In my recent correspondence with a pet rescuer who has yet to embrace No-Kill, I saw firsthand the phenomenon that Nathan Winograd discusses in Redemption: that we hear so much about pet overpopulation, but has anyone seen it?
The e-mailer wrote:
[Shelters] only kill the animals because THERE ARE TOO MANY! Hello? Have you heard of the overpopulation problem?
Why yes, I’ve heard of it quite a lot. I’ve also heard extensively about Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. If the modus operandi of the shelters in this country were to throw dogs off cliffs because the Easter Bunny commanded it, there’d be an uproar. If you had to trade Santa Claus a euthanized shelter dog for each present, the tragedy of “Christmas Puppies” would have a much darker and more sinister outcome.
I’ve heard a lot about “pet overpopulation,” but I’ve never seen a feral dog colony or a single dog starving in the street. I’ve never seen a dog abandoned at the dog park. Every loose and stray dog that I’ve picked up has always had a tag and an owner. I’ve never seen a pet store going out of business. The breeders I got my dogs from two decades ago are both still in the breed with occasional litters. Every breeder I met in the last few years who are active in some aspect of the dog world are actually “growing” their business. They are all expanding their activities and having more frequent litters. The only breeder I know who is “getting out of the business” was paralyzed in an accident.
Last October I became a dog breeder and just a few weeks ago I became a dog seller. I certainly didn’t get any hint that there was a Border Collie overpopulation problem. I had to go out of state for both of my last two dogs, and I sold two of the four puppies out of state. If I were just out for money I could have sold my litter five times over in one week. That’s all it took to find really good homes. One week. And I’m only catering to a very small fraction of the dog owning and buying world. People who are interested in purebred Border Collies who have had the breed before, who have a good sized yard, who won’t have to leave the animal at home for long periods of time, who are active and healthy themselves, who are willing and able to offer vet care to a high standard to the pup, who are willing to sign a contract, who agree to spay and neuter their pets or who pay a premium to keep them intact, who are willing to pay a premium for pedigreed dogs, who are willing to pay a premium for extensively health tested dogs, who are willing to put up with my interviewing them, who are interested in dog sport, etc.
I found four really excellent homes for four really excellent puppies and a handful of other A+ to A- homes that I’d gladly sell a dog to, and by that I mean make a contractual and emotional commitment to for the lifetime of that dog. Around 10 homes that would probably make excellent homes for a Border Collie but who just didn’t outshine the best homes, or excellent homes who just weren’t ready for a Border Collie now (new baby or too many very young children which would mean little time to train the dog during the crucial early months, their current dog is old and infirm and probably wouldn’t appreciate a new puppy, excellent experience with other breeds but brand new to Border Collies, too many Border Collies already, etc.). And then a slew of people who may or may not be great homes but who were either too far away, too inexperienced with dogs or Border Collies, or who were uninterested in training for dog sports for me to take a chance and who would be better served by a breeder in their area or a different breed of dog. And that doesn’t count the legions of callers who just wanted a price quote on a puppy.
In other words, if an aspiring Breeder like myself, first time breeding, who is an elitist, ultra picky about where my puppies go, selling puppies in the $450-600 price range (unregistered BCs go for $100, average price for a papered dog off of a Ranch is probably $250-300, show quality pups being sold to show homes sell for $600 and up, and rare colors like Merles go for about twice the market price for each of those classes), selling dogs in a relatively unpopulated area of the country, can find homes and put people on a waiting list in only a week, I have no evidence of a pet overpopulation problem.
The very existence of all these new designer dogs speaks volumes against a pet overpopulation problem. If there are mutts overflowing our shelters, filling the streets, and bringing about their own destruction, why are people paying $1200 for “designer” mutts? Perhaps it’s a shelter advertising problem, not a pet overpopulation problem. If shelters have too many dogs coming in, why are they importing them from overseas, and across our borders?
If I had to go out of state for my last two dogs, and so did two of my puppy buyers and many of the potentials, that speaks to a greater demand than supply, not an overpopulation problem.
I’ve licked my finger and placed it in the wind, and every indicator tells me that dogs are getting more popular, more homes are opening up their doors to them every day, and as we grow as a society our animals are becoming even more significant and being given higher status at every turn.
