What's With All This Worship of Shelter Animals?

[quote]I like dogs and cats as much as the next asshole.

The asshole part I believe.

Dogs and cats aren't people.

Abused children don't get kept in cages and killed when space runs out. Well, ok, we keep immigrant kids in cages, which most normal people are equally horrified about. If you have genuine empathy it is possible to care about more than one issue at a time. Clearly this is not the case for you.

Animals are just better than us

"Animals are just better than us."

Maybe. But they don't have to commute and deal with asshole co-workers.

OP is another concern troll. And you should be more concerned about your estranged mother, OP. Be real.

Are you kidding, OP? Just look at that face. [bold]Look. At. That. Face.[/bold] (The one on the right, of course.)

If we put all this animal attention on children, we could eradicate child abuse.

Our priorities are fucked up.

Animals are not people. Dogs and cats are not your children.

[quote] Animals are not people.

You keep saying that like it's a bad thing, dickhead. You don't understand that that's the very reason we love them so much.

Get thee to a grease fire.

How many orphans have you adopted, R8?

As warm and cuddly as your pets seem, they secretly hate you.

R9, that response was perfect.

I have absolutely no urge to go up to a strange human child and pat it on the head. Dogs rule. Kids drool.

Not so much a concern troll as a troll who randomly picked a hot-button DL topic to troll about.

People who are intensely into their pets tend to be narcissists. They surround themselves with pets because everyone else thinks they're an asshole. It's almost animal abuse.

When's the last time a dog annoyed the fuck out of you playing some digital device at top volume on the bus or train? Or screamed its fool head off at a restaurant?

[quote]If we put all this animal attention on children, we could eradicate child abuse. Our priorities are fucked up.

It is our responsibility to speak up for animals and care for them.

[quote]It is our responsibility to speak up for animals and care for them.

Yes. Children shriek up well enough on their own.

It is impossible to "eradicate child abuse." Fucked up people will never stop having children and treating them badly. We will never eradicate animal abuse, either. The point is to do the best that you can to lessen suffering. If a person has a way to give a better life to a child or an animal, then they are doing a good thing. Not everyone can. But there is something very wrong with you if you would criticize someone who only wants to help.

People who like animals over children lack the maturity to raise a child.

[quote]People who like animals over children often realize they have absolutely no desire to raise a child, know we really, truly don't need any more people in this world, and wish more people felt the same way.

Fixed.

OP's brain is scrambled from multiple personality disorders. Ignore.

[quote]Abused children don't get kept in cages and killed when space runs out

We've already taken care of the former and are working on the latter.

OPs photo is very misleading, as is most shelter animal marketing. 95% of shelter dogs are pits or pit mixes. But all the ads show a cute little dachshunds who wouldn't hurt a flea. If they know a dog is a pit mix, they emphasize the other lineage or they claim not to know what breed of dog it is.

Keith Olbermann tweets multiple times a day about shelter animals.

They’re typically breeds that no-one wants because they’re trouble (often pit bulls or something mixed with pit bull, or pit bull breed adjacent) but it’s usually framed as: “Nibbles’s human said he didn’t like dogs who terrorized small children!! He’s just a child himself!! Nibbles is gonna get the needle tomorrow!! JUSTICE FOR NIBBLES!!”

the shelters want to make their animals more desirable that way they'll get homes.

in reality a mutt is a far better and healthier pet (as a whole) because they have diverse genetics.

pedigrees have too much inbreeding

Because if we can't be compassionate toward our fellow animals, we can't be passionate toward our fellow humans either.

As Gandhi once said, “The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”

R24: Pit bulls and pit bull mixes make up 3-5% of the dog population in the US, but are responsible for 70% of attacks on humans (this isn't counting attacks on other dogs, which is even higher). It's an undeniable reality that it's a risky breed, and shelters are full of them. This is not a reason to avoid shelters entirely: there are plenty of other shelter dogs in need of homes.

But you do have to be careful, R28, that you’re not “sold a pup” that is part pit bull but designated as something else at the shelter.

I agree shelters are the way to go if you want a pet but the shelters are overrun with a breed that probably should be banned and eradicated.

I am a lead on Nextdoor, which is silly enough, but it points out the problem of shelter animal worship.

The level of obsession is not normal, and it alienates other members. Here are some examples of the nuttery.

