Knowing I write about dogs, one shared a funny advertisement that an Italian Animal Rights group is using to promote an abandonment awareness campaign featuring an Italian porn star, Alfredo Siffredi.  Apparently Siffredi is known for rough sex and rear entry.

"If you abandon your dog, I'll fuck you in the ass."

I was pretty sure the image was a fake because the message is crude, even by European standards. Since Animal Rights groups like PeTA are known for pushing boundaries and being provocative, especially with sexual advertising, I decided to see if the image was real. I googled the Italian and found out all about Siffredi and that he was actually retained by Animalisti Italiani Onlus for an anti-abandonment campaign but that their original message was a bit more tame.

"I have seduced and abandoned, but not my dog."

Seeing as Google returns four times the number of results when looking up the spoof ad versus the real ad, I’d say that the internet has embraced the crude humor.  Whether this will lead to anything better for stray Italian dogs, however, is doubtful.  Animal Rights groups entertain their own egos with provocative ads as much as adolescent pranksters entertain themselves with mockery.  Neither is good for much more than a laugh though; it’s hard to take a mission of compassion seriously when the message is so far removed from the cause.  The reason the spoof is funny comes in part from how ridiculous the ad is in the first place.

Provocative campaigns might get attention, but they fail to engender respect.  And I doubt such ads actually lead to changes in behavior.

It is often said in dog breeding that ‘form follows function.’  While this sort of attention is usually focused on the dogs, I can’t help but notice that the same wisdom applies to the methods of their production.  If we can attempt to construct the ideal form of the dog by analyzing its function, certainly we can reconstruct the ideology behind their breeding by deconstructing the form of the typical kennel.

It’s not a large leap to compare dog breeding to factory farm production, given the obvious parallels between domestic animals produced for food and those produced for companionship; and although most legislation currently treats large scale dog breeding like small time farming, the ethical paradigm of raising pets is incompatible with the efficiencies of factory farming.

Breeders who create puppies using the factory farming paradigm are called puppy mills.  The informed consumer doesn’t want their dog produced in the same manner as their chicken nuggets, and puppy mills are one of the few things the vast majority of the dog world is aligned against.  Still, the larger the breeder, the more their facilities and methods emulate the trappings of factory farming.

The dog kennel, the kibbutz and the concentration camp share several fundamental qualities.  All three are engineered to keep large numbers of living beings in close proximity but still provide a means to isolate them when necessary.  The concentration and segregation is for the explicit benefit of the warden, not the inmates; and the walls and wire fences are the tools which keep the inmates where the warden wants them.

Keeping them close makes inspection, feeding, breeding, culling, and other maintenance tasks easier.  Segregation prevents unwanted interactions and promotes pacification of the subjects.  The kibbutz stands apart from the other two in that participation is voluntary, and there are more cultural and social barriers than physical ones.

All three communal paradigms are tools by which people can achieve their Utopian ideals of creating or maintaining an exemplary future population.  The goal of the kennel is to produce purebred dogs following a Eugenic model using directed selection of mating pairs.  So too is the kibbutz designed to facilitate the mating of Jews with Jews, just as the Lebensborn was designed to facilitate birthing and raising Aryan children.

One aspect which has thrived in kennels but is a contributing factor to the limitation of the efficacy of kibbutzim is inbreeding.  Whereas the inbreeding ethic thrives in the kennel environment, it has been observed that the communal raising of children from a young age with the intent to create future marriages and reinforce the culture and genetics of the community from within largely failed because children reared together from infancy are predisposed against sexual attraction to their siblings/peers.

Whereas the kennel and kibbutz overlap in their function to advance the propagation of genetically pure offspring, the kennel also aligns with the death camp’s suppression of undesirable genetics–and undesirable is defined solely by the warden.  To bring about the Eugenic Utopia, it is insufficient to merely promote preferable mating pairs, one must actively remove deleterious specimens from the breeding pool.  The weak are killed, the questionable are sterilized, and the refugees are slaughtered en masse.  In this regard, the animal shelter is a particular subgroup of kennels much like the death camp is a subgroup of concentration camps, both performing essentially the same function via the same means.

The chart I made above is a rather conservative list of commonalities between the kennel and the konzentrationslager, as many more shared elements exist: wood, wire, and steel cages for confinement; tattoos, ear tags, patches or microchips for easy identification; warehouse-style communal sleeping quarters to pack the most bodies in the least amount of space; mud strewn runs and yards for minimal exercise; concrete, water hoses, and tiled isolation rooms for hygiene; and finally gas chambers and cremation ovens for the “final solution.”

The Konzentrationslager seeks to suppress fertility and the Kibbutz seeks to promote it, so many of the most horrific aspects of the former are absent from the later. But the kennel does both, although not always at the same location.

All three are bound by adhering to fundamentalist Eugenics taken to a scale which necessitates engineering and infrastructure more akin to the factory than the family.

I’m not a bleeding heart type. Most people would consider me an asshole. I speak my mind, call it like I see it with no regard for PC pleasantries, and I make an effort to clean my own house before I bitch about the filth of others; that is often mistaken as arrogance, condescension, and projecting vibes of superiority. So be it.

I don’t generally share my feelings outside of my inner circle, and I find strangers and acquaintances gushing their personal feelings and business to me about as tasteful, appropriate, and interesting as them sharing their farts.

That being said, Nathan Winograd‘s Redemption has my eyes watering, my head spinning, and my stomach in knots. What a horrible disillusionment it is to find out that large and powerful organizations with names that include “Humane” and “Prevention of Cruelty” are for the most part apathetic and defeatist butchers who do little more than lecture and kill and cash checks.