If we wouldn’t throw dogs off cliffs for the Easter Bunny or sacrifice puppies for Santa Claus, why are we so accepting of killing dogs for another myth that there is little evidence for: the “pet overpopulation” problem?
The Myth of Pet Overpopulation“Custom will reconcile people to any atrocity.”
— William Shakespeare (circa 1600)Sometimes the obvious eludes us. We are told something so often that we accept it a priori. We ignore evidence to the contrary, even overwhelming evidence. It is so because we believe it is so. And we believe it is so because we have been told it is so for as long as we can remember. Each time we say, read, or write it, we reconfirm it. It is so. It is so. It is so. But pet overpopulation is not so.
There is little reason why most people, your average animal lovers in the United States, would know pet overpopulation is a myth. The one fact that would dispel the myth is something they almost never see consistently because they do not go to shelters everyday. But animal rescuers see it. Animal activists see it. And others in sheltering do also.
They see it daily, but still believe in pet overpopulation. What do they see every time they go into animal shelters? They see empty cages. Shelters kill dogs and cats every single day, despite empty cages.The City of Los Angeles Animal Services Department kills every day despite empty cages. A veterinarian who tried to keep more animals alive by keeping the cages full was fired in 2005, in part, due to staff complaints of “too much work.” In September 2006, the Department killed twenty-five kittens because they had a cold, despite empty cages. In Eugene, Oregon, activists noted a high percentage of empty cages at their local shelter in the summer of 2006 due to killing that shelter management blamed on pet overpopulation and lack of a cat licensing law. The Lane County Animal Regulation Authority kept all but a half dozen cat cages empty at the height of the busy season, even though it killed approximately 70 percent of cats during the last year, many of them ostensibly for “lack of space.” According to local activists, doing so makes it easier for staff to clean. In Philadelphia before a new leadership team took over later that year, I counted over seventy empty cat cages in February of 2005 on a day they were killing “for space.” These are not isolated examples. They are epidemic–and endemic–to animal control.
Empty cages mean less cleaning, less feeding, less work. Some shelter directors simply don’t care and do it for that reason. Others do it because they falsely believe that no one will adopt the animals anyway. Still others kill because they believe the cages will get full. And others–such as Tompkins County before my arrival–require a certain number of animals to be killed in the morning to make room for the new animals they expect that day–animals who might or might not come, animals who might come after those animals killed could have been adopted, lost animals who might be reclaimed, thereby opening up space without the need to kill, animals who instead could have been transferred to rescue groups or placed into foster care.
There are many reasons why shelters kill animals at this point in time, but pet overpopulation is not one of them. In the case of a small percentage of animals, the animals may be hopelessly sick or injured, or the dogs are so vicious that placing them would put adoptive families at risk. (This killing is also being challenged by sanctuaries and hospice care groups, a movement that is also growing in scale and scope and which all compassionate people must embrace). Aside from this relatively small number of cases (only seven percent of the animals in Tompkins County), shelters also kill for less merciful reasons.
They kill because they make the animals sick through sloppy cleaning and poor handling. They kill because they do not want to care for sick animals. They kill because they do not effectively use the Internet and the media to promote their pets. They kill because they think volunteers are more trouble than they are worth, even though those volunteers would help eliminate the “need” for killing. They kill because they don’t want a foster care program. They kill because they are only open for adoption when people are at work and families have their children in school. They kill because they discourage visitors with their poor customer service. They kill because they do not help people overcome problems that can reduce impounds. They kill because they refuse to work with rescue groups. They kill because they haven’t embraced TNR [Trap, Neuter, Release] for feral cats. They kill because they won’t socialize feral kittens. They kill because they don’t walk the dogs which makes the dogs so highly stressed that they become “cage crazy.” They kill them for being “cage crazy.” They kill because their shoddy tests allow them to claim that animals are “unadoptable.” They kill because their draconian laws empower them to kill.
Some kill because they are steeped in a culture of defeatism, or because they are under the thumb of regressive health or police department oversight. But they still kill. They never say, “we kill because we have accepted killing in lieu of having to put in place foster care, pet retention, volunteer TNR, public relations, and other programs.” In short, they kill because they have failed to do what is necessary to stop killing.
