New data released by the ASPCA, HSUS, and the American Pet Products Association‘s National Pet Owners Survey show that shelter killings are at an all time low in both whole numbers and percent of pet dogs in America. Down from a high of nearly 25% of all dogs per year in the 1970s, as little as 2% of dogs now find their end in US shelters per year, the majority of them are pit bulls.
Despite both the human and pet dog populations in America rising, the number of dogs entering and dying in shelters has fallen steadily for decades. While this vast improvement hasn’t stemmed the degree of vitriol against “breeders” by those in the shelter/rescue community, a look at statistics shows that there is little foundation for their anger. The situation is getting better every year and very little of the past or remaining problems have anything to do with hobby breeders or people who buy their dogs.
There are now an estimated 78.2 Million pet dogs in the United States. Source: APPA 2012
The most significant factor in the steady decline in shelter intakes is widely credited to the advancements made in spay/neuter programs. Nearly four out of five pet dogs are now desexed. Despite making up only 1 in 5 pet dogs, intact dogs account for 9 out of 10 shelter intakes, a staggering asymmetry.
78% of dogs are spayed or neutered. The vast majority of dogs entering shelters are still intact. Source: ASPCA
Purebreds are under-represented in shelters versus their proportion of the 78 million pet dogs, but up to a quarter of intakes are deemed to be pure versus 75% deemed mixed-breed. The most significant disparity between the general population of dogs and dogs that enter shelter and are euthanized is being designated as a “pit bull” or a pit bull mix.
Whereas the percent of dogs desexed has increased since spay/neuter programs were widely introduced in the mid 70s, the popularity of pit bulls and their share of euthanized dogs has steadily increased from as little as 2% in the 1980s to the 60% we see today.
The sources and destinations of American dogs; Shelter intake and euthanasia rates per year.
The 2.4 to 3.5 million Pit Bull type dogs that are currently pets make up between 3% and 4.5% of the owned dogs in the USA yet the 1.1 million that enter shelters each year account for nearly 30% of all shelter intakes and 60% of all dogs euthanized. That means that more pit bulls are killed than all other breeds combined. Pit bulls also account for 60% of fatal dog attacks with Rottweilers coming in second with 14%. Fatal attacks are fleetingly rare, but bites and maulings are not, and even pit bull apologists will admit that their aggression propensity towards other dogs and cats is significantly higher than it is towards humans. Yet the average age of dogs entering shelters is only 18 months, so a staggering share of these failed relationships are occurring with adolescent dogs and problems with dog aggression or anything similar doesn’t even register on the top 10 reasons people report for why they are abandoning the dog at the shelter.
The biggest lie in dogdom today is that there is an “overpopulation” problem. This ignores the steady increase in both percentage of homes that have dogs, the rising number of dogs per home, the increase in population and the increase in pet dogs.
The next biggest lie is that breeders are to blame and that every purchased puppy condemns a shelter dog to death. This ignores that the majority of dogs are acquired for little to no cost from friends or family, not from breeders, and that every aspect of buying a dog from a breeder decreases the chance that the dog will ever see the inside of a shelter.
- Purebreds are less likely to end up in shelters than mixed-breeds.
- Dogs purchased from breeders or pet stores are less likely to end up in shelters.
- Dogs given as gifts or acquired for more than $100 are less likely to end up in a shelter.
- Dogs acquired for less than $30 or dogs adopted from a shelter are more likely to end up in a shelter.
Pit bull rescuers will wail and complain and blame puppy mills, hobby breeders, and puppy buyers with the most heinous of crimes against dogs and humanity. But the truth is that the foster pit bull at their feet is more likely to end up back in a shelter and more likely to get put down than any puppy mill dog sold in a mall, any purebred dog sold by a hobby breeder to a family that paid for it, or even the most carelessly bred oops mutt.
In fact, those pit bulls are making all other breeds of dog and dog enthusiasts look worse than they are. Without pit bulls in the picture, the yearly euthanization rate could be less than 1% of dogs. If you’re decrying dead shelter dogs and the first words out of your mouth are “breeders” and “buyers” or “overpopulation,” and not “pit bull culture” then you’re dangerously misinformed.