Now, I realize that my disgust is just about as relevant as a bystander to a crime, hamming it up for the news cameras… when the witness is neither the victim nor the perpetrator. But this is my soap box, and as I disclosed in my first post, it goes with the territory. My interest is not all academic, though, but I don’t feel like telling a personal story right at the moment.

I was going to type of a few passages from Redemption that I wanted to share and ended up retyping almost everything. This is a book you need to read even if you’ve never been to a shelter. The book opens with the history of the animal welfare movement and documents where it all went wrong. The first two chapters alone are worth the price of admission, and here are just a few of the choice bits:

New York City offered Bergh’s ASPCA money to run the dog pound… Henry Bergh [Founder of the ASPCA] refused.

He believed that the ASPCA was a tool to champion and protect life, not to end it. He believed that its role to protect animals from people was fundamentally at odds with that of a pound. Bergh understood implicitly that animal welfare and animal control were two separate and distinct movements, each opposing the other on fundamental issues of life and death.

- Redemption, p.11

Each SPCA and humane society was a unique entity with its own funding, leadership, staff, set of rules, policies, and governing structure. In other words, no SPCA was (nor to this day is) affiliated with or gets funding from any other SPCA or humane society.

- p.12

Following his death–and contrary to Bergh’s wishes–the ASPCA capitulated and accepted a contract from New York City to run the dog pound. It was a tragic mistake. In little more than a decade, animal sheltering became the ASPCA’s primary role. By 1910, the ASPCA was doing little more than impounding dogs and cats on behalf of the city, with all but a small percentage put to death. Other SPCAs around the nation fell in line. The guaranteed source of income provided by contracts helped sway many SPCAs and humane societies to abandon their traditional platforms for advocacy and cruelty prosecutions in favor of administering dog control for cities and counties.
…
Within a decade or two, most mainstream humane societies and SPCAs did little more than kill dogs and cats.

- p.13

From the ASPCA in New York City to humane societies throughout California, the twentieth century saw killing become the centerpiece of shelter strategy. It is the paradigm we live with to this very day. And while many of these organizations became very large and influential, they also became bureaucratic, with none of the zeal for reform that characterized the movement’s early founders.

- p.14

Historically, SPCAs made the tragic mistake of moving from compassionate oversight of animal control agancies to operating the majority of kill shelters. The consequences in terms of resource allocation and sacrificing a coherent moral foundation have been devastating.

- Ed Duvin, Redemption, p.15

It makes me feel disgusting that this is where we are in America today. That we’ve institutionalized killings for all the wrong reasons. And reasons matter. I’m no “lifer” who thinks that anything that moves is sacred and thus holy and untouchable. I believe in many forms of justifiable killing. I’m all for the death penalty for criminals, and I feel that War is not only the natural extension of politics, but that “the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” Some people “need killing.”

If you eat meat or hunt, you practice justifiable killing. If you are pro-Choice, you practice justifiable killing. If you wash your hands with soap, turn on a bug lamp, use paper products, take antibiotics, step on a spider or use a wasp spray, you practice justifiable killing.

We all draw our line in the sand at a different spot, but I think all of us do so based on the belief that some killings are justified and others are not.

After reading a score of pages in Winograd’s book, I can’t help but think that few of the 130,000,000 dogs and cats that have been killed in our shelter system since I’ve been on this planet are justified.

What a way to start the week.

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 she
lters? 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

Today marks the one year anniversary of my enlightenment to the true state of the shelter system in this country, its sordid history, and the hope for a better future. What a profound impact the words and research of Nathan Winograd have had on my outlook towards the animal rights and animal welfare movements, my views toward breeding and owning animals, and the duty we have to do right by them in all respects.

Before I read Redemption, I had a rather negative attitude toward the breeder ethic of taking their puppies back at any time for any reason. While I agree with everything I said then, I put such a clause in the contracts I signed with the buyers of my puppies. Why? After reading how incompetent and defeatist the shelter system really is, there is no way I’d ever want an animal I love to end up in one.

I had the mistaken idea that shelters were positive upbeat places where used dogs could find new homes. I had no idea that killing was such an ingrained element of the culture, defeatism the rule not the exception, and community outreach an unfulfilled burden instead of the core mission.

I had no idea that the ASPCA had abandoned their core principles and I didn’t appreciate how antithetical the roles of animal advocacy and animal control really are.

I got everything I wanted out of the book, and more.

Give yourself a gift this Chrismas and pick up a copy of Redemption. You won’t be the same again.

You see, when I read his name combined with his work in San Francisco, I immediately thought that he must be related to Terry Winograd, one of the best Computer Science professors I had at Stanford. After all, how many Winograds can there be in the bay area, let alone on the Stanford campus; they must be related especially since they have more than a passing resemblance to each other. If Nathan is anything like what I assume is his father, then he must be an engaging speaker with a soft style that belies a razor sharp intellect.

I read his online material about feral cat populations at Stanford and was rather impressed that despite being accosted on several occasions by the mutant black squirrels on campus, I never once recall even the slightest annoyance by a cat, despite there (supposedly) being a sizable feral population on campus. If they’re still there, they are unobtrusive and seemingly innocuous. I don’t recall ever seeing a mouse or a rat, and can’t say I ever smelled urine or stepped in cat feces. If you’d argue that cats would be detrimental to bird populations, the plethora of owls, hummers, and abundant species in between would suggest otherwise and the Stanford Cat Network makes a pretty convincing argument that saving cats is not endangering birds.