What allows them to continue killing without total condemnation for doing so is the religion of pet overpopulation. It is the political cover that prevents even the animal rescuers and advocates from demanding an immediate end to the whole bloody mess. And, at its core, it is an unsupportable myth. The syllogism goes as follows: shelters kill a lot of animals; shelters adopt out few of them; therefore, there are more animals than homes. Hence, there is pet overpopulation. It is as faulty a syllogism and as untrue a proposition as exists in sheltering today. But people believe it, and because they do, local governments under-fund their shelters, appoint and retain incompetent employees in animal control, and give shelter directors the carte blanche they need to kill because the problem is portrayed as insurmountable.
This also begs the question of why pet stores and commercial breeding operations (sometimes referred to as “puppy mills” or “kitten mills”) are still in business. Hobby breed enthusiasts notwithstanding (since these groups often support No Kill and assist in animal rescue), pet stores and puppy/kitten mills are motivated by profit, and they would not go into the business if homes weren’t available. In addition, the more animals dying in a given community) which traditionalists claim means lack of homes), the greater number of pet stores that sell dogs and cats (which show homes readily available). Generally, pet stores succeed when a shelter is not meeting market demand or competing effectively, and because animal lovers do not want to go into a shelter that kills the vast majority of the animals as this is usually accompanied with under-performing staff, poor customer servie, and dirty and unwelcoming facilities.
- Excerpt from Redemption: The Myth of Pet Overpopulation and the No Kill Revolution in America by Nathan J. Winograd
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Lori Ziemba
This is a very interesting article. The argument I was more familiar with is that there is an overpopulation problem of dogs who are dangerous to humans but there are not too many good dogs.
Your analysis is more complete. When my family went looking for a border collie when I was a child we always found that breeders would tell us that we could not touch the parents. Presumably this is because the breeders were afraid that we would get bit.
The border collies I have breed are not like this at all.
The only reason you should have been denied contact is if you had not washed your hands to prevent the transfer of Parvo before the puppies had their shots. Parvo can wipe out an entire litter.
My father gave me the opposite advice. Don’t pick the puppy, pick the best parents. If the Dam was nervous or flighty or mean, don’t get her puppies. Pretty much any puppy can melt your heart, but when you’re buying based upon if you’d take the parents home or not, we’ve never gotten a bad dog.
This is horrible. I am an animal control officer, and I deal firsthand with the pet overpopulation problem everyday. of all the dogs we get in, about 5 percent have tags. Half of the dogs we get in are starving. While ive never seen a feral dog colony, there are plenty of feral cat colonies. I think you should get your facts straight before writing a horribly incorrect article.
Horribly incorrect? How can my honest observations be incorrect? Nowhere did I say that because I don’t see something it doesn’t exist. I would expect a person tasked with rounding up strays to, in fact, see stray animals. But stray and abandoned animals do not make an “overpopulation” problem. They are only evidence that there are abandoned, stray, and feral animals.
Your particular selection bias doesn’t really put the size of the issue in perspective. Unhomed animals might make up the vast majority of dogs you come into contact with, but it’s still only 5% of the dog population. Only five percent. I, personally, don’t find that level of unhomed dogs to be horrific, even if some of the specific conditions of those animals is horrific.
the fact that we get in 100′s of animals each month, and that despite all of our efforts to rehome these animals, which our efforts are plentiful, we still have to euthanize over half of them, leads me to believe that there is a pet overpopulation problem. the fact that this is one medium sized town in the state of oklahoma, and knowing there are so many other towns all over the united states that have to euthanize this great number of animals as well, is a problem. and although a lot of the city shelters might not put much effort into finding these animals homes, mine does put a lot of effort forth and we still have to put down a good number of dogs every month. and cat overpopulation is ten times as worse.
If you don’t mind, why don’t you read that big quoted essay by Nathan Winograd and tell me how many of those issues are true with your shelter.
Do you have empty cages? Do you use the internet to promote your animals? Do you have volunteers? Do you have a foster care program? What are the hours of your shelter? Do you work with rescue groups? Do you walk the dogs?
What is the population of your town and how many dogs are there in those homes? How many pet stores are there and how many hobby breeders service the area? How active are the pet classifieds?
That you get animals in and that you can’t find homes for them all does not speak to a pet overpopulation problem any more than the existence of Good Will stores speaks to there being too many clothes. It certainly doesn’t justify shutting down The Gap and Eddie Bauer simply because sales aren’t as robust at the second hand store.
