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Originally Posted by Wylie's Mom  I totally agree with this, as it pertains to ALL discussions here. We should be able to have 2-sided+ discussions without the need to weaponize our words, in my humble opinion. It's SO EASY to get your point across *without* hurting anyone...I don't know why that proves so difficult here at YT, at times.
As far as s/n - I'm thrilled that Gemy started this thread and I always think it's an important conversation. Heck, to be a huge devils advocate -- there are some that say that s/n very clearly does NOT work -- bc if it actually DID work, we would not be killing 4-6 million animals EVERY SINGLE YEAR without apparent end. There are countries all over the world who do not advocate for spay/neutering -- rather, they have the kind of respect for other living creatures that should put Americans to shame, in my opinion. The end to overpopulation is WAY more complicated than s/n our pets. Should we still s/n? Yes, we should in many cases bc s/n is an arm of the solution toward ending overpopulation...but it will never, ever be an end-all be-all solution to this problem. Not even close.
So, while I believe in s/n in most cases - I also fully support responsible ownership of intact pets whose owners prefer they maintain their natural and very important hormones. The choice to s/n or not and why/why not is a great discussion - so thanks to all in this thread  ! |
I did read a report a while back (I think issued by the SPCA) that had some stats that seemed to show that the s/n here has had a positive impact on the number of euthanizations. I shall see if I can find it again.
How-ever it does boggle my mind the number of surrendered dogs in the USA. More understanding of why this is happening is so needed. Timely S/N might as Ann says may be a part of the solution, but 30 years of activism in this regard says we are only somewhat successful in reducing the number of dogs euthanized.
You have a population roughly 300Million with 10% dog ownership in households. That is 30Million dogs in homes in the USA. As I don't have stats on the age of the dog population and true annual demand for dogs, if it is roughly at 1% that is 300,000 dogs annually going into homes. It also says if roughly 3Million dogs are euthanized annually that is 10% of the dog population living in homes. A rather high number. And yet we have many commercial breeders, pet shops that sell dogs, bybers of all stripes. They don't do so out of the goodness of their hearts. They do it to make money, and so they must if they want to stay in business.
And in this day and age of computerization surely we can computerize all shelter organizations and get some numbers based on good information and not estimates. With that information on line, on a computer, accessible to all shelter placement personnel, and to the public, we can move to place dogs all over the country.