Heart Like a Dog

The Good, the Bad, and the Oh My God of living with dogs!

A Plea To Rescue Groups

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I’m not affiliated with one particular rescue organization, seriously, it doesn’t take a NASA engineer to figure out I’m partial to Labrador Retrievers, but Labs aren’t for everyone.

Instead I like to advocate for rescue.

On the rare occasion someone asks me about getting a dog, I like to educate them a bit on the joys of rescuing.   That’s not to say people shouldn’t get a dog from a responsible breeder, I just make sure they know where pet store puppies come from and how much work goes into training.

Rescues have some pretty strict guidelines when it comes to adopting a dog.  The rescues I’ve been associated with do a home visit.

Where will the dog sleep, how will the dog be exercised, where will the dog be when you are out of the house?

These are all important questions.

I get why they do this.   They are over-whelmed with dogs and understaffed with…well staff.

They see the horrors of the rescue world on a daily basis.  The dogs that have been neglected or worse yet, abused.

In many instances they have the unbelievable task of choosing which dogs will live and which ones will not.

Day in and day out they see the result of people not being responsible and spaying and neutering their dogs.

I get it.  I really do.

And yet, I wonder how many more dogs could be saved, if their guidelines were a bit less stringent.

Case(s) in point:

Stay at home dog mom.

When we made the decision to enlarge our pack I went immediately to Petfinder.  Honestly I spent hours and hours on that website searching for the right dog.

I submitted a fair amount of applications for puppies.  I was turned down on each and every one.

Why?

Because I wasn’t home during the day to let the puppy out for potty breaks.

I couldn’t understand that, we both worked full-time and had managed to successfully raise Sampson from a puppy.

Yes it was true someone wouldn’t be with the puppy 24/7, but my mom lived next door and could go over at three and four times a day to give the puppy a break.  By that time we had fenced in our yard so exercise wouldn’t have been a problem, plus there was already an older dog to provide companionship.

A Tale of Two Labs.

I mentioned in my Tick Tick Boom post there were two wildly crazy labs in the drop-in agility class.  The mom told me, they’re sisters and are inseparable.

I questioned Sara afterwards.

This well-dressed, established couple in their mid-fifties, with a beautiful home, a fenced in yard with a pool, applied to rescues and were turned down.

Why?

Their yard was too narrow.

The result was they went out and bought two dogs. The woman said, what else could I do?

Spaying and Neutering:

A young couple I know rescued a 16 week-old lab mix, the female dog was altered before being adopted.

The dog has urine leakage, which I’ve heard can happen if they are spayed too early.  A perfectly healthy dog now on medication, making an additional expense for the adopter, because the rescue spayed too young.

A friend whose rescue dog, came unaltered.  The rescue sent a van out to spay the dog, 15 minutes later the young woman gets her dog back, still groggy on anesthesia. 15 minutes!!

Newsflash, my mammogram takes longer than 15 minutes and they’re just squashing boobs!!

What’s the answer?

I’m not sure I know.

I do know having someone home 24 hours a day does not necessarily make them a great dog owner.

I do know having a narrow yard is not the end of the world and does not mean the dog won’t be exercised.

I do know the numbers of animals in shelters and rescues is astronomical, but I don’t believe creating health problems in healthy animals will resolve the issue.

The key to changing any behavior (as those of us in the dog world know) is education.

Educate yourself and educate others, it’s the only way to stop the bleeding.

Clueless

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The park at the top of the street isn’t an off-leash dog park.  Heck it isn’t even a dog park if you want to be technical.  It’s a soccer field surrounded by trails.

Most people who walk on the trails either have a dog, or have had a dog in the past.  Most of these people walk(ed) their dogs at the park off-leash.

There are a lot of people who use this park, but most of them don’t care to walk their dogs with me.  When I mentioned that in a post a couple of days ago, a few of you asked why.

This is the way I see it.

I’m a conscientious dog owner.  I want to make sure that my dogs are well-behaved and respectful.  I do not want to be the reason that animal control says you can’t walk your dogs up here anymore.

Okay, I do admit I fall into that…..what did Kristine call it?

Oh yes…..MDIF (my dog is friendly) category but for the most part I’m very consciousness when I walk my dogs.

I keep my dogs close by and do not like them to be out of my sight for a number of reasons.

Poop

I always pick up after my dogs when they poop.

Okay you got me… if Sampson goes off the trail and poops, no I do not go in after that, and yes  I might sometimes push some poop off the trail if Delilah decides to squat where she’s walking.

But I never, ever leave my dog’s poop anywhere that someone could step in it.  When they poop in the field, I pick it up.

Besides, I need to make sure their having normal poops. 🙂

People

Most of the people walk with dogs, but there are some who walk alone.

Let’s face it, not all people are dog people and those people do not want to come across an unaccompanied dog that they have no idea whether the dog is friendly or not.

This person could call animal control or worse, scare or hurt your dog.

Or your dog could hurt someone else.

“S’s” dog Brady is a jumper.  Not too long ago he jumped on a mentally disabled person causing them to lose their balance.  The person went down a number of stairs, somehow (amazingly) managing to remain on his feet.  Imagine the trouble ‘S’ and Brady would have been in if he hadn’t.

