Pet problems
Mahatma Gandhi once said that the greatness of a nation and its moral
progress can be judged by the way it treat its animals. So why are
people abandoning their pets so easily? Terence Pillay delves deeper.
A friend of mine sent me a message with a seemingly legit attachment. It was a screen grab of a woman’s Facebook picture in which she was holding a beautiful black Labrador. The caption read: “To the a***hole driving the white Merc C200, registration xxxx, who dumped a dog and her pups on the N2 South...” I couldn’t make out the rest of the message. There were 88 likes and shares and 94 comments, many of which are too profane for breakfast radio.
Needless to say, my knee-jerk reaction was one of outrage and so I thought I would investigate the matter. I found out that the registration she put up was actually for a Toyota Hilux and not a C-Class Merc, and the story was a complete hoax. According to a policeman friend of mine, these stories are a rand a dozen – some true, some hoaxes.
So the moral of the story is: interrogate the facts before you post and repost vitriol and comment about an issue you know nothing about. But that isn’t even the point of this discussion.
According to a Mail and Guardian article I read by business reporter Lisa Steyn, “Man’s best friends are paying a high price for South Africa’s economic slump and emigration—more pets are being abandoned, and adoption rates at animal shelters are falling.”
Lisa’s article says, owners can’t afford to keep their pets them any longer. People are suffering economically. Dogs are even abandoned at grooming parlours and kennel facilities. And three to five years ago emigration was one of the main causes of surrendering dogs, but this year it is a mix of the depressed economy and emigration.
So apart from our poor economy and emigration, we need to look at what the motivation is for abandoning these animals. Are people able to access services that actually provide an alternative to abandonment? And there are services. So for example: why would you stop your car on the side of the highway when you could just drive a few kilometres more to the SPCA and without any judgement of any kind you could say, “I’m really sorry but I just cannot afford to keep this pet an longer. Can you help?”
Now some people might say this is hugely irresponsible and I would agree to an extent. I mean people even give up their children for adoption. At the end of the day you need to ask yourself if you would rather give your pet a terrible life because you feel that you’ve made a commitment or would you give it a better life by allowing it to go to a home that would actually afford it and love it.
The unfortunate “other side of the coin” is that there are just too many cats and dogs. So what we should be doing is encouraging programmes that neuter these animals so they don’t over breed. People can sometimes be quite vociferous in their stand against neutering saying that it’s cruel and emasculates the animal. But what is the solution to the over-population of domestic animals – many of which will be abandoned? I suppose a reasonable alternative could be to actually let the dogs have a litter of puppies and have them spayed once this litter is born. This will certainly kerb the excessive breeding.
I watched an anthropological documentary by Louis Theroux the other day about dogs in Los Angeles, called Los Angeles: City of Dogs, where he embeds himself in this community of rescuers that go around rescuing dogs that have been abandoned or abused. They have about three or four state shelters in Los Angeles and each shelter sees in the region of about twenty to thirty thousand dogs a year, abandoned or ill-treated. They have euthanase dogs every single day otherwise they just can’t cope.
The one shelter has a capacity of three hundred and fifty dogs and they currently have five hundred in, so they have to euthanase every single day. They start out with dogs that are highly aggressive and obviously not safe to be around people, but in some cases, because of the demand, they will take a perfectly good dog that could be somebody’s pet and put it down.
They simply have no space for these dogs. They wait for long periods for people to adopt them, but that doesn’t happen. And so, perhaps this is why the argument for pets to be neutered is so compelling.
A friend of mine lived next door to a couple who emigrated to New Zealand and when the people they sold the house to moved in, they found that they had abandoned their two cats. The new owners weren’t “cat people” so they took the animals to the SPCA, and what happened to them after that is anyone’s guess. Needless to say, these animals don’t always find a home.
People who are moving house or relocating to another town, country or continent should make an effort to find their pets new homes. You can’t just leave them behind. They have to be re-homed, which means reaching out to friends or family or use social media appealing for a home for your pets. Alternatively, you could pay your R10 000 and have your pet transferred from Durban to Ney York or wherever it is you’re going to.