According to Winograd, a feral cat population that numbered between 500 and 1,500 in 1990 is today a community of 50 spayed and neutered cats. At a sustained level of 4-10% of what it was at its peak, without the unneeded killing of a single cat, the Stanford Cat Network would have to be called a resounding success.

Given the reviews and a decent bet that he can write as well as his father, I bought Redemption: The Myth of Pet Overpopulation and the No Kill Revolution in America.

I wanted to write at least one post before I read it, giving my honest guess about what the message might be and to document my comparative ignorance of the shelter situation in the U.S.

To me, most of the rhetoric coming out of the various animal crusader movements is off-putting and obnoxious, filled with slogans that don’t make sense and are frankly offensive. The “buy a puppy and kill a shelter dog” rhetoric pretty much just disgusts me, and removed any desire for me to learn more.

But I have a feeling that all of that is about to change, and nothing is better for the growth of the intellect than to be proven wrong or enlightened to a topic you’re in the dark about. Everyone seems to agree that Winograd is not your average bleeding heart gimme-gimme type, and on all accounts he seems to be a potential for a “true genius” that is being harped on by the “confederacy of dunces” according to my favorite of theories.

Several warning flags alerted me that I might not enjoy this book as much as others have. First, the liberal use of the word “compassion” all over the cover. Often, this is a political code word used by lefties to justify pork projects that don’t work and create a culture of dependency and by righties to abandon fiscal conservatism and libertarian ideals with their own vote-buying pet projects. Both parties use the word to whitewash what really amounts to either a nanny state or fascist interference into the economy or individuals’ social lives. Given that Winograd is an ex-lawyer from the Bay Area, there is a 95% chance he’s a lefty… maybe he’s a socialist anti-capitalist too.

“Compassion” is an attack word: people never use it to describe themselves, yet they often site its lack in others as justification for otherwise unpopular or nonsensical redistribution programs. When a socialist with a bleeding-heart’s compassion outgrows their own means to provide relief, they almost universally demand that other people who “have” aren’t doing enough for the “have nots.” They combine this with the anti-democratic notion that their power to influence wealth should be proportional to how much they “care,” not how much they have.

In essence, this is the same mentality as the protest movement. Protesting isn’t democratic, it’s the exact opposite. It’s using tactics to magnify your voice louder than it really is and to drown out the voices of the larger opposition. It’s tyranny of the minority. Obstructing commerce, trespassing, destruction of private property, inciting a riot, and vandalism are terrorist techniques, not democracy. They might be justified, but that doesn’t make them democratic. This is the game plan of wackos like PeTA.

So why is all this relevant to Redemption? Well, this is the milieu from which I would suspect on first glance that Wi
nograd is coming from. Guilt by association, so to speak.

But there are other things that make me feel that this book and Winograd’s argument might be different. First, the Stanford Cat Network is run “in agreement with, but not funded by” Stanford University. Interesting, a cause that doesn’t have its hands in the deepest pockets it can find.

Second, Terry Winograd is such a captivating professor because he combines two distant disciplines, computer science and modalities of human interaction, to great effect. His book and class is on Human Computer Interaction and all the issues regarding how we translate our organic wants and needs into digital processes and likewise how we interpret output from lifeless and predetermined systems with our social lens was a highlight of my undergrad experience. He managed to take the most interesting aspects of computers and human behavior and show how they relate.

Winograds are probably people who don’t think along trite two dimensional models. From what others are saying, Winograd is advocating a new path, a different direction, and just maybe he has found a way to combine the best of two different fields just like his father.

Third, I like people who come out with seemingly outlandish theories that defy all “conventional wisdom.” These people are the ones that push us forward and who find elegant solutions to complex problems that have evaded solution by generations of “experts.” These people are typically visionaries and their detractors are the confederacy of dunces who would rather wallow in the dark than face the light. Results based assessments versus theory base assessments are always superior (what actually works versus what sounds good).

Fourth, the first sentence of his book, “the Myth of Pet Overpopulation” rings very true with what I have observed to be true. I don’t believe there is a pet overpopulation problem and have yet to be shown any convincing evidence that there is one. The notion that there are homeless pets in no way demonstrates an overpopulation problem, just as the existence of homeless people doesn’t in any way support the notion of human overpopulation. It took me years of planning and months of intensive searching to find my two current Border Collies and I had to seek out of my home state before I found either of them. I have yet to see packs of wild feral dogs anywhere other than the third world countries I’ve visited, and the dog friendly places like dog parks and superstores are busy, but hardly overcrowded with too many dogs.

I’ve seen documentaries on Puppy Mills on TV, but the very existence of a low cost provider speaks to a burgeoning market, not an over population problem. Signs of overpopulation would be too many dogs over running every venue for dog activity, tons of stray an feral dogs wandering around and setting up wild colonies. News reports of farmers complaining about excessive predation on their flocks of chickens, sheep, and other small game. There would be more breeders than you could care to shake a stick at and they’d all be selling pups at dirt cheap prices. Mall pet stores wouldn’t be the low end of the market, they’d be comparatively high class compared to the masses of wild born puppies and get-rich-quick schemers, and the US would be exporting the excess puppies instead of importing them.

People wouldn’t be paying a premium for pet food, vet care, and dog toys. Nor would the standard of living of today’s pets be higher than ever before in history.

People who speak of human overpopulation are welcome to sterilize or even kill themselves to solve the problem. Few have the, erm, balls. But plenty of zealots have latched on to the eco-terrorist/green/vegan/environmental band wagon that says humans are a plague and pets are too, but since we can’t kill humans, killing pets will have to do.

