Spaying, Neutering, and the decline of Humanity

There are a lot of things in this world that make me angry. To even begin to list them here would take more time than I’ve allotted to get this post written, so I won’t even try. I’m an extremely passionate person, sometimes to a fault, so I tend to take all of my emotions, including anger, to extremes.

Recently though, while reading a post on “The Daily Drool” (DD), an internet mailing list for basset hound lovers, I came across a post that angered me more than anything in my recent memory. I must be very clear here, it was not the poster, or anything she had done that made me angry, in fact I am in complete agreement with her on the issue. Rather it was what she was recounting from experience plus the very fact that she was forced to have said experience that made me angry.

I had been following a thread on the DD for several days, about the pros and cons of spaying/neutering your dogs. Beverly, a frequent poster to the DD, momslave to several dogs, and an extremely gifted writer of “Nigel and Lewis” adventures, wrote in about her experience over 15 years working for a kennel (I think a humane society like one but I’m not positive). Beverly came down firmly on the side of spaying and neutering and from these excerpts it is easy to see why.

“one of my jobs was to go through the stray and abandoned dogs and cats periodically, and put a big, black *X* on the cage cards of those who were going to be put to sleep because
1. They were vicious and not adoptable
2. They had been there too long (usually a couple of months)
3. They were ill with something that required continual or extreme
treatment-- cancer, severe mange, etc
4. Or worst of all, we were coming up on a holiday and needed the space.
So of course, perfectly healthy, happy dogs got euthanized.…
… What fun it was to put a leash on a young, excited, happy dog, wagging his
or her tail, delighted to be out of kennels, trusting me (because I did it,
I held them) to be nice to them, and then-------killing them.

I don't care whether there are health benefits or not. I don't care whether
you show or don't. I don't care whether someone thinks it's too young or too
old or too pretty or too anything. If you are not involved in a breeding
program and you don't have room for all the overflow then you need to neuter
or spay your pet. Anyone who thinks it isn't necessary has not had an
"accidental" litter that you then have to deal with, or held a year old Lab or
Pointer or Basset or Mutt while he wags his tail and the doctor puts a
needle in his vein to stop his heart. Do that a few times. Do it maybe a
hundred times and then come back and tell me that neutering and spaying
doesn't make a difference in dogs that get loose and roam because they're in
season, or the bitch down the road is.”

I cried for about an hour after I finished reading her post. For the next two days I alternated between crying and quite literally boiling with anger. It’s taken me more than a week to calm down enough to write about it, and actually it’s what spurred me to give in to increasing peer pressure and start my own blog.

So other than the obvious, the images of puppies in my head, and the horror at Beverly’s firsthand recounting of it, what made me so angry I could think of little else for days? The answer is complex, but I will do my best to winnow it down to a manageable read.

The first aspect that angered me was the fact that we, the human race, feels that we have the right to pronounce and carry out a death sentence on a healthy, happy, sentient being. I know what you’re all thinking here, we do it all the time. We kill chickens, pigs, cows, sheep, etc. by the millions to eat. It’s true, and it is somewhat at odds not only with what I’m trying to say here, but also with my own philosophies, and it’s something I’m still working out for myself. I’ve toyed with the idea of becoming a vegetarian, and I buy only organic, free-range, cruelty-free meats. Still, I realize it’s a contradiction. All I can say in my defense is that at least we are eating them, using their skins, sometimes their bones, and other things. I’m not saying that makes it right, or wrong, but I digress.

Let me approach this from another angle, the second and ultimately strongest reason I’m so very angry; arrogance! More than 2,000 years ago the human race began domesticating dogs. They took them out of their natural wild environments, and brought them into their homes. They trained them as companions, and dogs proved extremely adaptable to domesticity. Over the next 2,000+ years humans began to genetically engineer dogs to their liking, breeding them for certain traits that made them more desirable either as working dogs or as pets. Traits were bred into them that rendered them unable to survive in the wild. Inbreeding and other irresponsible breeding practices resulted in entire breeds being prone to debilitating or deadly disorders like epilepsy and hip dysplasia. Dogs became completely dependent on humans for their survival. Can you imagine a pack of wild Basset Hounds, Pomeranians, Daschunds, or Shar Pei? Never going to happen.

So now, here we are, several thousand years later with a multitude of beautiful and useful dog breeds that we in our infinite wisdom created. It’s progress right, evolution? We members of the human race love to tout all of the progress we’ve made over the millennia. So to recap, we’ve domesticated dogs then bred them to be human dependant, and even if we hadn’t we’ve taken away most of what could have been their natural habitat were they still wild animals.

Now don’t get me wrong here, I LOVE dogs and I’m glad we domesticated them! I’ve had dogs all my life, and I can’t imagine life without them. My dogs are as much a part of my family as my daughter, and believe me my daughter agrees. We’ve often given up luxuries and cut down on necessities when money was needed for vet bills or pet meds, and we wouldn’t have it any other way. My sister-in-law summed it up the other day when we were discussing the dogs being abandoned at shelters because of home foreclosures and not enough rentals accepting pets. She said, “If we get foreclosed on it will be me and Bandit (her minpin-chuahua) living out of the car together.” I feel exactly the same way.

That being said, that’s me and my family. There are others out there who feel the same, I know some of them, and there are certainly a lot of them on the DD. However, we have a RESPONSIBILITY, as a race, to care for our creations. Stuffing them in kennels and shelters because we don’t want to see them roaming the streets and then killing them when we don’t have the room, or the money, or the time for them, is unacceptable. I know what most of you are thinking, “I didn’t create these breeds or domesticate the dog, so why should I be responsible?” This is the human race’s favorite justification for inaction and apathy. In America we are especially good at it, “I didn’t own slaves, why should I have to help the millions of African Americans stuck in a cycle of poverty because of slavery and its after affects?” or “I don’t know anyone in Darfur, so why should I do anything to stop the genocide there?”

I’ve spent most of my life trying to justify to myself and others why the human race is worth trying to save, that the atrocities they commit in the name of their god, or country, or belief can be attributed to ignorance and isolation and with time, education, and understanding we can evolve into a race worthy of being the dominant species on the planet, and perhaps someday even becoming productive members of the universe by joining the other life forms that must exist out there. I’m an optimist; I believe that the human spirit can rise above its current state of pettiness, selfishness, greed, and arrogance. I watch the news, war coverage, politics, murder, poverty, apathy, and still I manage to believe. When I see these horrors it makes me want to try harder to help the human race become a better species.

But I have to say, Beverly’s posting made me doubt my belief in humans for the first time in a really long time. If we as a race can justify taking a healthy, happy creature, wagging its tail and wanting nothing more from us than our love, and killing it, no matter how humanely, for ANY reason, then perhaps we in our arrogance, apathy and greed, don’t deserve to be the dominant species on this or any planet. Perhaps the best thing for the universe would be to let the human race continue on its current path to imminent extinction.