Do you have empty cages? at times.
Do you use the internet to promote your animals?yes, as well as paying for full page ads in every newspaper including sunday.
Do you have volunteers?yes we do,
Do you have a foster care program?yes we do
What are the hours of your shelter?11-7 monday thru saturday
Do you work with rescue groups?yes we do however all rescue groups in our area are generally full
Do you walk the dogs? yes we do.
What is the population of your town and how many dogs are there in those homes?17,000 on average 2 to 3
How many pet stores are there and how many hobby breeders service the area? quite a few hobby breeders, average amount of pet stores
How active are the pet classifieds? petfinder and craigslist are the most active.
Nathan is an idiot. Even Peta refused to back him on his proposed legislature, cause while what he says sounds nice, its horribly inaccurate.
Just bc maybe in his part of the country its not as bad as made out to be, doesnt mean its that way everywhere, being right next to missouri, the puppy mill capital of america, we experience firsthand the pet overpopulation problem.
So why do you keep calling it an overpopulation problem? If hobby breeders are doing robust business there clearly isn’t a problem with too many dogs and too few homes.
If the top reasons people ditch their dogs at shelters have nothing to do with there being too many dogs in the world, why do you keep calling it an over population problem? Why not call it what it is and then you might actually find solutions to the problems.
To my knowledge the puppy millers are smart enough to send their dogs to the big cities where they are sold. They might run their businesses in rural areas but the dogs don’t stay there. How many dogs to you send to partner shelters in big cities where demand is higher and supply lower?
No, hobby breeders are still in business because people dont think, they just see something cute and then realize they cant keep it and release it to us. Also , many of these “hobby” breeders release their puppies to us, the ones they cant sell, then will have another litter in a few months. They are also still in business because people like you and this nathan idiot go around telling people there isnt a pet overpopulation problem, so they buy from a breeder instead of rescuing a homeless dog. And the more people think there isnt a pet overpopulation problem, the more people that are going to go to a breeder instead, therefore contributing to the overpopulation problem, as the breeder is gonna have another litter as business is good for him.
We do try to send dogs where the supply is lower, but as there IS an overpopulation problem, the opportunity to do that is few and far between.
And your knowledge of puppy millers must not be very extensive, as they are not smart enough to send them to big cities. They send them to wherever there is a buyer.
I would like for you to try and run an animal shelter, and see firsthand the problem, so maybe instead of denouncing this problem which you have no idea about, therefore contributing to the problem itself, you could do something productive, like helping raise awareness to the problem and encourage owners to spay/neuter.
Hobby breeders are in business because they provide a service people want. 95% of dogs never see a shelter, so how could it be that you’re in any position to judge that there’s an overpopulation problem? Does a worker in a junk yard have any idea if there is a car overpopulation problem? Do divorce attorneys have any idea about human population? How about orphanages… do they know anything about global human numbers?
Looking at the numbers of mutts that go into shelters, I doubt that these “hobby” breeders you’re talking about are anything of the sort. The mere act of having ones dogs screw in the backyard does not make one a hobby breeder.
As for Nathan, he’s turned around and run successful shelters. It sounds like you have some sour grapes over your not-so-well run shelter. Sorry, I wish you the best.
As for puppy millers, it’s my understanding that they sell their dogs far and wide in more lucrative markets than the rural areas where they operate via dealers and brokers. If you have some published source that documents that they do their business locally, I’d be interested in reading it. It was my impression that puppy millers get away with what they do because of loose regulations and cheap land rates in rural areas and make a profit by selling their dogs where they can be sold for a much higher markup in urban areas.
No dog I’ve ever owned has ended up in a shelter and no dog I’ve ever bred has ended up in a shelter. Sorry, but I’m not part of the problem. I’m part of the solution, creating quality dogs and placing them in quality homes.
And I see no reason to promote lies and incompetence. There isn’t a pet overpopulation problem.
and the top reason people ditch their dogs are to buy a new one, 8 times out of 10. THey are desiring a purebred, so they release their mutt.
and owner release count for about 5 percent of the dogs we get in. the majority of them are found wandering the streets, HOMELESS.
