(no subject)

[conuly]

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

Comments

[sciatrix]

God yes! All the people I remember who were banging just exactly this drum have gone silent because there's so much weird racist screaming from the blood purity people, and I'm too damn tired to be working on it right now. I'm particularly bitter about the mainstream kennel club reactions to the two separate introgression projects I do know about that have been allowed to enter the main breeds: there has been much more widespread acceptance of introgressing natural bobtails into Boxers in England after docking was banned than there has for introgressing an allele for low uric acid in Dalmatians here in the US, which means the poor damn dogs aren't constantly developing fucking kidney stones. (Both of these crosses were done ~30 years ago, mind.) I think the Pedigree Dogs Exposed folks are doing the bulk of this activism right now, which is lovely to see.

I don't particularly like doodles for a whole host of reasons having to do with the hair and the basic temperaments of the retrievers involved, but I do think they're a step in the right direction... but there has to be a way to let those genes mix in the long term and give the dogs a bit more genetic variability.