That’s my greatest hope for this book, that Winograd uses facts and logic and data instead of zealotry and dogma, that he makes me want to support his movement instead of shun it, and that he acknowledges the facts as they are and gives credit where it’s due instead of the slactivist tactic of blaming someone else and then bitching for them to fix it.

Here at the beginning of the twenty-first century, over fifty million household dogs live in the United States. Europe houses an estimated thirty-five million. … If I add Canadian dogs to these populations, I get one hundred million household dogs in the industrial West.

In the United States each year, households produce 3,700,000 puppies. Hobby breeders produce another two million, and half a million are produced by commercial breeders for department store and other retail sales. That is a turnover of 6,200,000 dogs a year. If the population is not going up or down, then 6,200,000 dogs die every year. That is a 12 percent annual mortality rate, which for a species with a life span of a little over ten years is a low mortality rate in the wild.

In the United states, four million of these dogs spend part of a year in animal shelters. For 2,400,000 of them it is the last stop. Almost 5 percent of our companion animals are dogs nobody wants, and they get “put to sleep.” Culled. Again, disaster for the individual dog. Some of this culling may be related to competition between people and dogs for food resources. People soon decide they can’t afford the dog, and turn them over to humane societies

- Dogs, Lorna Coppinger

Is a five percent disposal rate really that much of a concern? The bleeding heart loud mouths would have us believe that there is an “overpopulation” problem and that it is an epidemic. So much so that they demand for (near)universal sterilization laws, moral outrage at hobby breeders, misplaced hatred of purebreds and the people who buy them.

Nathan Winograd has shown again and again that many dogs that are killed don’t need to be, but the onus is on shitty shelters that don’t get the job done, mostly because they are defeatist from the outset. Huge strides have already been made in sterilizing pets and in lowering the percent of pets that are abandoned. But this number will never be zero.

Will the bleeding heart loud mouths not be satisfied until it is, as in never? Will they be like the Christians and the Jews waiting for the next coming of their prophet/savior? And will they, in their growing frustration as their dogma fails to deliver success year after year, become even more preachy and unreasonable?

Evidence suggests that they will. Here’s a comment posted recently that is filled with references to PeTA’s veritable Book of Revelations (which documents the Pet Overpopulation Armageddon we are now living in according to their dogma):

Of course Joe Biden killed a dog [by buying a puppy instead of rescuing from a shelter]. Are you all delusional? Can you not count? Joe could have adopted a dog at a shelter or from a rescuer and opened up another spot for one of the millions of dogs dumped at shelters by people, and saved a dog from being euthanized due to over crowding. There is NO justification for breeding a dog when millions of adoptable dogs are put to death. All 3 of my rescue dogs were well behaved and lived to 15 + years old, so don’t tell me about damaged, sick dogs. Most of the people I know with “pure breeds” encounter health problems at age 7 or 8 and behavioral problems earlier due to inbreeding. The whole notion of breeding a specific type of dog is archaic.

- Comment by Janice — December 12, 2008 @ 6:41 pm

Janice is a perfect example of a bleeding heart loud mouth with a savior complex. Since feeding her ego with 3 rescue dogs wasn’t sufficient (and how could it be, rescuing a dog does nothing except save that dog) to even influence the dog abandonment issue, she’s now grasping at totalitarian measures to bring about her “my bleeding heart is more important than your freedom, so I’m going to force my uniformed blather down your throat even though what I demand you do has never been effective at accomplishing the goals I want” religion.

I’ve already debunked the “buy a dog, kill a dog” fallacy. (Myth of Christmas Puppies, Parroting PeTA, Buy From a Breeder, and Adopt a PeTA pet and kill 248 more). This is a displacement tactic used by PeTA to blame someone else because they don’t want to take responsibility for killing 97% of the animals they take in. Have no doubt, it’s the shelters who kill the dogs, and in almost all cases, it’s not because they have to. It’s because they want to. Thinking you’re opening up a spot by capitulating to the kill shelters is like appeasing a terrorist. You think you’re saving lives but you’re really just making a deal with evil. You are allowing them to operate and continue their extortion.

Would you buy drugs from your neighborhood street dealer simply to take that small amount of product off the market?

As I’ve shown (Garbage In, Garbage Out), the major causes of abandoned dogs are HUMAN problems, not problems with the dogs themselves and not problems with purchased dogs or purebred dogs or even pet store dogs, or dogs given as pets.

So given that humans are imperfect and will always be such, what do we expect the natural rate of culling should be?

In economics, there is a concept called the “natural rate of unemployment.”

The natural rate of unemployment is the healthy unemployment rate that will always occur in an economy, unless it is severely overheated. Some level of unemployment results from:

1. Frictional unemployment that comes from job turnover,
2. Structural unemployment that is caused by a mis-match between job skills and job availability,
3. Unemployment caused by minimum wages laws and unions.

In short, it’s economist speak for “the unemployed will always be with us” and observationally, economists place the rate at between 4% and 6%.

Given that, do you really think that the bleeding heart loud mouths are justified in breathing their fire and spitting their venom on the rest of us? I think their outrage is entirely disproportionate to the size of the problem. I think the targets of their rage are also inappropriate and thus their rage is ineffectual. They aren’t going to change the kill rate by even one dog by putting breeders out of business, ending the concept of purebred dogs or even reaching saturation levels of desexing dogs.

The first way to cut the rate is to tackle the issues that actually cause people to relinquish dogs: Moving, landlord issues, cost of pet maintenance, no time for pets, inadequate facilities, too many pets at home, pet illness, personal problems, biting, no homes for litter mates.

