The way society treats our "best friends" is appalling and utterly cruel! We allow backyard and "puppy farm" breeders to breed puppies to sell at markets, on the Internet and in pet shops. They are bred to generate profits. This happens while we have overflowing pounds and shelters. It is totally shameful. There are all sorts of reasons for surrendering pets, including lack of training and behaviour problems, lack of room, too busy, not allowed by landlords, etc etc. It is just to easy to acquire and dispose of dogs and cats due impulse buying, pet overpopulation and their commercialisation.
Over 200,000 cats and dogs are "put down" each year because they are homeless. There are thousands sold on impulse and there is a good chance that many will be abandoned over the following 12 months. Pet shops promote battery breeding in puppy farms, and impulse buying, by having their wares as shelf items.
The government allows the indiscriminate breeding of dogs and cats but they do not cover the costs of rehabilitating and re-homing abandoned animals! This is left to charities.
Animals adopted from a shelter must be desexed. Why wait until they have already been homeless? The breeding of animals for pet shops and markets needs to cease. Only approved breeders should sell dogs and cats to the public, and puppy farms should not be keeping animals in battery cages to supply puppies to an already saturated market.
If pet shops sponsored ethical breeders, and shelters, the misery of killing homeless animals could be avoided.
Profits should not justify everything! Where is compassion and common sense?
Pets are being commercialised rather than being considered as deliberately adopted four-footed family members, or "best friends". Mandatory desexing and controlled breeding would stop this misery!
www.saynotoanimalsinpetshops.com
www.smh.com.au/news/lifeandstyle/pets/grim-end-for-christmas-puppies/2008/12/22/1229794326689.html
www.thewest.com.au/default.aspx?MenuID=77&ContentID=114429
Comments
Anonymous (not verified)
Sun, 2008-12-28 12:00
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Yeah, our society is warped.
Peter Bright (not verified)
Sun, 2009-01-04 15:46
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Dog plague
James Sinnamon
Sun, 2009-01-04 16:50
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Our need to be surrounded by people who are compatible
Whilst I strongly agree with your first petition:
... I wouldn't be able to bring myself to support the second:
In a sense I would agree, but it would be hard to legally define 'socially beneficial'. What is important is that people not be subjected to the noise of barking dogs and that dogs not be subject to the cruelty that would cause theme to bark excessively.
The critical problem in most parts of the country that we don't have space to spread out.
We should be able to live with people who are compatible with ourselves, but because living space and housing stock is so limited, many of us are made to live, for example, with people who like having loud drunken parties going to three in the morning breathing down our necks.
People who are not troubled by the sound of incessantly barking dogs (provided that we can be confident that they are not barking because of cruelty) should live together away from the rest of us who are (or, perhaps, vice versa).
audrey robb (not verified)
Mon, 2009-01-05 12:17
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Dog (and cat) overpopulation
Matthew Ridgeway (not verified)
Mon, 2009-01-05 16:06
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What to do about pets
Quiet Tasmania
Mon, 2009-01-05 21:15
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Online Petition to reduce dog suffering and hence barking
This Petition may be signed now at
http://gopetition.com/online/24313.html
Here's the wording:
This petition draws to the attention of all governments:
The huge and growing number of dogs kept in the suburban environment;
That most dogs are kept in the suburbs under conditions of close confinement;
That the suburbs comprise a totally unnatural environment for an animal congenitally programmed to free-range;
That innumerable confined backyard dogs are left unattended by their owners because of work commitments, especially during the daytime;
That many of these dogs bark intermittently or continuously because of their boredom, frustration, confinement and deprivation of animal and human contact;
That such extended isolation to a dog, a social animal by nature, can be torture;
That the dog commonly vents its frustration, anguish and torment by whining, howling and loud continuous barking; and
That such barking is increasingly noxious to nearby humans, is often damaging to their health, and is usually in contravention of barking control laws now so commonly left almost entirely unenforced by reckless animal control authorities having regulatory powers but refusing to use them.
Your Petitioners therefore ask all governments to:
Create the Dog Control Act offence "Leaving a Dog Unattended"; and
Compel enforcement by authorised persons with the words:
"It is the obligation of any person on whom a function is imposed or a power is conferred under this Act to perform the function or to exercise the power..."
Bandicoot
Wed, 2014-04-16 08:17
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The Napthine government does nothing to stop puppy factories
quark
Wed, 2014-04-16 09:35
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Put Dennis Napthine in a cage
Sheila Newman
Thu, 2020-07-09 18:27
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Inquiry into problem of feral and domestic cats in Australia
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