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 Posted: Tue Aug 18, 2009 3:37 pm
The title of this thread is a quote I saw on a bumper sticker once in the parking lot of my college. It has been stuck in my head ever since.
The pet overpopulation problem is starting to become a serious problem. Every year, thousands of animals are euthanized in animal shelters, yet people continue to let their pets breed or buy new pets from breeders or pet stores, supporting puppy mills. This has to stop.
I urge you all to take a look at my profile, which I've kept this way for the better part of two years, to educate those who were not aware of this problem. I strongly advise you to watch the video in my profile in its entirety as well; it's very powerful, and while it may be hard to watch, sometimes the reality of situations is what motivates us the most.
Feel free to discuss your opinions in this thread. Thank you!
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Posted: Tue Aug 18, 2009 4:01 pm
while im agaisnt mills for any type of animal (rodents, pigs, and some birds aside because they need to be mass produced to feed some reptiles) and i am 100% agaisnt back yard breeding, i think that discouraging people from buying animals from reputable breeders is kind of silly. some people are looking for a certain animal with certain charicteristics. lets say that someone needs a dog that doesnt shed for allergy reasons, or a dog that can help them around the farm, or even if you want to enter your animal in a show.
i will admit i am a bit biased as i plan on breeding leutistic ball pythons once i have the money to get 2 females and a male all from different breeders, and i plan on breeding midnight blizzard leopard geckos.
but i hold breeders to a very high standard. breeding for profit or just because you think the animal is cute are some of the WORST reasons to breed any animal. never breed any animal unless its for food, your trying to get aa certain genetic mutation, and/or your trying to better the health or temperment of the animal. this is a good rule of thumb for any animal. the reason i plan on breeding snakes and geckos is because i have a huge passion for them and i find their genetic mutations very interesting, i dont plan on making any money at all and will be lucky to break even with the leopard geckos, but i plan on keeping what doesnt sell.
also i would like to point out that yes, a shelter is one of the best places to get a pet, but please remember that an animal shouldnt have to suffer to deserve a good home
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Posted: Tue Aug 18, 2009 5:08 pm
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Posted: Tue Aug 18, 2009 8:18 pm
Shanna66 while im agaisnt mills for any type of animal (rodents, pigs, and some birds aside because they need to be mass produced to feed some reptiles) and i am 100% agaisnt back yard breeding, i think that discouraging people from buying animals from reputable breeders is kind of silly. some people are looking for a certain animal with certain charicteristics. lets say that someone needs a dog that doesnt shed for allergy reasons, or a dog that can help them around the farm, or even if you want to enter your animal in a show. As mentioned in my profile, I am not against breeding animals for specific purposes. However, breeding animals for show I am completely against. Animals were bred for specific purposes; dachshunds for getting into weasel holes for hunting weasels, labrador retrievers used for retrieving ducks from the water, etc. To breed an animal for the purpose of winning money or showing off dogs to me is selfish and in a world where thousands of animals die each year because they're not good enough to meet the attractive standards of these people aggravate me to no end. Why keep breeding more and more dogs and cats because you want something pretty and "pure" blood? Animals in shelters are just as good as, if not better than pureblood animals, as mixed breeds have greater genetic variation and therefore stronger genes. There's an entire chapter devoted to how watered down we're making our dogs in a book called Animals in Translation by Temple Grandin, a woman with autism who for a career studies animal behavior. Quote: i will admit i am a bit biased as i plan on breeding leutistic ball pythons once i have the money to get 2 females and a male all from different breeders, and i plan on breeding midnight blizzard leopard geckos. The exotic pet trade is also something I'm against. Snakes and lizards have not been domesticated to pet life as dogs and cats have been. Their real home is in the wild. I absolutely adore snakes but have never owned one for this reason. And while you may be a reputable breeder or know some reputable breeders, the fact is that these animals came into existence because someone stole them from their natural habitat. By continuing to breed these exotic animals, you are indirectly contributing to this problem of poaching. Quote: but i hold breeders to a very high standard. breeding for profit or just because you think the animal is cute are some of the WORST reasons to breed any animal. never breed any animal unless its for food, your trying to get aa certain genetic mutation, and/or your trying to better the health or temperment of the animal. this is a good rule of thumb for any animal. the reason i plan on breeding snakes and geckos is because i have a huge passion for them and i find their genetic mutations very interesting, i dont plan on making any money at all and will be lucky to break even with the leopard geckos, but i plan on keeping what doesnt sell. Another huge, huge thing I'm against. I'll never understand why people breed for recessive traits in animals. Is this good for the animal, or your own amusement? How is this directly benefitting the animal's natural population? I think an animal born without eyes is an interesting mutation, but I certainly wouldn't selectively breed for it. There was a segment on an Animal Planet show about a woman who breeds cats for polydactyly. Because it's a highly recessive trait, she inadvertently ends up with cats who have severely deformed limbs and can barely move. When you breed your animals with mutations and get a bad end-result in some of the off-spring (and when you're breeding for these traits, you certainly will) what do you plan to do with them? I certainly hope you won't resort to killing them, as an instructor I had once would do with his deformed incest puppies, as also mentioned in my profile. This is exploitation at its worst, and as someone who cares about the environment, I would hope you have done your research and know what you're getting into. Quote: also i would like to point out that yes, a shelter is one of the best places to get a pet, but please remember that an animal shouldnt have to suffer to deserve a good home It is the best place to get a pet. Also, just in case, these are merely my opinions and I don't expect you to conform to them of course. I just love a good debate. biggrin
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Posted: Tue Aug 18, 2009 8:46 pm
well sadly for you i suck at debating to ill just accept that we will have a difference in opinion ^.^
i do want to say though that by breeding exotic animals in captivity then there is no need for getting wild caught animals. im agaisnt wild caught animals unless they are rescues, i went out of my way to make sure my first ball ball python was captive bred for so many reasons, fairness to the animal being my main concern.