The second way to cut the rate is to improve the ef
ficiency of shelter placement programs: adopt the entire no-kill paradigm.

The CHS is a family affair run by executive director Mary Warren, her husband and development director Robert Warren, and their daughter Stephenie Gardner who is the director of operations. The CHS website fails to list any other personnel and there are no apparent directors or operators outside the Warren family. The filed complaint lists Madeline Duncan, Nancy Miller, and Stephen Hallber as possible present or past members of the board.

The allegations against the Colorado Humane Society & SPCA:

• Euthanized nearly 30% of animals at their Englewood facility despite advertising themselves as a “No-Kill” shelter with a 92% adoption rate.
• Falsified reports to the Secretary of State and the Department of Agriculture, distorting the number of animals adopted, returned, transferred, and euthanized to artificially maintain the organization’s claimed euthanasia rate.
• Regularly killed dogs that were not “gravely ill or injured, of advanced age and inform or aggressive to make room at the shelter for more ‘adoptable’ animals.”
• Falsely claimed that animals killed at the shelter’s discretion were killed at owner request, exploiting PACFA regulations allowing PTS animals to not be counted toward euthanization rates.
• Made room for small breeds and puppies by selectively killing larger dogs.
• Initiated in-transfers of hand picked smaller dogs and puppies from out of state shelters despite having no room for them, necessitating the needless euthanasia of larger dogs who were taking up more space.
• Improperly disposed of euthanized animals in dumpsters.
• Ongoing use of expired medications and vaccines.

• Diverted thousands of donated dollars for personal use and commingled CHS finances with the personal finances of the directors.
• Gross mismanagement of CHS finances.
• Failed to register the CHS under the Charitable Solicitations Act, collecting nearly $3 million in donations illegally.
• Spent $32,000 of the $66,154 collected to aid Katrina rescues on payroll while spending less than $16,000 on Katrina expenses.
• Spent at least $1,000 of the Katrina money to reimburse travel to Mississippi prior to the hurricane.
• Used a donated Mercedes Benz as a personal vehicle instead of selling it to raise money for the shelter as intended by the donor and the requirements of the car donation program.
• Failed to make payroll and bounced salary checks multiple times despite the intake of sufficient donations, incurring over $14,000 in overdraft fees on the payroll account.
• Failed to fill the Board of Directors to the required seven members, failed to follow the bylaws requiring term limits and failed to have a Chairman for at least the last four years, invalidating the legality of all contracts and agreements of the CHS.

This story makes me sick and hopeful at the same time. Sick, because there is mounting evidence that the Colorado Humane Society is a broken institution corrupt with fraud and deceit. Hopeful because the reason for the deceit suggests that traditional shelters are feeling the pressure to improve their methods and adopt the No Kill philosophy.

While it’s frustrating that many shelters are choosing to lie and cover up their failures instead of adopting the No Kill methods that work, their abandonment of the “we kill because we have to, there is simply no other way” mentality shows that the greater public no longer finds ‘kill to be kind’ strategy an effective or moral means to deal with abandoned pets.

Just compare what the CHS is advertising to the public versus what we now know about their real habits. Even worse, their internal employee manual makes it clear that not only were they never a no-kill shelter, they never intended to be:

Our Englewood Shelter serves the colorado community by housing and helping with one of the largest animal adoption facilities in Colorado. As an open-door shelter, no animal is turned away. With no clock ticking, CHS does not euthanize for money or space considerations.

- CHS Website

In most shelters, time is the enemy. Each year in the United States, after a pre-determined time, hundreds of thousands of animals are euthanized for overstaying their welcome. At Colorado Humane, time is the animal’s greatest asset. We provide shelter, food and medical treatment as long as an animal’s health and heart are willing! This can be a day, a week or even months, if necessary. In only the most extreme situations is an animal put to sleep. Grave illness or injury, advanced age with infirmity or aggression are the only criteria considered for euthanasia. Walk through the shelter and look into the eyes of a dog that has been here for months. The eyes twinkle and the tail wags. If he has not given up, how can we?

- CHS Website

The longer the animal stays in the shelter suffering the lack of security, purpose and attachment enjoyed by owned companion animals, the less adaptable and adoptable it becomes.

When we have an animal in this condition, or receive an animal whose adoption is so unlikely that its only future is in our shelter, we can only prevent suffering by humane euthanasia.

- CHS Employee Handbook

Now, see if you find the CHS’s response to the initial news story credible in any way.

I personally find it amazing that when people are caught red handed in a disgusting crime they will not only deny reality, evidence, and common sense, but vehemently continue to operate in the same manner for as long as possible. If anyone needs to be put out of their misery, it is the idiots who are running the CHS. They need to be shut down and thrown in jail.

12/17/2008 – UPDATE – The Warrens and their daughter are out and the shelter is under new management. Too bad they can’t just throw the thieves in the dumpster behind the shelter like they did dogs that could have been given homes. I imagine 10 minutes in there with a dead dog would give them a little sense of reality.

Stella on Snow

There’s plenty of elitism in the dog world and where you get your dog is as much of a potential status symbol as the breed you’ve chosen or any titles that might appear on a pedigree.

Much of the cachet built in to where you get your pets has to do with the implications the source has about the quality of the pet and/or the quality of you the owner. One of element of that cachet is what your pet source says about the likelihood your pet will end up in a shelter, and for people who pride themselves on shelter adoptions, what wrongs you are righting by adopting.

This is one one of the most surprising pieces of information I’ve found concerning petdom in America. For one, it 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.

