agonyaunt | (no subject)

Dear Amy: I am one of four adult siblings, all in our 40s. One of my siblings and I have devoted ourselves to help counter the negative impacts of pet breeders and irresponsible pet owners, by fostering and spay/neuter volunteerism.

Recently, our sister announced that she will be buying a dog from a breeder!

She clearly is not interested in putting in the effort or caring about the impact of her actions.

Amy, I can't tell you how upset we are about this. The sister making this awful decision cannot be redirected. She has been enabled by our parents her entire life and, as an underdeveloped adult, lives in a bubble without any consideration of her impact on the environment.

How would you best recommend we handle this literal slap in the face?

-- Sibling of the Unconscionable

Dear Sibling: My first suggestion is that you stop seeing this as being about you and your values. This is about her and her values. She is not slapping you in the face; she is making a choice, which you vehemently disagree with.

She might be ignorant, wasteful and deliberately rejecting your activism.

So, message received.

You could respond by trying to create a "dog-neutral" balance to this behavior, by donating to a shelter the amount of money she paid for the dog, or by fostering a dog specifically in her honor.

https://www.arcamax.com/healthandspirit/lifeadvice/askamy/s-2272284?fs

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I am very glad to hear of the happy ending for your mom and Rosie!

It does seem that the rescue organizations attract a lot of people with animal hoarding tendencies and savior complexes. Only they know what is best for animals, and their opinions are facts.

Sadly, skimming dogs from the shelters leaves the shelters with a far harder job---it's discouraging, as we see, to go in and find only dogs who are mixes of breeds one already knows one wouldn't consider.

I've observed that when someone says 'but you can get a dog at the local shelter! Have you checked?' there's a greater than average chance they are waiting for any semi-legit opening to evangelize about how totally sweet pit bulls are, how they totally know someone who has it sleep with their newborn baby, and tell you how actually terriers and chihuahuas are way more prone to biting. If you make any sound or a sound occurs in your vicinity, that is interpreted as hatred of dogs classified as 'bully breeds' and it is because of people like you that pit bulls, dobermans, chows, [insert dog called a bully breed] are put to death every day instead of adopted into large families with ten cats and learn what it means to love.

I mean, there are variations here, but those are the basic elements, and if you're having this conversation online, chances go to 75% it will be all this and more, with links. There are some Labrador and German Shepard variations as both misunderstood tragic victims of rumor and/or so much more dangerous than pit bulls, but invariably, a poor chihuahua is maligned as the coup de grace. I'm not even close to a chihuahua person but invariably i want to go adopt like ten and train them to go for the Achilles tendon first so the pitty-lover falls and they can reach their throat.

The thing is yes, I agree: 'bully breeds' are generally badly behaved not because they're bad or its their nature but because of crappy owners. In the hands of a good, responsible owner, hell yes they're good dogs, I adopted a two year old German Shepherd from a shelter. THat holds true for pretty much any dog, excluding the rare dog with inborn issues.

What I have a problem with is anyone thinking there's a glut of pit bulls who once belonged to good, responsible owners who trained them well and tragically died without family or friends and that's the only reason why the dog is in the shelter and was never at any time chained to a tree in the backyard for weeks on end, ran free terrorizing the neighborhood becuase the owner thought it made him look cool to have a scary dog, or was involving in backyard dog fighting.

Sure, there are probably just as many if not more badly socialized chihuahuas who will bite, but key difference between pitbulls and chihuahuas:

1.) One of these has a tiny jaw, can barely reach my knee standing on his hind legs, and can be dealt with by well-timed drop kick, a pair of calf-high boots, or locking it in the bathroom. To die by chihuahua attack requires effort on your part to make happen; unless it hits a lucky artery early on, the process of gnawing through your throat while you passively lie there until death occurs is going to take some time, and that's assuming it doesn't get bored due to their lack of attention span and just pee on your face to assert dominance. Imagine explaining this shit to a doctor at the ER.

2.) The other is much stronger than me, much faster than me, has a jaw that can easily fit around my throat and part me from it or do a really good job trying, and the means to easily get my throat in range of said jaw is thoroughly covered by the first two items on the list. The only way to deal with this is not be within range of that dog.

This very basic math applies to Dobermans, German Shepherds, Labradors, Golden Retrievers, terriers, Maltese, insert dog here. No, I do not think Pits are evil and should all be destroyed and that's why I won't adopt one from the shelter but might if available adopt a dachshund; in the latter, assuming minimal precautions are observed, the worst that will happen is a night getting a small bite stitched unless it's a super determined dachshund and a concussion and/or a considerable period of unconscious are involved; in the former, worst case is very real possibility I won't survive long enough to get to the ER.

Forgive me for knowing how to do accurate dog math and prefer my chances of survival are as close to 100% as possible.

I mean, even ignoring aggression and dog biting, pit bull-types are difficult for many homes because:

a) if you rent, goooood luck finding dog friendly housing in most cities. My own dog is proooobably actually a Boston Terrier cross, judging from her very friendly bug eyes and big pointy ears, but she's brindle and looks enough like a pit type that it's a common guess, and who knows? She has just enough plausible deniability that I was able to squeeze her in by, effectively, squinting hard and landlords and emphasizing to the vets that it was very important that her paperwork never list her as a pit bull. And even then, she looks close enough to one that I would be sincerely concerned to move to certain places (Ontario, the UK) lest she be confiscated and destroyed, because she's got no breed history and the law is uncertainly enforced. Hurrah, I guess.

b) I find that the usual issue that leaves these dogs in shelters is that they're big, rowdy, and have zero manners. That's fine, but not everyone wants to teach a rowdy two-year-old dog who is in full-on obnoxious teenage stage and already weighs seventy pounds how to have basic manners. Some people physically can't train a dog like that without aversive aids, like prong collars and head halters, which many people are uncomfortable using.

And, like. that should be okay. Not wanting to ever have a fully adult and fully untrained large, powerful dog should be a reasonable preference!

This. Some people--perfectly nice, good people!--are terrible at training animals. There's a reason why good trainers get paid for it and really really good trainers get paid like a lot for it. And with an adolescent dog start value, you need the ability to train and the time to do it, a lot of time, and as few variables (kids, other pets, lots fo space) as possible.

I like plants but if someone put me in a greenhouse and told me I would die if I couldn't keep them alive, I'd be dead; I just--don't have a talent for it. I just bought four plants and all of them have the distinction of having--written on their labels--requiring only minimal supervision on my part and even so I have a reminder from Alexa every two days to go look at them and check their soil and a mental checklist of Plant Warning Signs to actually check becasue othrwise, I might not notice I am watering a dead plant.

By 'might', I mean 'won't notice, maybe for years'.

That's one of the things I love about the APL folks and the Love-a-Bull ones in my area--do you know, they both have programs to help people who want to volunteer to teach the young big dogs basic manners so they have the skills to be pets that fit easily into a household? Genius! There's often a perfectly good dog under the rough exterior, but not everyone knows how to get there--but if a rescue can put in a bit of elbow grease and teach the dog how to have some manners, the dog suddenly becomes way more attractive to adopters and is way more likely to stay in a home.

Once the dog has the manners, then maintaining them is so, so much easier. Same thing's true for some of the big behavioral problems that cause dogs to be rehomed, like mild separation anxiety or mild reactivity. One thing I'm beginning to see more that also fills me with joy is free or low-cost training classes and resources for people who have mild behavior problems, don't really want to rehome the dog, but don't see a good way forward. That's a good way of handling the problem, not blaming people for going "this isn't working and I don't know how to fix it."