I went to the shelter where I volunteer, this afternoon, to train a couple of dogs. As I was walking one of the dogs through the lobby area, to say high to some of the office staff, a older women was filling out a release form for the dog she was dropping off. It was a really cute Rottweiler puppy, about 6-7 months old, and had the nicest disposition. It was behind the counter with one of the shelter workers, and he was playing with the dog and it looked as happy as could be. I asked the women, why she was giving the dog up, since it was a really cute animal. She told me that the dog had actually belonged to her next door neighbor. She took the dog about 6 weeks ago, after asking her neighbor if it was OK. The dog's mom had a litter of 5 pups, and this dog was one of the litter. The parents were both owned by the neighbor and were
chained up to a tree 24/7 in the back yard. The pups, after they were born, were kept in a couple of open wooden boxes in the back yard along with the parents. One or both of the parents had
eaten 2 of the pups. The rest of the pups were covered in poop, had very little water and food, and just wandered around the small backyard.
She took the pup that they gave her, and cleaned it up and took it to the vet for it's shots and started feeding it good food and playing with it, and in about 6 weeks it had improved dramatically. She can't keep the dog, so she was bringing it to our no-kill shelter where she hoped it would be adopted. Since the day that she had taken this dog, one of the remaining Rottie pups had also died. I am listening to this story and am about ready to go find these owners and beat the #@## out of them. I then asked her, why they hadn't S/N the adult dogs instead of letting all this happen. The women said,
" Oh they want to breed the dogs, because their dogs have papers" . She then said that the female dog is pregnant again.
This is the kind of horror story that goes on day after day, all across the country. Educating people like those owners is like trying to push a building with your bare hands. The only thing that has even a chance of reducing this scenario, is a law that mandates S/N. Will it solve all the problems, of course not. Will people like these horrible owners, obey the law, maybe yes, maybe no. To use the excuse that people might ignore a proposed law, so therefore we shouldn't even bother enacting one, is totally irresponsible in my opinion. We have laws about selling drugs, child porn, murder, rape, and yet these laws are broken every day by people. I don't hear people saying,.
"Oh what the heck, people are going to murder or rape anyway, so let's just repeal the laws we already have cause they don't work" Stating that a proposed law that might change things for the better, is no good, because some people won't follow the law, is not a valid reason for having no law at all and having animals continue to be stored and excuted in shelters every day. This doesn't even take into account the animals that are treated like this Rottie puppie.
If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.