Although there are 1000 other places to post and discuss missing animals, they use ND as well. They repeat all their obsessed posts on every platform and discuss what is and isn't on every other platform, regarding every relevant (to them) event or critter.

They discuss lost animals, found animals; they seek shelter donations of all sorts and discuss sharing them.

Nextdoor has a rule against the sale of animals, but permits re-homing fees. Many of these shelters are being run as de facto businesses. Re-homing fees are typically $300-$500, which is well outside what reasonable people consider a re-homing fee. These posts got flagged continuously. Finally ND changed the rule to say that rehoming fees cannot exceed $50. This has shut up some of the shelter business bitches.

They are supposed to post about animals in the Pets section, but they often spill into the General forum or other places where they aren't welcome, and where their 1000 posts an afternoon bury the other posts more relevant to the rest of the neighborhood.

The biggest problems occur when they shame people trying to give away pets. They start in with their SCREEEEEEEE about bait animals and dog fighting. Every single post. If anybody tells them to MYOB, the SCREEEEEEEEEEE gets only louder. The animal freaks completely lack human relations skills. When they start in on animal donors, I move to delete all their posts.

The animal obsessives frequently go off the rails and call other people names, or otherwise get abusive on the forum. If they are called out on bad behavior, their go-to defense is always some version of "I did it for the animals."

We live in an area where the pound can't go no-kill because they take in over 30,000 (not a typo) dogs a year. 100 fucking abandoned dogs a day, every day. Supply vastly outstrips demand. There needs to be some other means of dealing with this. Banning home breeders has been suggested but the state then passed a pre-emptive law banning municipalities from passing rules banning breeders.

Basically, the animal obsessives are another example of the loons that the internet has given a voice to.

OP, every thought that crosses your mind does not need to immediately become a thread on Datalounge. Some are better processed through private reflection and meditation.

The thing you seem to be missing here is a sense of empathy, which is both telling and troubling.

Most people think offering live animals a chance at a good home is better than killing them. Then, there’s you....

[quote]As warm and cuddly as your pets seem, they secretly hate you.

[quote]People who are intensely into their pets tend to be narcissists. They surround themselves with pets because everyone else thinks they're an asshole. It's almost animal abuse.

[quote]People who like animals over children lack the maturity to raise a child.

You keep posting these little blurbs like they’re widely-assumed facts, but they’re just your dump personal opinions.

Most animal lovers don’t “like” animals “over” children. There’s actually a huge overlap between parents and pet owners, which you seem completely unaware of, which is strange, to say the least.

Even stranger is coming to a gay website to stridently criticize animal lovers and compare them, in the most harshly critical terms, to parents. This is nothing short of homophobia. You should be banned from here for this anti-gay trolling.

There's a book coming out in a few weeks from the world's leading undercover animal abuse investigator, a man who has shut down more than 700 puppy mills, that explains everything you ever needed to know about how horrible dogs are treated in our society, and why you should never, ever buy from a pet store.

Today on a Manhattan street I was approached by a rep of The Human Society asking for donations. Told him I give money to a small shelter in Pennsylvania who operates on a shoe string, adding "The Human Society doesn't need my money, they have millions to run national TV campaigns." He didn't respond. I walked away.

The reps post themselves on the sidewalk in the same block. One faces one direction, the other in the opposite. A few years ago the Village Voice did an expose on the company who hires these colleges kids. They get a commission on your donation.

There's what appears to be a nice animal shelter in S. California called Paw Works. They try to find homes for lots of different kinds of dogs. Sure, they place pit bulls (when they can), but there are lots of adorable-looking little dogs there, too. Plus puppies. And cats.

When shelters who pride themselves on being "No Kill" fill-up, they ship the excess to shelters that euthanize.

I'm with OP. I like animals but they aren't people.

R34 -- "The Human Society"??

Oh so much more than dear.

It always struck me as odd that Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who would mercilessly hunt down Immigrants like prey, and created the cruelty of open- air " Tent- City" prisons in 110° (+) heat, also is a strident Animal Rights activist. Like, What's Wrong With This Picture??

[bold]Why Euthanasia Rates at Animal Shelters Have Plummeted[/bold]

A cultural transformation: Spaying and neutering are now the norm, and rescue adoption is growing in popularity.

