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Originally Posted by livingdustmops  I am sorry but I have to say I did not see anything in there that isn't already being used except maybe making larger shelters/nicer surroundings. I still believe we have to address the problem from the get go and that is not breeding so many dogs/cats/gerbils/rabbits etc.
It is like teen pregnancy to me, we stick our heads into the sand about sex and the morality of it but we throw fits with all the teen pregnancies. If we could solve the problem from the get go then we wouldn't have all the problems later. |
Cindy, I didn't see any earth-shattering revelations there either. What I took from it is a cost analysis for trying to attain a no-kill policy for a specific area. If you go to my local shelter's web page
Humane Society of South Mississippi - 2615 Hwy. 49, Gulfport, MS 39501 and look at the annual reports, you'll see there's a tremendous amount of money being poured into that one shelter that receives about 16,000 animals annually.
I realize that just throwing money at a problem won't fix it but shouldn't we expect more bang for the buck? As I posted before, I think the solutions are in front of our faces if we only would implement them more effectively. We have to have a goal of no-kill before we can hope to reach it. I don't think any shelter wants to go out of business and that may be a big part of why we're stuck at these high rates of euthanasia.
Irresponsible breeding is certainly a huge part of it. I don't think there's a cut and dried answer for that. It is simple to say that less breeding=less animals in shelters and it's true, but that's a huge subject in itself. Regardless of how an animal came to be, they usually end up in a shelter due to owner surrender or as a stray. An aggressive s/n campaign targeted at the pet owner is probably the most doable thing. In my area, we have local tv ads and billboards about s/n but more could be done as far as community outreach goes.
I won't go there on the teen pregnancy issue except to say that it, like being a responsible pet owner, is all about personal responsibility.