Had you read my post: http://www.astraean.com/borderwars/2008/12/garbage-in-garbage-out.html
you’d know that the top 10 reasons for dog relinquishment at shelters are:
1. Moving
2. Landlord issues
3. Cost of pet maintenance
4. No time for pet
5. Inadequate facilities
6. Too many pets at home
7. Pet illness
8. Personal Problems
9. Biting
10. No homes for littermates
This puts to rest most of the arguments against breeders being the source of the over-hyped pet overpopulation problem. Not one of the reasons on that list has to do with a big B Breeder, and only the last (no homes for litter mates) has to do with someone who breeds.
Those two things are not the same, any more than you’d call anyone who runs a Runner, anyone who swims a Swimmer, or anyone who paints a Painter. The big T Title implies a level of training, skill, and success not common in people who blindly attempt an activity. This isn’t a simple matter of existentialism, it’s a matter of professionalism.
Feral dogs:
1.http://www.straydogs.ro/
2. Studies on feral dogs in Italy: There are many studies of the feral dog colonies in Italy and how they compare to the Italian wolves.
Where I live, there would be a great many feral dogs.
And I have known packs of stray dogs to form for the sole purpose of hunting deer and killing sheep or calves.
The only thing that stops them from doing so is that landowners shoot stray dogs that hunt deer or stock on sight.
So dogs can indeed go feral and form colonies.
They don’t in part because human societies don’t tolerate them in the same way they do cats, and unlike cats, which operate mostly by instinct, dogs have to learn how to hunt.
And do not throw Raymond Coppinger “dogs are scavengers” nonsense at me.
Rman, just tried the link on your point#1 but it says “Be back online in a few days.” Has anyone noticed if the ferals that successfully formed and hunted and killed deer, have anything in common? Do they look similar in any way? As if in process of reverting back to a type you might see in dogs that have been living as ferals in human camps in third world countries for generations?
The number one reason for reason for homeless pets is ignorant pet owners. Where do they get their pets from? Everywhere. Good breeders. Bad breeders. Other ignorant pet owners that don’t spay or neuter their pets. Rescues. Shelters.
Of all of those, which one will take them back if the owner no longer can keep it?
Only a breeder that will unequivocally take back any animal for any reason (without refund) does not contribute to the unwanted pet problem. Once you drop “overpopulation” and substitute “unwanted pets”, then the problem is very clear. People get pets, people no long want pets, people “get rid of” pets. Some end up in n ew homes, some in shelters, some end up homeless, many end up dead – struck by a car, starved, sick, or shot.
The reason there are so few feral dog colonies is twofold: Most domestic dogs aren’t capable for fending for themselves. People find nothing cute or attractive about a roaming pack of dogs. Any that do survive are likely to be killed because people find them threatening.
Are breeders at fault? Definitely. If the industry as a whole (this means everyone) educated the buyers, had them sign contracts, followed every animal sold and would take every pet sold back if the owners no longer wanted it. Well, first – a lot of operations would immediately go under. Ah, well. Pity that. Then there wouldn’t be much of a need for shelters, rescues and animal control – because the breeders would be housing and rehoming all of the unwanted pets.
I can only wish.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Sure we’ll take in you christmas present puppy and find a good loving home for him. (but what I won’t tell you is it’ll be dead in 6 days).
Ask yourself, if you I were a puppy farmer who would I want a movement that relays dogs between cities and states to make sure as many as possible have a home, or the people who slaughter 4 million a year and constantly make room for more puppies on the market?
Gee, who is it that gets $1 mil a year as CEO? that would be the ASPCA. Use your head people. It is one giant assembly line and euthanasia techs across the country have had their conscience systematically revoked for the 6th largest marketin the world. The pet industry.
At the end of the day bickering over how to handle the problem is just a distraction to actually solving the problem. trying to say there is not an overpopulation problem as a means to not justify slaughtering millions of pets by means of statistical slight-of-hand does nothing at best and hurts the movement at worst. The bottom line is we wouldn’t have any shelters if there weren’t an overpopulation issue period.
now back to your regularly scheduled program….
“Bickering over how to handle the problem” is how you find new solutions and improve old ones when a problem still exists. Pushing the “overpopulation” myth hasn’t worked well at all and demonizing owners isn’t working either, it’s only giving bleeding hearts an excuse to pass judgement on others (for no benefit to the dogs) and to justify their horrible placement rates and high kill rates.
