Dunno what's worse — a puppy-mill victim with a vacant stare, or a man so freaked out at the thought of handling an animal that he has to summon his girlfriend to remove her pet cat from his chest.What's worst, actually, may be the fact that the cat-averse individual in question is lobbyist-in-chief of the beleaguered Humane Society of the United States. Which shouldn't be confused with your local humane society, not that anyone ever does such a thing.
Brent over at KC Dog Blog has an excellent run-down of some of the HSUS's most flagrant abuses and current troubles. "Help us care for the Vick dogs," oy. With a friend like Wayne "I don’t want to see another dog or cat born" Pacelle, dogs and cats don't need enemies.
The most excellent Laura Sanborn rages against the machine [in a comment at Pet Connection]:
HSUS & PETA —> still raking in tens of millions of dollars a year despite the Great Recession. Again, their fund-raising models work because they effectively and misleadingly leverage our compassion for defenseless animals. I won’t use those tactics myself and don’t have an answer for how to ethically compete with it.
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Here's a HumaneWatch.org guest column on the HSUS lobbying effort. [News flash: money talks!] Yes, I know HumaneWatch is a front for CAFO-lovin', environmentalist-hatin' extremists. It's just that they seem so much more... factual about the HSUS than the HSUS seems to be about unfunded mandates and wildlife management and such. The man who said, "The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest," never met a lobbyist. [I kid. He knew a few.]
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Terrific post over at Lucy & Friends on puppy mill legislation. Did I first bookmark Lucy nearly 20 years ago? I did indeed :~)
I've said it before and I'll keep saying it: we dog lovers screwed up big time when we told the average pet owner to forget about breeding his friendly, healthy Lab to the friendly, healthy collie mix down the street. When we did our best to prevent that, with our spay/neuter campaigns and our lists explaining "how to identify a good breeder," we gave up much of our freedom to have the dogs we really want. We granted ideologues and politicians, puppy mills, rescue groups and AKC breeders of functional cripples the power to shape and choose our dogs for us. Which reminds me: where exactly am I supposed to find a nice puppy these days? Hey, let's ask Wayne Pacelle — he knows all about animals!
[Which Times gets it right...? Image: "With his cat, Libby, is Wayne Pacelle, the Humane Society president." Photo by Michael Temchine for The New York Times.]
1 comment:
There are so many grey areas in dog breeding. On the one hand, I don't want to discourage people from breeding a friendly, healthy family pet to another in the neighborhood. On the other hand, I do want to discourage that breeding if the breeder has no solid intentions for securing homes for the pups. For example, putting a FREE PUPPIES sign out on the phone pole one weekend and then taking the leftovers to the shelter is not a sound plan to my mind. Although to be fair, that would be preferable to the more common scenario I see in my area: Letting the pups grow up and roam as they please, getting hit by cars, breeding with one another and ending up dead in a ditch after a year or two.
I don't know where our sense of personal responsibility has gone. If you cheat on your wife now, it's not your fault - you are a victim of sex addiction and need treatment. I don't know if people really don't know what's "the right thing to do" anymore or they are just choosing not to do it because it's work.
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