and breeding for a recessive gene is only ok if it doesnt affect the animal's quality of life. an albino leopard gecko can and will live perfectly fine as an albino because they dont need uv lighting, while a bearded dragon would suffer as an albino since they thrive in uv lighting. but if i had some normal morph babies or any morph i didnt want i would never cull them off just based on looks. some breeders do and i dont agree with that at all, i would try to find good homes for them or keep them myself. i would only cull if there was a health reason to do it or if i had to freeze the eggs for some reason or another. i have frozen gecko eggs before because when i got my 3rd leo she was gravid and i had no way of caring for the babies or properly incubating them and didnt want them to hatch with deformities which is common if the incubation temps fluctuate. im still doing plenty of research on breeding balls and leos since ive only kept reptiles for about 6 years and have only kept snakes for about a year now so i will gladly admit that i still have alot to learn, but ive got years ahead of me before i can even afford one leutistic ball python as adults sell for 12,000 and babies sell for 6,000. not to mention it takes years for a ball python to reach sexual maturity and even longer to get to a good age to breed without hurting the female.
also, just because an animal isnt domesticated doesnt mean it isnt happy or that it could survive in the wild. my geckos and snakes are quite used to their cushy lifestyle and as far as i can tell enjoy their lives. i leave them alone for the most part besides health checks and a small amount of handling to make sure health checks can continue to be a stress free proccess. plus every animal that has been domesticated has happened because someone took it out of the wild. dogs, rats, cattle, they all came from the wild to be used and bred by humans. the mopre ball pythons i sell to new owners the less ball pythons will be stolen from the wild and put into the pet trade, though the morph i plan on breeding is nothing like a normal morph and sell for a much higher price.
but exotic animals, especially reptiles are my greatest passion in the world so nothing could ever make me change my mind about owning them ^.^
breeding for show im on the fence about ill admit. i dont like how people are sacrificing the health of their dogs for looks, like how thin a german sheperds hips have gotten over the years in show lines.
i think that covers everything, i was skipping around so if i missed something please tell me
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Posted: Wed Aug 19, 2009 6:13 am
When I was little, I wanted my golden retriever to have puppies. I begged my parents and they wouldn't let her breed because they thought I'd be sad to see all the puppies being bought. Well, years later, I'm thankful that my parents didn't cave in to my request. Just imagining all those puppies stuck in cages, being treated like wild animals, given no reason to live but to had puppies just makes me so angry at all those people doing these things. My sister works at the Humane Society (and I'll work there too, when I'm old enough), and she says that they keep all the animals until they get adopted. The longest that an animal was there was for 1 1/2 years! She says that nearly everytime she goes in to work, a few of the animals are gone. She gets sad, but at the same time, it's nice to know that they don't have to be there anymore. They have a home.
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Posted: Wed Aug 19, 2009 6:18 am
you know, now that i think about it, most of the dogs and cats in our family have been strays. we got one from a shelter. only hamsters an fish from the pet store. not even that, anymore. just strays and rejects.
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Posted: Thu Aug 20, 2009 8:16 am
i'm a sucker for baby cats or dogs. so we've been through a lot of litters. and it is painful when you can't find homes for them and they do go to a shelter. now i was just a little kid then. and did not understand that we had a population problem. it pains me to say. but the sheltered ones should come first...
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Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2009 5:13 am
 "Orbis terrarum est non altus satis (  ) All the pets I have every had in my lifetime are from shelters, usually animals that were abused or had no homes. heart The world is not high enough" James B.
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Posted: Sun Sep 13, 2009 10:12 am
If I could get a cat or a dog, I would definitely adopt one from a shelter. Unfortunately, my mom's allergic. :'(
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Stars Flying Vice Captain
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Posted: Mon Sep 14, 2009 6:26 pm
all anials rock :3 i get pets from ads online or the paper.also the humane society it makes me sad when a pet is old enough and it has a name ya can't change xD
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Posted: Tue Sep 15, 2009 4:29 pm
You said that you are against the breeding of animals to make money. I disagree with that, well somewhat anyways. I am in the horse industry, and i sell and breed horses for their show quality in the ring. I have horses tat sell for up to 20,000$ as just weanlings. I do agree with you on half of it because, some breeders go as far, as if they dont get what they want the horses will be euthanized. We have rescued two babies from that exact situation one of which has become a show ring mega money winner and the other a beautifully built and sweet pea stallion.
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Posted: Mon Aug 09, 2010 4:34 am
There was an old pet store near my house, that was closing. The old lady there couldn't handle the pet store anymore, and she was selling the remaining animals for very low prices. We got two cats from there - one was mine, one was my brother's. My brother's, named Nutt Butt, was a kittymill kitten, you could just tell, even then when he was a kitten. Mine, Angel-Foodz (don't blame me, I was eight...xD) was all white. We just had to get him, because my first cat was all white, he ended up running away. My second cat was Angel's son, Ebony. (My brother and sister tricked me into thinking ebony meant white. xD) We had to get rid of our cats because we were moving because the scumbag landlord said we didn't pay the bill. So we took it to court, won, blahblah. Anyways, we gave Ebony to family and he ended up running away, and took the cats they couldn't take to a no-kill shelter. But a lot of our cats we had were from shelters and people who put up ads giving away cats. We ended up having sixteen cats, but they were all well-cared for and most of them were cats we got from shelters/other people. Getting pets from petstores, etc. isn't that bad. Leaving pets to sit and whither in a store is just as bad as ignoring cats in shelters. What do you think happens to the pets in stores that don't sell?
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Reply
