred isn't an unreasonable number to take in and place in good homes, and it may be expensive, but these funds were raised for this reason alone and these animals wouldn't have had any other chance.

Yeah, we're not perfect, and we have a long way to go.  However, we are still so much better than a lot of other places, and I don't see why we can't try to extend a helping hand.  "You need to help yourself before you can help others" -- We'll never be perfect and there will always be more that we can do, so should we just never help others?

I know my words will make little to no difference, but I figure I should try anyway.  This isn't a matter of right and wrong, there's a lot of grey area too.