Nathan Winograd thoroughly dispels that bit of circular reasoning:
“It is the political cover that prevents even the animal rescuers and advocates from demanding an immediate end to the whole bloody mess.”
Well all I know is that members of my own rescue have attended more than one protest to end killing at shelters. And from my POV these types of protests are growing. But maybe there is a difference between “rescues.” A lot of the smaller ones are run by folks who are, at least, well intentioned. Now, HSUS is not what I would call one of those rescues supportive of ending mass kills.
I have thought about this alot & when I worked in rescue I noticed in western sydney it was not about pet over population but maybe over population of staffy looking dogs more than anything.
Kill day all dogs where back with their owners, re homed, in rescue etc exspect for a number of very similar types of dogs every week.
They generally fill in 1 of 3 types, staffies, working breeds sent totally mad living in town that no one felt up to re training or dogs with health issues.
If we where so over poulated why is their not a wider selection of dogs facing the kill day?
It depends heavily on where you live. I’m in a good-sized city with excellent animal-control facilities – one large no-kill and two medium-sized kill shelters. Both of the “kill” (or “open-door” as they prefer to be called) have high adoption rates and rarely have to euthanize for lack of space.
It’s worth noting that of the 60 dogs on one shelter’s website, 45 are pit bulls or pit bull mixes. According to shelter personnel, many of the small, appealing dogs are never even put on the website because they’re adopted so quickly.
The case is very different over the border in Ohio and West Virginia. Few pits (they are illegal in some parts of Ohio), lots of small dogs, few adoptions. Many of them end up getting transported to out-of-state rescues.
Jana recently posted..Defining a "Quality Dog"
I’ve come to realise the same thing. I think it’s really that dog ownership dynamics are VERY different in different parts of the country. The the NE, Florida, parts of California and the west coast, the shelter business is booming and turning over dogs more quickly than they can get them (except for certain unmarketable breeds that aren’t homed because nobody wants them not because there are too many)
The guy who posted from Oklahoma is right, though – there IS a pet problem here because the mores about pet ownership are massively outdated. Very few people train their dogs. Dogs are seen as disposable. Dogs quite often are KEPT OUTSIDE (a huge factor in creating aggression). People are too poor or don’t care enough to alter their pets because they are seen as being valueless (a very pastoral point of view that is slowly changing).
However, there are MANY groups now in Tulsa that transport busloads of dogs to areas of high demand. I’ve shipped many a pup to Colorado, Florida etc. Rescues from groups in these areas go for $350 a pop. In THOSE parts of the country, there really isnt’ an overpopulation problem.
The mentality of a “purebred dog” is a huge part of the problem. Thinking that shelter dogs are trash is horrible, but a very real mind set for a lot of people. Before you decide that you are doing the right thing, spend a week at a shelter. Realize that those shelters are everywhere, even in the states you are selling your dogs to, and that by every puppy you breed you are helping just one more dog die. If people didn’t have the option to turn away from a shelter dog, then more of them would be adopted. Most shelter dogs are purebreds, most were from breeders who “found them a good home.” Please, don’t be so ignorant. If you love dogs, realize you are hurting them. I HAVE seen starving dogs on the streets, they do exist.
> that by every puppy you breed you are helping just one more dog die.
That’s bullshit. Dog ownership isn’t a zero sum situation and no dogs are killed because others are bred. Dogs are killed because their owners ditch them and shelters suck at re-homing them.
> If people didn’t have the option
That’s the most pathetic, defeatist logic. I feel sorry for you that you think that way. “If people didn’t have freedom, they’d be forced to accept my mediocrity” yeah, no thanks.
> Most shelter dogs are purebreds
No, they’re not. 75% of shelter dogs are mutts, and the majority are all/part bully breed.
> most were from breeders
Again, this is false. Most dogs in shelters come from people who acquired them for little to no cost from friends or family. Those aren’t breeders in all but the most basic sense.
> you are hurting them
The only thing hurting dogs is ignorance, lies, and stupidity like what you’re offering here.
There is really no excuse for your ignorance, Addy. If you really care about needy shelter dogs, you should educate yourself on the facts about the issue (which are easily available from reputable animal welfare organizations like the ASPCA and National COuncil on Pet Population).
Until then, keep your hysterical PETA-esque dribble to yourself.