New El Paso Ordinance of puppy & kitten sales

[redhen]

Quote:
Ooh Nevermind..

Okay.. lets get back on topic..

 

[SilverPhoenix]

To be honest, I have almost no issue with people who are serious about breeding and do it to improve the breed. People where a ton of research, thought, care, and work goes into it, not just breeding to make money, for fun, to show the kids "the miracle of birth" or whatever else. I think only a small percentage of people who breed their dogs would fall into this responsible breeder category.

I guess the thing I take issue with is... If cracking down on spaying and neutering dogs is not the solution to the crazy amounts of killing going on in shelters, then what IS the solution to changing this problem? Because as it is millions of animals, many of them perfectly wonderful animals, are being killed every year and to me that is just unjustifiable. I would rather see responsible breeders have to apply and pay for a license to breed their dogs and cut down on the death rates, than continue to know that thousands of animals are being put down every single day while people are allowed to just freely breed their dogs or run puppy mills however they like.

It just makes me so frustrated and sad that people are so irresponsible about animals. I want there to be a solution, a REAL solution, that makes it so homeless animals don't have to die unless they are already beyond saving health-wise (euthanasia to relieve suffering) or dangerously aggressive.

 

[Bear Foot Farm]

I would rather see responsible breeders have to apply and pay for a license to breed their dogs and cut down on the death rates

Responsible breeders aren't the problem.
Why should they have to ask permission to raise their animals?

Should we do the same with chickens?

They are trying to do it with Muscovy ducks now

It's mainly mutts in the shelters because folks don't get their pets neutered

(And those high priced "designer dogs" are included in the MUTT category)​

 

[BlacksheepCardigans]

"I'd rather see x than y" arguments are one of the main ways stupid decisions are made. If you can create an Emergency, then anything you do to stop that Emergency is right, isn't it? Except that it's not. Right is right, wrong is wrong; ends no matter how desirable do not justify bad actions.

You need to solve the problem using RIGHT actions, not wrong ones. For example, why not put your quarter of a million dollars a year into setting up and funding a universal free spay/neuter clinic? No income expectations, no registration, no police involvement (undocumented residents, or even documented residents who live in that community, will often avoid programs that they fear will bring attention - one of the reasons that "strays" are a bigger problem in urban areas is that undocumented residents don't dare to go to shelters to retrieve lost dogs, no matter how much they loved or wanted the dog). That's the kind of thing that DOES work. In areas where the spay/neuter rate goes up on its own, as the result of owner decisions, euthanasia rates plummet.

I live in an area where we truck in thousands of strays from every other area of the country to fill the shelters because we literally don't have enough abandoned dogs. I haven't seen a local puppy in any shelter in YEARS. I pull dogs from the low-income areas of Hartford, CT, driving four hours each way to do it, because that's literally the only shelter with genuinely at-risk dogs I can get to. My local shelter, ten miles away, has a five-million-dollar education center and the adoption counselors look like waitstaff from a Friday's. New England, even in urban areas, has an almost 100% spay/neuter rate and the only local dogs in the shelters are adult pit bulls and pit mixes (which, aside from Hartford, will often be held for months until adopted). That's not the result of laws or licensing; that's the result of good low-cost programs and a cultural expectation. El Paso could do the same thing.

Or how about funding "education programs" by paying good breeders to educate the community about what to look for when buying a puppy, or educate prospective new breeders about how to do it right (which will naturally lead those new breeders to conclude that they don't in fact want to do it, unless they like throwing money down the toilet)? Why is "education" translated to "you stupid breeders better pay up and get a permit!" If breeding is a GOOD thing, a challenging activity that depends on education and skill, one that can be done well or can be done badly, the public becomes a consumer. They start refusing to buy poorly bred puppies. One generation - the refused generation - would show a spike in euthanasia, which is horrible and I have no love for, but after that the euthanasia rate would nosedive. If the situation stays as it is, where puppies are children and there's no better or worse because each puppy is a magic creation of love and every puppy should be bought because every puppy needs a family (which is where you get the awful "I consider him a rescue" chirping from someone who bought a puppy from a pet store or a breeder they KNEW was terrible), nothing is ever going to change and the abandonment rate is going to stay high. No permitting or laws are ever going to change that, because no permitting or laws can stand in the way of the MASSIVE demand for puppies by people who only see the fwuffy wooble squidgems.

 

[SilverPhoenix]

Quote:
I'm going to agree with you on this post.

I did some reading, and it does seem that mandatory spay/neuter laws do not do as much good as I would hope. It also seems like they would be difficult to enforce, and might scare people away from having their animals get health care in the first place for fear of being cited for having an unaltered animal. I love the idea of completely free spay/neuter clinics with no requirements (other than the dog being healthy enough to go under the knife). Let's hope free spay/neuter clinics become a reality, sooner rather than later would be the best.

I just get so frustrated sometimes, knowing all of the suffering that is going on. I really hope that we as a nation can make big steps toward reducing killing shelter animals in the future. I know I try to do what is best, but it is such an overwhelming problem that sometimes it just seems hopeless. I could never work in a shelter and make decisions of who lives and who dies. One time I went on a site that shows dogs who only have a few days or hours until they will be put down, and then it shows the dogs that are already dead. It just killed me, seeing that site, even though it's up for a good reason. When you see the faces of the dogs it's so painful. I remember I saw a border collie in the section of dogs who had already been put down, and it was a beautiful dog that I would have happily adopted.

I'm going off topic, but...basically, I guess I agree with you.