why is neutering a pet considered humane?

uscitizen said:
Nor is taking the down the road and turning them loose.
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Or handing them over to a rescue organization when you're bored with them. I received this in an email today and thought I'd pass it on:


Dear Mr. And Mrs. Average Idiot,

We receive an extremely high volume of inquiries and requests to accept surrendered animals. To help us expedite your problem as quickly as possible, please observe the following guidelines:

1. Do not say that you are, "considering finding a good home," or, "feel you might be forced to," or, "really think it would be better if," you unloaded the poor beast. Ninety-five percent of you already have your stone-cold minds made up that the animal will be out of your life by the weekend or holiday at the latest. Say so. If you don't, I'm going to waste a lot of time giving you common-sense, easy solutions for very fixable problems, and you're going to waste a lot of time coming up with fanciful reasons why the solution couldn't possibly work for you.

For instance, you say the cat claws the furniture, and I tell you about nail-clipping and scratching posts and aversion training, and then you go into a long harangue about how your husband won't let you put a scratching post in the family room, and your ADHD daughter cries if you use a squirt bottle on the cat, and your congenital thumb abnormalities prevent you from using nail scissors and etc., etc. Just say you're getting rid of the cat.

2. Do not waste time trying to convince me how nice and humane you are. Your coworker recommended that you contact me because I am nice to animals, not because I am nice to people, and I don't like people who "get rid of" their animals. "Get rid of," is my least favorite phrase in any language. I hope someone "gets rid" of you someday. I am an animal advocate, not a people therapist. After all, you can get counselors, special teachers, doctors, social workers, etc., for your ADHD daughter. Your pet has only me, and people like me, to turn to in his or her need, and we are overworked, stressed-out, and demoralized. So don't tell me this big long story about how, "We love this dog so much, and we even bought him a special bed that cost $50, and it is just killing us to part with him, but honestly, our maid is just awash in dog hair every time she cleans, and his breath sometimes just reeks of liver, so you can see how hard we've tried, and how dear he is to us, but we really just can't ...."

You are not nice, and it is not killing you. It is, in all probability, literally killing your dog, but you're going to be just fine once the beast is out of your sight. Don't waste my time trying to make me like you or feel sorry for you in your plight.

3. Do not try to convince me that your pet is exceptional and deserves special treatment. I don't care if you taught him to sit. I don't care if she's a beautiful Persian. I have a waiting list of battered and/or whacked-out animals who really need help, and I have no room to shelter your pet because you decided you no longer have time for your 14-year-old Lab.

Do not send me long messages detailing how Fido just l-O-v-e-S blankies and carries his favorite blankie everywhere, and oh, when he gets all excited and happy, he spins around in circles, isn't that cute? He really is darling so it wouldn't be any trouble at all for us to find him a good home. Listen.. We can go down the kennel runs and count the darling, spinning, blankie-loving beasts on death row by the dozens, any day of the week. And, honey, Fido is a six-year-old shepherd-mix weighing 75 pounds. I am not lying when I tell you big, older, mixed-breed, garden-variety dogs are almost always completely unadoptable, and I don't care if they can whistle Dixie or send smoke signals with their blankies.

What you don't realize, though you're trying to lie to me, you're actually telling the truth: Your pet is a special, wonderful, amazing creature. But this mean old world does not care. More importantly, you do not care, and I can't fix that problem. All I can do is grieve for all the exceptional animals who live short, brutal, loveless lives and die without anyone ever recognizing they were indeed very, very special.

Finally, just, for God's sake, for the animal's sake, tell the truth, and the whole truth. Do you think if you just mumble your cat is,"high-strung" I will say, "Okey-dokey! No problem!" and take it into foster care? No, I will start asking questions and uncover the truth, which is your cat has not used a litter box in the last six months.

Do not tell me you "can't" crate your dog. I will ask what happens when you try to crate him, and you will either be forced to tell me the symptoms of full-blown, severe separation anxiety, or else you will resort to lying some more, wasting more time.

