Comments on: Good Sunday reading: Extended interviews with Richard Avanzino, Nathan Winograd

By: Jennifer J

Jennifer J — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 22:32:49 +0000

This year the Bulldog Club of America National Rescue Network will process over 1000 animals. Many will come from overseas importers, brokers and puppy mills. Some will be hardship cases and the bulk of the rest will come from back-yard and internet opportunists.

80 plus percent of the network are breeder/exhibitors, including the NorCal director who fosters and places 30 plus dogs yearly from her own home, not to mention the the volunteers she oversees. All the network volunteers are members of the Bulldog Club of America which stresses support for education and rescue to it’s members.

I am proud to count all these “greedy breeders” as friends and partners in the quest to promote welfare for our own breed and all pet animals. And I am proud to count myself amongst their number. The new foster dog I picked up yesterday will be my fourth in the last year I’ve rehabed. During that time I sold one puppy. Obviously I am breeding for profit and greed and giving nothing back!

By: EmilyS

EmilyS — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 22:07:59 +0000

It’s a shame that you and Christie have to write those “I’m not a breeder” defenses.. as if your writing would have no value if you were. There are several people on the Best Friends blogs who automatically call you a breeder if you write something they disagree with, which is supposed to mean you’re the enemy. I guess “breeder” is the new “terrorist”…

Levine’s latest quotes about opponents to mandatory s/n being only “greedy breeders” is disgusting.

p.s. I’m not a breeder either!

By: Susan Fox

Susan Fox — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 21:25:06 +0000

I supported the local effort up here in Humboldt County to get a county spay-neuter law passed earlier this year, even speaking for it at the supervisor’s meeting during the public comment time, until I read your position here on Pet Connection. I was initially skeptical because I had also only heard the reasoning in favor of it that you relate above. Now I’ve read and learned enough to see what you are saying and I find that I absolutely agree with the No-Kill position. So, count me in as a “follower”!

Oh, the local law was tabled because:
1. it created a huge s—-storm of near class warfare because a lot of people in our rural county felt that if it passed, the only dogs that would be available would be expensive purebreds and that mutts would vanish, so working people wouldn’t be able to have a pet dog anymore. A bit of a head scratcher, that one.
2. And, since politicians don’t like s—-storms, they tabled it pending the result of an effort to pass essentially the same thing at the state level. Nice face-saving lateral.

I’d say that compulsory spay-neuter is a dead issue up here at this point and I would fight it if it came up again, but would sure need any support I could get because it would put me on the outs with the local humane society (which is explicitly a No-Kill facility, though) and every local rescue, all of whom have bought the old paradigm about “overpopulation” and “irresponsible owners” being the source of the problem in the absence of learning about the alternative.