Do you believe that there should be some kind of punishment for people who abandon their pets? Or is this act just a result a failing economy and should be seen as such?
Needless to say, my knee-jerk reaction was one of outrage and so I thought I would investigate the matter. I found out that the registration she put up was actually for a Toyota Hilux and not a C-Class Merc, and the story was a complete hoax. According to a policeman friend of mine, these stories are a rand a dozen – some true, some hoaxes.
So the moral of the story is: interrogate the facts before you post and repost vitriol and comment about an issue you know nothing about. But that isn’t even the point of this discussion.
According to a Mail and Guardian article I read by business reporter Lisa Steyn, “Man’s best friends are paying a high price for South Africa’s economic slump and emigration—more pets are being abandoned, and adoption rates at animal shelters are falling.”
Lisa’s article says, owners can’t afford to keep their pets them any longer. People are suffering economically. Dogs are even abandoned at grooming parlours and kennel facilities. And three to five years ago emigration was one of the main causes of surrendering dogs, but this year it is a mix of the depressed economy and emigration.
So apart from our poor economy and emigration, we need to look at what the motivation is for abandoning these animals. Are people able to access services that actually provide an alternative to abandonment? And there are services. So for example: why would you stop your car on the side of the highway when you could just drive a few kilometres more to the SPCA and without any judgement of any kind you could say, “I’m really sorry but I just cannot afford to keep this pet an longer. Can you help?”
Now some people might say this is hugely irresponsible and I would agree to an extent. I mean people even give up their children for adoption. At the end of the day you need to ask yourself if you would rather give your pet a terrible life because you feel that you’ve made a commitment or would you give it a better life by allowing it to go to a home that would actually afford it and love it.
The unfortunate “other side of the coin” is that there are just too many cats and dogs. So what we should be doing is encouraging programmes that neuter these animals so they don’t over breed. People can sometimes be quite vociferous in their stand against neutering saying that it’s cruel and emasculates the animal. But what is the solution to the over-population of domestic animals – many of which will be abandoned? I suppose a reasonable alternative could be to actually let the dogs have a litter of puppies and have them spayed once this litter is born. This will certainly kerb the excessive breeding.
I watched an anthropological documentary by Louis Theroux the other day about dogs in Los Angeles, called Los Angeles: City of Dogs, where he embeds himself in this community of rescuers that go around rescuing dogs that have been abandoned or abused. They have about three or four state shelters in Los Angeles and each shelter sees in the region of about twenty to thirty thousand dogs a year, abandoned or ill-treated. They have euthanase dogs every single day otherwise they just can’t cope.
The one shelter has a capacity of three hundred and fifty dogs and they currently have five hundred in, so they have to euthanase every single day. They start out with dogs that are highly aggressive and obviously not safe to be around people, but in some cases, because of the demand, they will take a perfectly good dog that could be somebody’s pet and put it down.
They simply have no space for these dogs. They wait for long periods for people to adopt them, but that doesn’t happen. And so, perhaps this is why the argument for pets to be neutered is so compelling.
A friend of mine lived next door to a couple who emigrated to New Zealand and when the people they sold the house to moved in, they found that they had abandoned their two cats. The new owners weren’t “cat people” so they took the animals to the SPCA, and what happened to them after that is anyone’s guess. Needless to say, these animals don’t always find a home.
People who are moving house or relocating to another town, country or continent should make an effort to find their pets new homes. You can’t just leave them behind. They have to be re-homed, which means reaching out to friends or family or use social media appealing for a home for your pets. Alternatively, you could pay your R10 000 and have your pet transferred from Durban to Ney York or wherever it is you’re going to.
Do you believe that there should be some kind of punishment for people who abandon their pets? Or is this act just a result a failing economy and should be seen as such?
You can email Terence Pillay at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter: @terencepillay1 and tweet him your thoughts.