And, if you succeed in placing your pet in a shelter or foster care, do not tell yourself the biggest lie of all..."Those nice people will take him and find him a good home, and everything will be fine." Those nice people will indeed give the animal every possible chance, but if we discover serious health or behavior problems, if we find that your misguided attempts to train or discipline him have driven him over the edge, we will do what you are too immoral and cowardly to do: We will hold the animal in our arms, telling him truthfully he is a good dog or cat, telling him truthfully we are sorry and we love him, while the vet ends his life. Some are not so lucky and will face the gas chamber, depending on the part of the country you're in...a slow, painful death.

How can we be so heartless as to kill your pet, you ask? Do not ever dare to judge us. At least we tried. At least we stuck with him to the end. At least we never abandoned him to strangers, as you certainly did, didn't you? In short, this little old rescuer/foster momma has reached the point where she would prefer you tell it like it is:

"We picked up a free pet in a parking lot a couple of years ago. Now we don't want it anymore. We're lazier than we thought. We've got no patience either. We're starting to suspect the animal is really smarter than we are, which is giving us self-esteem issues. Clearly, we can't possibly keep it. Plus, it might be getting sick; it's acting kind of funny."
"We would like you to take it in eagerly, enthusiastically, and immediately. We hope you'll realize what a deal you're getting and not ask us for a donation to help defray your costs. After all, this is an (almost) pure-bred animal, and we'll send the leftover food along with it. We get it at the discount store, and boy, it's a really good deal."

"We are very irritated you haven't shown pity on us in our great need and picked the animal up already.We thought you people were supposed to be humane! Come and get it today."

"No, we couldn't possibly bring it to you; the final episode of 'Survivor' is on tonight."

~*~AUTHOR UNKNOWN~*~


I used to volunteer with one of these organizations that fostered unwanted pets. There were a lot of very dedicated people involved, but it can be understood that there was a high rate of burnout among volunteers. This is part of why.
 
Damocles said:
No kidding! And I hear they've been designing new ones for fish... Am I going to have to go fitting my aquariums with helmets?
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This is news, even to me.

My initial reaction is that there are not many fish who possess the suave self-assurance to pull off a hat.

An octopus would look good in a top hat (holding it in place with a spare tentacle if necessary) and a cane. Are octopusseses fish? Who knows?
 
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Grind, I did look at your references; couldn't access the last two or the original article in the second, but I can comment:

The first article addressed obesity; I didn't see anything specifically about spaying or neutering. They did stress that obesity occurs (as it does in humans, big surprise) when caloric intake exceeds output by exercise or other activity. Also, as with humans, persistent obesity can lead to Type II diabetes. With dogs (it seems moreso than cats but occurs with felines also) some people seem to think that overfeeding (including overindulgence with treats) is somehow a kindness, and don't realize that dogs in particular will eat until they burst if you let them. Also table scraps are a big no-no. They don't contain the nutrition that a dog needs and generally do contain a lot of fat. One possible exception: for some inane reason, my dogs love the spines of Romaine lettuce. They crowd me, literally, when I make a Caesar salad, just pushing for the non-leafy parts. I have to be careful not to give them too many as it can cause diarrhea. For training, I reduce the meal size and use the food pellets as treats.

The second article made a claim about prostrate cancer but I have a couple of problems with that, apart from the fact that I couldn't access more than the abstract. First, they used a statistic that is, at best, nonconventional. You may know that I taught statistics and experimental design, so I know that it is very likely that this "odds ratio" that was used probably represented a pretty weak finding. Notice that they didn't allude to any statistical significance at all, just gave (very broad) confidence intervals. They didn't give any numbers to suggest statistical signigicance and didn't claim any. Second, although they looked at dogs of several different sizes and ages, it seems that they didn't look at the age at which the dogs were neutered. More recent investigation has found that if this is performed too early, (before 6 months, say), then a whole host of problems, including the PCA that that study looked at, are significantly increased. I do have that info somewhere; will look it up if you're interested.
 
charver said:
This is news, even to me.

