i try not to get angry but some days i do.
minnie pearl died homeless in a shelter because her family got pissed off at each other, went thru an ugly divorce and tossed minnie pearl back and forth like a freaking basketball..."i want her, fine you take her, no i changed my mind, i don't want her so now you take her..well i don't want her either..ok fine whatever, i don't care what you do.. just dump her at the SPCA."
for fourteen years that dog loves them and that's what she gets???
and then there is monty..i bet whoever took that tiny kitten home, told him they would love him forever. but 8 months later he was unneutered and living out on the street just trying to stay alive. who lost him or left him and didn't go looking or even care that he was out there alone? who was too freaking cheap or lazy or incompetent to even get him neutered at six months old? do you actually think they even think about him...how he scratched to survive for a couple of years, became infected with FIV and spent the rest of his life with intermittent mouth agony...and finally died before he was barely 5 years old????
we just have to get our heads out of our asses. these animals are not peices of wood to take in and toss out when we de-junk our lives. i understand that sometimes life throws some pretty hard hitting curve balls but for goodness sakes there is absolutely no excuse to not know yourself well enough to know if you can cope with the responsibility of another beings life.
i am sick to death of the fantasy seekers, the transient lovers, the give-me takers who will not shed one or two drops of real sweat to responsibly care for a life.
if you absolutely cannot step up to the plate..if you just don't have the strength of will to figure things out and make them work..then don't go out and get an animal that you are going to betray as soon as the going gets tough or the animal becomes inconvenient.
one of my coworkers told me last week that her room mate tossed her cat across the room after the cat had pissed in his shoes. i said a couple of things..the first being this...you absolutely NEVER treat an animal in any way that you would never treat a child. so if it is not ok to throw kids across the room for any reason even if they too piss in a shoe..then it is not ok to toss the cat either. and secondly..i can tell you right now why that cat pissed in those shoes..either he is sick or he is stressed and for both of those things he needs a bit of compassion and care to get thru it.
so guess what? if a child can't live on a chain in the back yard...neither can the family dog. if the child cannot be dumped into a shelter when the family moves to another province..then the cat should be safe. if you would not let your teenager indiscriminately breed all over the place..then the cat and dog shouldn't either..if the child needs and gets dental work or medical care..then so should the family pet. if you wouldn't let your kid suffer with lice, then don't make the cat or the dog suffer with fleas. and if you wouldn't let your unsocialized kid run loose and bite other kids in the sandbox, then please do not take your unsocialized dog to an off leash dog park.
having pets is not rocket science..it is pure and simple common sense. so why the heck are the shelters so full?
one reason only...if the numbers of homeless, unaltered, abandoned, neglected, abused animals are any indication..the vast majority of the human race are selfish, thoughtless, careless, stupid and cruel.
There are always going to be uncaring and irresponsible people in the world. The key is to create a society where they are not allowed to own animals. The rest of us have the duty to protect those that cannot protect themselves, so hopefully we will move forward to a time when it is unthinkable for an animal to be abused or abandoned. Unthinkable. It won't be in my lifetime, but I believe it will happen one day.