But in the world of breeding dogs, whoever, there’s an image problem. To call one’s self a “professional breeder” risks negative associations with puppy mills. After all, puppy milling is a profession which turns dog breeding profitable by treating dogs like livestock. Making the leap from “professional” to “commercial” isn’t hard, nor is the leap from “commercial” to puppy mill.

So yes, puppy millers and their slightly less problematic brethren commercial breeders would have to be called Breeders, they breed a lot and they make money at it. But they don’t deal with the public, so their image isn’t as big of a factor. That’s what pet stores are for, putting a friendly face on assembly line produced dogs.

“Professional” is out. So we try “Hobby” breeders. That keeps some semblance of being serious, but does away with the negative associations with commercialism. Many hobby breeders spend a lot of their time talking about how much it costs to raise good dogs, how much they don’t breed, and how very distinct they are from a commercial breeder or puppy mill.

But sadly, “Hobby” doesn’t embody enough seriousness. Some people are good at their hobby, but many are piss poor. How many “hobby” photographers do you know (there’s at least one in every family) that haven’t produced one picture that could be sold for more than the frame it would end up in? Since photography is an expensive hobby, many of these hobbyists become quasi-professionals, trying to recoup a little of the cost and maybe save up enough for that new lens. Results vary.

You hear a lot about dog breeders who are supposedly like said photographers. They’re really into the “art” or perhaps the science, and results vary. Just like there are emotionally and ethically charged border wars in the photography world (digital versus film, 35mm versus medium format, Canon vs. Nikon) there are also border wars in the hobby breeder world.

A lot of hot air and verbal bullets are shot back and forth between the different camps of hobby breeders and even within the same camp. Much of that content deals with who is a good breeder and who is a poor breeder and who breeds too much and who breeds for the wrong reasons or breeds the wrong dogs.

What you don’t hear enough of is breeders defending themselves against the erroneous claims that the pet overpopulation problem falls square in their laps, nor do you hear a lot of talk about how good breeders can play a role in limiting the number of pets that end up in shelters.

Looking at the above chart, the answer seems pretty clear to me. Good breeders are ones who find good homes for their dogs. New owners that are not at risk of being evicted or moving; who have interior and exterior space appropriate for the breed; owners who have the time and money to do right by the puppy, even in an unforeseen emergency.

Although most people don’t get their dogs from a breeder, and although dogs that are bought for a fair price from a breeder are much less likely to end up in a shelter in the first place, good breeders can learn from the list of reasons that pets are relinquished and see that the clear means to solve many of those issues is to not sell pets to homes that are inappropriate and under prepared for a pet.

If we bring garbage owners into the fold, we should not be surprised when they return garbage by poorly socializing their animals and ditching them in shelters at the first instance of inconvenience. Garbage In, Garbage Out.

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

The sad thing about Parrots is that they sound like they are rational and intelligent, but they have no idea what they’re really saying since they don’t have to think about it. They just mimic. That’s the beauty of mantras and why they are so popular by groups that control and influence the masses (religions, political parties, governments, advertisers, schools, social clubs, militias, guilds, unions, etc.): they are easy to repeat and require little or no thought.

I haven’t been to a church service in years, but I can still recite almost the entire mass. And really, when you’re saying the Pledge of Allegiance, singing the National Anthem, or saying a prayer, are you really thinking about the words? When was the last time you analyzed the words of your favorite song on the radio, if ever?

Since this affords me a golden opportunity to rebut an actual argument instead of summarizing my perception of an opponent’s argument, my responses are interspersed with the Rescuer’s letter:

Hello. I have a few comments about your post: Buy From a Breeder, Never Adopt

That was sick and horrible and disgusting! You can’t just put all shelters and rescues in one category and label it “DISGRACEFUL”. Do you know how many dogs and cats are rescued?

I am not a victim of employing the some-all fallacy where the qualities of a subset of a group are applied to every member of that group. I don’t believe that ALL rescues are poorly run by incompetent boobs, nor do I believe that ALL shelters are disgraceful. If a shelter does the stupid and irresponsible things that I am criticizing, then my venom applies to them. If they do not, then it does not. It’s rather simple, really.

I think you are failing to realize that my post is mocking the tone and rhetoric of PeTA’s advertisement. I believe everything I say in my post, but it’s not the “whole truth” it is simply my observations that tip PeTA’s absolutist message on its head. I answered absolutism with absolutism. Between the two, my absolutism is better.

And yes, every time you buy from a breeder a shelter dog/cat DOES die. YOU could’ve saved that dog/cat from being euthanized, but you DIDN’T, so now that dog/cat must suffer.

This is an example of the zero-sum fallacy and the fallacy of a false dilemma. You are mistaken if you think that the market for animals is so fixed that to buy an animal leads to another one’s death. It is not a zero-sum game and to suggest such is banal, asinine, and jejune.

Since you live in a zero-sum world, let me inform you of what an evil and vile person you are in hopes that you will kill yourself so that someone better can be born.

The clothes you are hoarding now in your closets and chest-of-drawers could be used to clothe the needy. Your vanity and greed is keeping hundreds of people cold and naked. Every shoe you wear means someone is without protection for their feet. You torture people with your greed.

Every breath you take is a breath that is stolen from someone else who deserves it more, especially new born babies struggling for their first bit of air. Every breath you take kills a newborn baby who is denied that oxygen. That makes you a baby killer.

There are starving children in Africa. Every mouthful of food you eat is nutrition that you are denying them. Every time you swallow, you kill a child in Africa. You sicko.

