Feedback on Canine Cash Crop
(Page 2 of 6)
September/October 1972
By the Mother Earth News editors
It is the duty of SPCA staff members to care for the overflow pet population, mostly dogs and cats, that man has caused or allowed to be born and then doesn't know what to do with. They are beaten, injured, starved, neglected, crippled, vermin ridden, and often spoiled as to temperament. I won't go into our procedures, but if you are in any doubt as to the critical nature of the problem, volunteer your services for one week at your local SPCA. I hope you will. You are needed. Scrub floors, disinfect, shovel droppings, pick off ticks, clean wounds, prepare meals, give shots and press the switch that gives a merciful release to many of these hopeless creatures. The only worse job would be work in a mental institution or an orphanage.
RELATED CONTENT
Some of the most pathetic of our inmates are the pedigreed dogs, many of them turned out by the kind of puppy mill operation described by Dorothy Lockard . . . the failed pets, bought as cute fluffy puppies by an unthinking parent. He bought it on an impulse. But the kids are in school all day and Mamma doesn't really like dogs and didn't know how to house-train the pup. It was tied outside all day where it yipped incessantly from loneliness. Mamma went out to cuff it now and then to make it shut up. Possibly the pup was a cocker spaniel. Those breeds with preternaturally long ears are prone to ear trouble if their owners do not keep those hearing organs clean and free from hair. So ear canker developed. In the meantime, the pup's coat grew and grew, but no one told its folks to brush it. How would your hair and scalp look if you did not comb or brush it for a year? At last the pup, now eight or nine months old, bites one of the children. Its ears have become so sore that it cannot bear to be touched about the head. So it is brought to the SPCA as neurotic and incorrigible. The matted hair is twisted about on itself, so that sores have formed on the body. Flies have laid eggs in the sores, Maggots hatch.
If the puppy described (it exists not just as a horrible example, but is a fairly regular occurrence) could have had the services of a warmhearted veterinarian, free medicine, a devoted and knowledgeable trainer to psychoanalyze it and retrain it, possibly after months of hard work it might have been rehabilitated and returned to society as a good, attractive, dependable pet. Unfortunately, SPCA's don't have this kind of staff, or that kind of money. And rightfully so. Until we get the problem of ghetto kids solved, we have no right to spend money on animal rehabilitation. So our cocker spaniel was put out of his misery.
Page:
<< Previous 1 | 2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
Next >>