Property

Delilah loves to run off the trail and scope out other people’s property.  She will scrounge around looking for food.  Maybe this doesn’t bother some people, but what if she damaged something?  Remember the time she got caught on the air conditioning unit?  It’s a good thing (for me) that she didn’t do any damage, I would have been responsible for that.

Other dogs

The few people who do walk their dogs on leash do so for a reason.  Perhaps their dogs are fearful, maybe they are runners like Delilah.  They do not want unleashed dogs rushing up to their dog.

One would hope that no-one would let an unpredictable dog off-leash but we all know that not every dog owner is responsible.  I like to supervise any meetings my dogs have.

Injury

We are walking on hiking trails.  This means there are rocks, cliffs and fallen trees.  How can I help my dog if (s)he becomes injured if I do not know where they are?

Not to mention animals.  There are wild animals that could really hurt my dogs up there.  Granted they should not be out during the day, but I’m pretty sure if they’re rabid they don’t worry about what time of day it is.

Illness

I have big dogs, I worry about bloat.  I’m very cautious about making sure we wait two hours after eating.

Sometimes I walk before breakfast, but I still make sure to wait an hour before I feed them their meal.

But there are kids who like to go into the park at night and have bonfires.  They sit around the fire drinking alcohol and baking potatoes.  Not that a potato should hurt my dogs, but you never know what else those kids are doing.

And it’s not just food items that can be dangerous, there are bugs, small animals and plants that can be dangerous to your dogs.  If you don’t know where your dog is you cannot monitor what your dog is eating.  And if you don’t know what your dog ate, you can’t tell the vet and get the proper treatment.

You get the point, right?

Most people who walk their dogs where I walk don’t think like this.  Walking with me doesn’t jive with their way of thinking.

I sometimes feel like I’m the only one who walks up there that even has a clue about what could happen with/to their dog.

Are you like me, surrounded by people who don’t train the same way you do?

WTF Wednesday

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Please note this post is not meant to make light of the deeds described here, only to make fun of, ridicule, bully and just plain beat the shit out of the idiots who commit these stupid acts.

The entire post was going to be devoted to my Canadian friends.   Montreal to be exact.

Wicca the Pit Bull

If you’re on facebook you probably heard about Wicca, another Pit Bull euthanized for a incident where the owner states the dog did not bite, only grazed.  It is a similar case to Lennox where the owner appealed but was rejected.  Sadly Wicca was euthanized last Thursday.

What makes this case even worse, is the city is trying to pass a new law where a dog involved in a bite incident can be euthanized within 24 hours, leaving very little time for the dog’s owner to take any legal action.

To this I say, Montreal, WTF?

When did people lose all common sense?  I know the old saying if common sense was common…. but come on!  Pull your heads out of your asses and think about it.  What causes a dog to bite?  Why are the circumstances not taken into consideration?

Is there nothing more pressing going on in your community that you cannot focus on?

What if you were to spend your money say on fixing the economy? Instead of persecuting dogs because they look a certain way.

I thought Montreal’s stupidity was more than enough for a W.T.F. Wednesday post and then I saw this.

Rep. Steve King defends the right to watch dog fighting and this GOP Rep. Steve King Defends Dog Fighting, IOWA – Warning if you click on one of these links you will see the results of dog fighting.

Apparently Iowa’s representative King opposes an amendment to the farm bill, which he verbalized at a tele-townhall last week.

I could go on a rant right here and call Mr. King every name under the sun, but if I cannot articulate my words and be concise in my criticism than I am just as ignorant as he is.

I’m just going to quote Mr. King  here, “It’s wrong to rate animals above human beings,” he told the questioner. To make his point, King argued that “there’s something wrong” for society to make it a “federal crime to watch animals fight” but “it’s not a federal crime to induce somebody to watch people fighting.”

Let me explain the difference to you assbag. (Ok, sometimes articulation is over-rated.)

People who CHOOSE to fight do so of THEIR OWN FREE WILL.  They know full well the risks involved in fighting and take those risks willingly.

Unlike dogs, bears and roosters who are starved, tortured and tormented oh and did I forget, EXECUTED when they lose.

It really makes me wonder where we are headed as a society when our elected officials have this kind of mentality.

Complaining doesn’t work.

You can write as many letters and e-mails as you want, you can call every day, every five minutes even, sign as many petitions as you can but unless you have your representative’s cell phone number or can schedule a face to face, the reality is your representative won’t hear your words.  An admin in his office is writing down your comments and generalizing them with her weekly reports.

Yes Mr. King you had 52 people call and complain about your comment regarding dog fighting.

Thank you Susan, duly noted.

Real change.

Just because your congressman/representative isn’t reading your e-mails doesn’t mean you CAN’T make a difference.

We   live in the world of social media.  You can blog it, tweet it, facebook, google+, pin it, the possibilities are endless.  The point is to keep these critical animal issues in the spotlight.  Send information to your local news networks, ask them to cover the stories.

Shine the light on the ignorance associated with BSL and dog fighting.

Oh and if you live in Iowa, your voice is heard at the polls.

It’s the only way.

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