Drought and famine killed thousands of people today due to lack of drinkable water for people, livestock, and crops. When you brushed your teeth, you wasted water that could have saved a cow. That cow is now dead because you wasted its water. When you flushed the toilet, you polluted enough water to meet the needs of an adult man. He’s dead now and his wife and children will soon follow. You killed him. The shower you took sealed the rest of the family’s fate. The water you wasted could have given them sustenance, but they won’t survive the night for lack of that water. You are a serial killer now.

The reality of your zero-sum world really sucks for you, doesn’t it. Do the right thing, die so that others more deserving may live. Your wardrobe could clothe hundreds, your wasted breath could allow thousands to live, the food and water you consume is directly leading to a genocide of starving and parched people the world over. The scales of justice has you one one side and hundreds of thousands of people on the other. How do you sleep at night knowing that your very existence is a modern holocaust?

If you are so concerned about the shelter conditions, maybe YOU should rescue. Obviously you know nothing about animals and you want the animals to die. They only kill the animals because THERE ARE TOO MANY! Hello? Have you heard of the overpopulation problem?

You are now applying an ad hominem tu quoque fallacy. The pitiful situation kill shelters find themselves in now has no bearing on my participation or lack thereof. Just like you shift the blame for killing from the shelters who do it (they are not forced!) to nameless “bad owners, breeders, and pet stores” you are now trying to shift the burden of your failures on to me.

My primary concern does not lie in shelter conditions but in the condition of the dogs themselves. The failure of the shelter system is not my concern, not supporting the further failures is. Trying to shift the burden of proof on to me is ridiculous. So is your thought that if I went and saved an animal right now that it would make the shelter system any better. It would not.

I don’t want animals to die. Rather the opposite, I just bred my dogs. This strongly suggests that I want animals to live. I also found all the puppies I didn’t keep excellent homes and I have a contract that demands that I will take back the animals at any time for any reason if the new owners’ situations change. My dogs will never end up in a shelter for any lack of effort on my part.

There are not too many animals. There is no overpopulation problem. Every single animal in a shelter could be adopted tomorrow and they wouldn’t even fill HALF of the demand for pets. Haven’t you heard of the MYTH of the overpopulation problem?

The only people who want animals to die are shelter workers. They are the only ones killing the animals, they are the only ones demanding their deaths. Who else is demanding and rationalizing killing those animals? NO ONE.

If you don’t want them dead, just stop killing them. No one has to kill them. If you don’t kill them, no one else has to. If your cages in your shelter are full, do a better job at finding homes. If more pets come in than you’re capable of finding homes for, turn those people away, it’s better than killing animals to make room.

Why don’t you tell everyone dropping an animal off that you only have a 40% chance of finding a home, so 3 out of 5 times their pet is just going to be killed. Maybe that will get them to be better owners and keep their pet instead of leaving it in your killing hands.

And you are supporting the people who are making the shelters kill their animals.

No one is “making” shelters kill their animals. No one. There’s no law that says that shelters have to kill their animals to make room for new ones, and hardly any shelters are full anyway. If shelters are full despite really effective efforts to find homes, then there need to be more shelters built, not more animals killed. I doubt, though, that if there are full shelters, that it’s because of too many animals coming in, it’s most likely too few going out.

If breeders didn’t exist, then there would be a good amount of domesticated animals in this world, then MAYBE we wouldn’t have to kill them all.

Your hypothetical is really stupid. Shelters don’t create dogs, they recycle them. If there are no dogs made in the first place, there would be none to recycle.

If breeders didn’t exist there would be no domesticated animals in this world at all. Dogs as we know them would last one more doggy generation (10-15 years) and then all of the current breeding stock would be dead and all the animals from shelters would be incapable of breeding (as they are spayed and neutered). Then what?

Sure, in the very short term all the shelters would be empty, but so would most of the homes who want a pet. No more dogs, no more cats, no more horses.

Shelters and rescue play NO PART at all in the preservation of breeds. They play NO PART at all in creating healthy, well adjusted pets. Shelters and rescues don’t create, they just recycle. You are the used car salesmen of the dog world. You don’t appreciate the engineering or the art that goes into making the car, you don’t innovate, you don’t perfect, you don’t preserve, you simply want to get as many of them off your lot as possible.

Used cars are great, but buying used doesn’t reward the car maker for building a better, safer, cleaner, faster, quieter, more stylish, harder working machine. Buying new does. Buying used saves that great machine from going to waste, so it is virtue to buy used, but it’s also a virtue to buy new.

Breeders, and only breeders, are the caring people who work to create better, safer, cleaner, faster, quieter, more stylish, and harder working dogs. That is a virtue.

How dare you say that shelters and rescues have poor animals. You don’t know anything about shelters or rescues. The animals there aren’t disgusting and they aren’t unwanted, simply unlucky and dumped at shelters by uneducated or desperate people that have no other place to put their animals.

You should not confuse my words with the words of Nathan Winograd. He is an expert on shelters and rescue. Neither he nor I said anything about the shelters and rescues having “poor (quality)” or “disgusting” animals. If the animals are poor, it’s because they’ve ended up in the hands of incompetent killers. And the animals aren’t disgusting (although I’ve read enough about dirty shelters to argue otherwise) the PEOPLE who run kill shelters are disgusting. Their defeatism is disgusting. Their ineptitude is disgusting. Their philosophy is disgusting. Their mass slaughter of animals is disgusting.

But let me make some new statements that are sure to piss you off.

Shelters and rescues do have poor animals. Many are damaged goods, ruined by poor breeding and poor training by inconsiderate people. Shelters claim that such animals were “abused” but mostly it’s just poor training and lack of socialization. Those kinds of animals are not appropriate for all owners, and some people don’t care to make the additional investment in fixing those problems. Bless the people who do, but being dishonest about the POTENTIAL problems associated with used animals is dangerous.