By Alicia Parlapiano

Updated Sept. 4, 2019

DALLAS — When a lost, stray or abandoned pet entered an American city’s animal shelter 10 years ago, there was a good chance it would not leave.

But in a quiet transformation, pet euthanasia rates have plummeted in big cities in recent years, falling more than 75 percent since 2009. A rescue, an adoption or a return to an owner or community is now a far likelier outcome, a shift that experts say has happened nationwide.

The New York Times collected data from municipal shelters in the country’s largest 20 cities, including two in the Los Angeles metro area. Many of the shelters do not track outcomes uniformly or make historical data readily available online. Until recently, there has not been a concerted national effort to standardize and compile shelter records.

One reason the data is scarce: What it represents is sensitive. Even in the best-run shelters, workers face criticism, even death threats, for euthanizing animals.

“We all agree that even one euthanasia is too much,” said Inga Fricke, the most recent director of sheltering initiatives at the Humane Society of the United States. She supports more data transparency, but in her view, many shelters face impossible expectations. They also operate with varying levels of political and community support.

“Shelters shouldn’t be condemned for the numbers they have if they are genuinely doing what they can,” she said.

Part of the difficulty is that most city-run shelters are “open admission,” meaning they are required to take in any animal, regardless of its health or behavior (many private shelters and rescue groups accept only animals most likely to be adopted).

In 2015, for example, the New York City shelter system found itself with 176 ill and injured domestic rabbits that a woman had been keeping in a vacant lot in Gowanus in Brooklyn. “We bring in all these rabbits,” said Risa Weinstock, the shelter’s chief executive, “and then we have to start figuring out — where are these rabbits going?” (Most were rescued and adopted.)

[bold]How we used to deal with stray animals[/bold]

For much of their history, cities’ animal services swept stray dogs off the streets, brought them to the pound, and put them to death. (It wasn’t necessarily heartlessness; there was a well-founded fear of rabies).

In the mid-19th century, New York City adopted a policy to drown stray dogs that were not claimed. A report from Philadelphia described a notorious dogcatcher operating in “the brutal slaughter of the captured animals by clubs” before a shelter was established that put down the animals using gas chambers.

Today, the vast majority of shelters in the United States perform euthanasia by injection.

By the 1970s, the Humane Society estimated that 25 percent of the nation’s dogs were out on the streets and that 13.5 million animals were euthanized in shelters each year (some argue that number was much higher). In 1971, Los Angeles’s shelter alone euthanized more than 110,000 animals, or 300 per day on average.

Since then, large-scale activism, industry professionalization and shifting cultural attitudes have helped limit euthanasia to fewer than two million shelter animals per year. In 2018, the Los Angeles city shelter euthanized an average of 10 animals per day, less than 10 percent of its intake.

“They’re family members on four legs,” said Richard Avanzino, a longtime activist known as the father of the “no-kill” movement. “Society is no longer willing to say, ‘Well, there’s just too many animals and not enough homes.’”

part 2

[bold]What’s behind the changes[/bold]

Animal welfare experts tend to agree that since the 1970s, the number of stray animals entering American shelters has decreased sharply — the result of a successful push to promote spaying and neutering of pets (remember Bob Barker’s sign-off?).

A recent paper in the journal Animals found that up until about 2010, the drop in shelter euthanasia tracked very closely with the drop in intake. After that, the authors wrote, it appeared that adoptions helped to further drive down euthanasia rates.

“Rescuing an animal has become a badge of honor,” said Matt Bershadker, the president and chief executive of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. “People proudly go to dog parks and walk around their neighborhoods talking about the animal that they rescued from a shelter.”

Many of the animals rescued are transported north from Southern states with higher rates of euthanasia. The A.S.P.C.A. alone relocated 40,000 animals in 2018.

Most of the shelters in this analysis also continue to reduce the number of animals they take in. Programs to spay/neuter and release community cats are one factor. There has also been a rise in programs helping people resolve problems — like landlord disputes and unaffordable vet care — that might otherwise compel them to give up their pets.

These trends reflect the professionalization of the shelter industry. Its members attend conferences and have their own magazine and veterinary specialization. Shelters increasingly use data to direct their resources, and they collaborate with a growing network of rescue groups and volunteers to fill in the gaps.

