Man, that is some nice news.

Nancy — it’s basic propaganda.

There is no reason to kill those 4 million animals OR stop preserving dog and cat breeds. You can do both. Not so many years ago, that 4 million was 27 million. You don’t have to choose, and the price of saving those 4 million animals — many of which, by the way, are feral cats — is not the extinction of many of the breeds that are part of the human race’s history and heritage.

It’s a false equation.

It was through the dog fancy I discovered rescue. It’s because of my passion for dogs that I have been involved in low cost spay neuter programs, and feral cat trap, alter, release programs. I have advised uncounted hundreds of pet owners on how to choose a pet, how to train a pet, and how to solve pet problems, so that all those animals had good homes for life. I’ve been personally responsible for hundreds of cats and dogs being altered who might not otherwise have been.

Neither I nor any other ethical breeder is part of the problem. We are part of the solution.

On the other hand, people who spread lies and propaganda, people who think there is no better way to run their shelters except by wholesale killing, people who drive wedges between animal lovers so that we waste our time fighting instead of helping that last 4 million dogs and cats?

THEY are the problem.

From a Bark magazine review of Matthew Scully’s “Dominion”:

“Scully also does an admirable job in deconstructing the polemics of behavioral theorists like Stephen Budiansky and Professor John S. Kennedy. A student of evolutionary biology Budiansky believes that animals act by a kind of “unthinking intelligence” arising from their genetic coding or “hardwiring.” Animals, he further argues, lack language, therefore they lack the ability to form concepts, therefore lack consciousness, therefore they cannot suffer. He also promotes the notion that dogs, and other animals, including primates, only mimic human emotion and intelligence. Scully contends that Budiansky, and other theorists, hold a position of dominion that is “without that moral sensibility.” These theorists are quick to discount anything that can’t be measured or replicated in their labs. But to anyone who has shared a life with animals, it is readily evident that such theories are poppycock. For, as Scully reminds us, “None of these abstract theories would warrant such space and attention if they stayed where they belonged . the problem lies in their practical application . which give license to what people actually do to animals.” Hunters and animal husbandry experts can be counted as fans of Budiansky’s views.”

http://www.thebark.com/ezine/l.....ws_02.html