Shelters will claim that their animals are just as good as animals you can buy from a breeder. Perhaps some are. There are perfectly good animals in shelters and there are horrible animals from breeders, the quality offered by all shelters and all breeders certainly overlaps. But you are a fool if you think that the new market and the used market are exactly or substantially the same. There ARE trade offs and there ARE concerns for buying new and buying used.

Denying so is irresponsible.

Go volunteer at a shelter, go see those wonderful faces that must perish due to the irresponsible and responsible breeders in this world. Go volunteer at a rescue, go see the amazing animals that were actually given a second chance. Breeders don’t care about the overpopulation problem- if they did they wouldn’t be breeding more.

Your first bit is an appeal to emotion fallacy. It makes no difference how wonderful or cute or lovey the animals in a shelter are. That in no way justifies or excuses the killing that inept shelters carry out.

Shelters and Rescues give animals a second change. Great. Breeders give them their FIRST chance. Great. I appreciate the good work of No Kill shelters and Breed Rescues. Your inability to appreciate the good work of breeders makes you petty and unreasonable.

You don’t know anything about shelter or rescue animals. Honestly, your post was just as bad as saying “Don’t rescue a horse from an auction, because then you are supporting slaughterhouses.” Are you even aware of how they kill animals in slaughterhouses? If not, watch this video and see.

How animals are killed has no relation to my post. Your observation about horses is a non sequitur fallacy and an appeal to pity fallacy. I have no problem with animals being killed for a good purpose. A nice cut of prime rib, a leather sofa, Elmer’s glue, medical research, scrambled eggs, McNuggets, safer shampoo, a nice pair of shoes, a warm coat are all good purposes, in my opinion. Inept shelter management is not a good purpose.

If you are at a shelter awaiting death, wouldn’t YOU want someone to come and rescue you? Or would you rather die for no good reason? GOOD people save animals from these situations. And by supporting your rescue, or shelter you are giving them donations so that they can HELP more animals.

This is again an appeal to emotion, pity, ad hominem tu quoque and a hand full of other fallacies. You’re displacing the needs and innocence of the animals in shelters with the ethics of the shelter itself. If I were a dog in a shelter I wouldn’t want the stupid shelter people to kill me just to “make room” even though there were plenty of empty cages. I wouldn’t want them to kill me because they failed to do enough to get me adopted. I wouldn’t want them to kill me because they have the misguided notion that dogs of a certain color don’t get adopted fast enough to justify keeping them alive for a little bit longer.

GOOD people run No-Kill shelters. I support No Kill shelters. I made a donation to my local No-Kill shelter for each of the dogs I sold in the name of their new owners and I donated a brand new printer to a local breed rescue to assist in their self promotion efforts (they do a photos with Santa fund raiser–brilliant idea–so I gave them a brand new color photo printer because they needed one) on behalf of the two puppies I kept.

Don’t blame the shelters, they have too many animals because of your breeders. They don’t have room in lots of shelters. They are overcrowded.

If shelters have too many animals they should build more shelters (god knows HSUS, PeTA, and the ASPCA have plenty of money to do so!) or turn animals away. If they don’t turn animals away they are not allowing for the demand for new shelters to be met.

Breeders are not the reason for too many animals. The vast majority of animals are turned in because their owners are stupid and have human problems like moving, landlord issues, and lack of funds. Breeders aren’t filling shelters. If that were the case, the majority of shelter dogs would be purebred, puppies, and all those “breeders” would quickly go out of business because it’s very expensive to breed dogs the right way and you don’t make any money if you simply abandon your puppies in a shelter.

If you’re a good Breeder people are willing to pay you good money for your good puppies because they’re worth it. Good Breeders also find good homes for their dogs, and avoid selling to people who are likely to fall into the human failings that lead to the vast majority of dogs in shelters. And the best Breeders will take their dogs back. I screened all my buyers heavily, turned away four and five buyers per puppy that didn’t fit my ideal home, and I will always take my dogs back for any reason at any time and guarantee and demand such in my contract.

The puppies that do end up in shelter are not the product of breeders, they are the product of stupid people who have OOOPS! litters between dogs that should not have ever been bred and who are likely not the same breed, with no health testing, no training, and no demonstrated merit, born to owners who are so inept that they can’t cull the unwanted puppies or find homes for them themselves.

Your post was really unreasonable and it shows me that you are uneducated about the whole breeding topic. You don’t know anything about animals, and your post surely shows it.

Next time, try to stay away from breeding posts, because you don’t know enough about it to have an opinion on the subject. I hope you do your research next time.

Julie
Help A Horse
Love an Animal. Make a Friend.

http://www.helpahorsenow.org

Between the two of us, it is you who are clearly uninformed. You obviously haven’t read Nathan Winograd’s book, Redemption, and since it’s all about your supposed area of expertise, I’d say that makes you look rather foolish and poorly read.

You clearly don’t know that shelters don’t have to kill. For any reason. Yet they do.

You clearly haven’t heard about the No-Kill movement that is revolutionizing the way people treat animals.

You clearly haven’t taken any time to appreciate where all those wonderful dogs and cats and horses came from and continue to come from. Kill shelters did not create the Arabian or the Paint Horse, kill shelters did not make the Labrador Retriever or the Siamese. Breeders did.

You are like the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz, all heart and no brain. At least that character strived to find a brain… but you, well, you’re just a straw man, much like your arguments for why you find the need to kill animals and lash out against those who say you should stop.