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FirmhandKY -> "Dropping off" an animal ... (2/21/2009 12:18:53 PM)
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I know I'm going to take some heat for this .... but what the hell. [:D]
I like animals. Perhaps even more importantly, I respect animals, especially the pets that we humans have adopted and adapted throughout our history.
Dogs are pack animals whose social instincts have allowed them to be adopted into the human cultural mix, and who we often value as much or more than our relations with other humans. As well, we often identify with them as if they are human.
How many men have a problem with neutering a strong, "masculine" dog of theirs? Yeah, I know, rationally it's often the right thing to do, but I dare say that few men who love their dog don't have at least a tinge in their nether regions when they contemplate the action, and the effects on the life of their beloved pet.
This thread is about my particular mindset and (perhaps irrational) belief of how to handle "excess" animals when the time comes reduce your relationship with a pet, or at least a pet dog.
For most of my later life I've lived in a rural setting.
Up until a couple of years ago, I lived in a house in farming country, in which my nearest neighbor was at least 1/4 mile away, and the nearest store at least 6 miles away. Lots of fields of grain, deer crossing the roads, and late snow removal.
It was also a place in which many pet dogs would find as the end of the road from their previous owners.
In the approximate 15 years that I lived in that house, there were times in which my family had in excess of 20 dogs. Generally, we had at the very least 6 or 7. Over the years, I suspect that we had a total of several hundred individual dogs that I supported, and a sum total of 3 that I actually had sought out for ownership, or purchased.
The costs to feed them, the costs to get them the medical care that they needed, and the cost to house and otherwise care for them was not insufficient.
We never had a problem with uninvited human guest, however. [:D]
Unfortunately, from time to time we had to "thin the pack". If a dog was sick beyond care, we'd take them to the vet to be put down. If they were dangerous, or could not be trained to respect the physical integrity of the children, they were put down locally (usually with a 9 mm). Some wondered off, never to be seen again. Some found other homes.
But sometimes the sheer numbers demanded a thinning greater than any of the reasons above could provide.
What to do?
Occasionally I would take an otherwise healthy animal and take them far enough away so that they couldn't find their way back and drop them off.
My reasoning is that those particular animals had done nothing to deserve the death penalty. If they were a danger to me, mine or the public, I assumed my responsibility and dealt with them appropriately.
If I had sought them out for ownership, then again, they were totally my responsibility, and I would find them a new owner, have them put down by the vet, or kept them until death.
Occasionally my SO at the time would call the local dog catcher who charged $20 per visit and $20 per animals, to come and take them away where they would go to the local "shelter" for two weeks and then be euthanasized.
But most of the time the dogs were harmless, prior pets, lovable in their own right, and I respected them enough not to put them to death. If I could find no one to accept responsibility for them, I'd "drop them off".
Some (many, I dare say) see this as being somehow "cruel". I disagree, and believe it is cruel and unfeeling to simply condemn an otherwise healthy and lovable animals to extinction without chance of reprieve. By taking them out, and leaving them to chance and the kindness of strangers I believe that I at least gave them a chance at life, and a chance at happiness, even if the occasional cost was struggle and death.
That's all I've asked for in my life: a chance. I see extending the same possibility to these animals as the moral and respectful thing to do.
What are your thoughts?
Firm
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