My initial reaction is that there are not many fish who possess the suave self-assurance to pull of a hat.

An octopus would look good in a top hat (holding it in place with a spare tentacle if necessary) and a cane. Are octopusseses fish? Who knows?
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... or perhaps a bowler hat? :)
 
Thorn said:
... or perhaps a bowler hat? :)
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Bowler hat, umbrella and a rolled up copy of the Times (probably laminated). :D

In an ideal world, where octopusses understood and embraced the concepts of currency and consumerism, i would be running the world's leading octopus outfitters and coining it in.
 
charver said:
This is news, even to me.

My initial reaction is that there are not many fish who possess the suave self-assurance to pull off a hat.

An octopus would look good in a top hat (holding it in place with a spare tentacle if necessary) and a cane. Are octopusseses fish? Who knows?
Click to expand...

A catfish with a low slung touring hat would be cool.

Maybe a barracuda with a ballcap on sideway?
 
Southern Man said:
Dooood you replied to a post to USC like it was referring to you. That's fucked up. :)
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I made a mistake on who you were referring to, and you want to make a federal case of it? The man who missed being told 4 times that his question had been answered?

Get a grip. Its not as if you insulting me is a rare thing.
 
WinterBorn said:
A catfish with a low slung touring hat would be cool.

Maybe a barracuda with a ballcap on sideway?
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This is certainly a conundrum.

Normally one would simply type 'fish' and 'hat' into Mr Google's magical picture generator and be inundated with snaps of tunas in turbans or whiting in wimples.

However, people seem strangely reticent to upload their fishy hat pics.

The closest i could get was this old trout in a fluffy white number.
camilla+big+hat.jpg
 
charver said:
This is news, even to me.

My initial reaction is that there are not many fish who possess the suave self-assurance to pull off a hat.

An octopus would look good in a top hat (holding it in place with a spare tentacle if necessary) and a cane. Are octopusseses fish? Who knows?
Click to expand...
I don't know, this puffer fish looks stylin'...

4948904.gif
 
WinterBorn said:
I made a mistake on who you were referring to, and you want to make a federal case of it? The man who missed being told 4 times that his question had been answered?

Get a grip. Its not as if you insulting me is a rare thing.
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Dooooood, both issues are problematic due to your excessive posting, and now you can't even tell when someone is talking to another poster. You're addicted like you were before as Solitary, and its become a real problem. :eek:
 
Southern Man said:
Dooooood, both issues are problematic due to your excessive posting, and now you can't even tell when someone is talking to another poster. You're addicted like you were before as Solitary, and its become a real problem. :eek:
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When I have to post the same thing 4 times in order for you to actually see it and stop asking for me to answer your question, it is your problem not mine.

As for my being addicted.....

Pot
Kettle
Black

Ring any bells?


Now get a grip and move on.
 
charver said:
This is certainly a conundrum.

Normally one would simply type 'fish' and 'hat' into Mr Google's magical picture generator and be inundated with snaps of tunas in turbans or whiting in wimples.

However, people seem strangely reticent to upload their fishy hat pics.

The closest i could get was this old trout in a fluffy white number.
camilla+big+hat.jpg
Click to expand...

Nah, something more like Charlie the Tuna.
 
WinterBorn said:
When I have to post the same thing 4 times in order for you to actually see it and stop asking for me to answer your question, it is your problem not mine.

As for my being addicted.....

Pot
Kettle
Black

Ring any bells?


Now get a grip and move on.
Click to expand...
Doooood, you lost your job over your addiction last time, and had to change your name....
 
Southern Man said:
Doooood, you lost your job over your addiction last time, and had to change your name....
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I lost my job? Or did Solitary lose his job? Or is it some other imaginary character that lost an imaginary job?

I have no idea why you seem to think you know what you are talking about. Its time to let it go and move on.
 
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