[yorkietalkjilly]

I'll say this about people taking responsibility about dog-ownership. It's time more did it and faced life knowing ahead of time that it gets very bad and hard at times. Plan ahead. That old lady with the several dogs - she likely manages to arrange to get her social security, medication, beer, cigarettes, manages to pay for her insurance and groceries and pays her cable bill - but she couldn't run an add and carefully choose and rehome all but one of her dogs as she aged and faced her reality? She could call a vet, social services, 211 or any number of places and begin to ask questions of how she can get help placing her excess dogs now that she's old and incapable of caring for all of them. And something needs to be said for why she irresponsibly got so many dogs later in life to start with.

And many of us lose our jobs more than once in life but have planned our lives for that and other contingencies - haven't lived beyond our means for years and worked hard and saved for those rainy, rainy days and aren't totally sandbagged by the loss of our income, so we keep our dog, our home and look for another job.

Few people even adequately bother to train their dogs and most of them are surrendered due to behavioral problems as the main reason. That can be fixed immediately by a caring, responsible owner.

It's taking responsibility for one's life well ahead of the bumps and losses that keeps one from being totally devastated by at least some of the hard things that come along. And when a devastating illness, a tragedy such as a tornado or fire happens, all the planning in the world isn't that helpful but for the most part, that's not why dogs are surrendered or abandoned - it's failing to plan or take responsibility - and the dogs are often paying the price when they face death at the end of the needle in the animal shelter.