Many shelters have been pushed along by no-kill advocates, who oppose euthanizing any healthy or treatable animal, often using a 90 percent “live release” benchmark. (A live release rate is essentially the inverse of the euthanasia rate, though not every shelter calculates it the same way.)

In part because of the success of the no-kill movement, many shelters in the nation’s largest cities euthanize only the most ill or aggressive animals.

The movement’s critics agree that it has helped decrease euthanasia, but they point to examples of no-kill shelters in which animals have suffered in poor conditions or were released to families despite having exhibited dangerous behavior.

The challenge is to find a middle ground between euthanizing as few animals as possible, ensuring that those in the shelters don’t endure overcrowding or the spread of disease, and providing animal control for public safety.

The municipal shelter in Austin, Tex., which boasted a 98 percent live release rate in 2018, reported sheltering more than 800 animals at the end of June, more than double the number of kennels available. A shelter representative told a local ABC affiliate that while the shelter is “doing work that no one else has done” in terms of live release rate, it is “reaching a breaking point.”

The animal shelter in Dallas places more emphasis on not going above capacity, which can occasionally mean euthanasia for some animals that could be adopted. But there is still much less euthanasia than there once was (a rate of 65 percent in 2012).

part 3

[bold]A turnaround at a Dallas shelter[/bold]

Of all the city shelters surveyed, Dallas Animal Services has achieved one of the most drastic declines in kill rates in the last 10 years. A decade ago, Dallas Animal Services euthanized nearly 28,000 dogs and cats in a year, 75 per day on average.

Mismanagement also plagued the municipal shelter. A 2010 evaluation by the Humane Society identified inadequate record keeping, “a morale crisis” and “alarming” care of sick or injured animals. To reduce euthanasia rates, management discouraged field officers from impounding strays. Image

Then, in May 2016, a homeless veteran, Antoinette Brown, was mauled to death by a pack of dogs in South Dallas.

Public outcry led the city to bring in consultants, who determined that there were about 8,700 loose dogs roaming city streets, contributing to more than 1,600 dog bites in the city that year. The dogs were almost exclusively found in low-income South Dallas neighborhoods, where only 15 percent of them were spayed or neutered.

But in just three years — after a shelter overhaul by the Dallas Police Department; the adoption of a mandatory microchipping law; a renewed push for spay and neuter; and the hiring of a new director — Dallas has managed to decrease euthanasia while also increasing the number of dogs it removes from the streets.

“You can do both, and you can do it responsibly,” said Ann Barnes, who runs the shelter’s field office. “I don’t think that a municipal shelter should risk public safety” to increase the live release rate. “That’s not what we’re for,” she added.

Bites from loose dogs in Dallas are down 12 percent compared with last year. More strays are being returned to their owners, and more adoptions are happening inside the shelter. Rescue groups continue to transfer animals to areas with higher demand, but the city now reserves some smaller and more sought-after dogs (think Yorkies) for people coming in the front door.

As a result, Dallas has hovered around a live release rate of 85 percent to 90 percent this year.

Alicia Parlapiano is a graphics editor and reporter covering politics and policy from Washington. She joined The Times in 2011 and previously worked at The Washington Post and the Pew Research Center. @aliciaparlap

I applaud the idea of helping shelter cats and dogs. What I dislike is the sheer amount of effort that seems to go into helping pit bulls. The breed is at this point frankly unfixable. I am sick and tired of dog parks overrun by smug yuppies and their "rescue " beasts. I hate seeing smaller, better mannered dogs intimidated and bitten by some pitbull while the owner either shrugs their shoulders or looks on helplessly. Too many animal rights organizations are fixated on saving pitbulls at the expense of advocating for animals that aren't public menaces.

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

Shelter dog or shelter cat, r44?

Interesting that you should bring up child abuse. There were animal cruelty laws before anything like child or spousal abuse laws and the first US case of child abuse was brought by The American Humane Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals defending a 10 year old girl. Animals were considered property, and as such there were laws about how they could be treated, wives and children not such much and you could treat them how you see fit.

Another interesting tidbit, the book Black Beauty led to all kinds of reforms in animal safety because of the brutality suffered by the horses in the book and was even handed out by animal rights activists.

It will all lead to this.

Haha sorry R45 I’ve put it in the right thread now.