The rising status of dogs in our families combined with spay/neuter, foster and rescue, and no-kill programs have made the last 30 years an increasingly better time to be alive for dogs. While there’s still work to be done, and there will always be animals in need, the old paradigm of blame and internecine hatred–especially attacks aimed at people who endeavor to do right by their dogs from conception to old age–are misguided and distract from the real problems.
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Interesting data.
You cite 30% of shelter intake population as pit bulls or pit bull X’s, and 25% of the shelter population as being purebred. Any idea of what fraction of the apparent purebred dogs in shelters are pit bulls?
Since pit bulls are not a breed (it’s a class of dogs of about 30 breeds) that’s a tough question to sort out
The american pit bull terrier is a recognized breed. It has been a breed for a very long time.
Yes, and so what?
I think numbers and facts bear out that registered APBTs with papers from some registry are a tiny fraction of what we call pit bulls. Perhaps even an insignificant fraction.
It’s sort of like saying that the AKC show Border Collie is the only true Border Collie. Heck, it’s not even the major or secondary or tertiary type.
shelters do classify pitbulls as “pure bred” hence why they call some “pit bulls” and some “pit bull mixed” a large portion of “purebred” in shelters IS pit bulls
Pit bulls aren’t a pure bred dog.
As a breed rescue volunteer I check the kill shelter listings by me and Craigslist, every day. Yes, overwhelmingly the inmates are deemed “pit bulls” or “pit mixes” or “pit bull type.” That last term probably is most accurate today, as we are at the point where what is considered a “Pit bull” s strictly determined by certain physical dimensions and even first impressions. The http://www.savelennox.com.uk site and the story of THAT dog pretty much sums up this new labeling phenomenon.
At the moment I’m looking at a newspaper piece I downloaded from Facebook from some paper called “The Blade.” It’s a sampling of six “pit bulls” that were DNA tested. Three of six had zero “American Pit Bull Terrier” in them, nor Am Staff nor Staffordshire bull terrier. Those that had other dogs were often mixed with other mastiff types like American Bulldogs or boxers. Some also included breeds that would surprise most folks like Irish Setter and whippet, but to look at the dogs though, the impression would be that mastiff blood was the overwhelming ingredient in the mix.
Still, it seems just about ANYTHING can be a pit bull. I’ve seen a lot of sausagey looking show labs with really broad heads and short muzzles. Mix one with a whippet or something and I’d bet dollars to donuts you have a good chance of producing a pittie, because it sure stands a good chance of simply looking the part.
I don’t deny that real APBTs and similar bull-and-terrier type breeds became far too popular with folks, often the WRONG folks, becoming overbred, badly bred, and it has led quite a bit to the current breed demographics in shelters.
But combine that with the fact that anything can be a pit, and you have your answer to how so many pits are in shelters. “Pit” has become slang. So sure, there are loads of pit bulls in shelters but god knows what that means anymore.
DNA tests do not test for “pit bull” and the test manufacture admits the results will be a mix of other breeds, possibly not including APBTs or Staffies. Doesn’t mean the dog is not a pit. Look at the stats above. It has been said that only 25% of the pit population is altered, therefore its a very good bet that any mutt will have pit in it, and by definition if pit is in the dog it is a pit bull.
for some reason almost ALL dna tests will show Irish Setter and of all things Weimies and Dalmations…. I have little faith in “breed” testing dna
Breed DNA tests are bunk. Don’t waste your money, the results are crap.
Thank you. Shelter stats are skewed for the reasons you gave, as well as the fact that pits and pit mixes are so over-represented in the overall dog population. Add to this the fact that a Tuft’s study several years ago showed that “purebred” dogs were misidentified about 45% of the time, and couple it to the many misconceptions about what a “pit bull” is and how they should be handled/raised, and you have the basis for the statistics used to decry so alled “pit bull culture.” It isn’t “pit bull culture,” BTW. It’s bad owner culture; it’s just that the “bad dog du jour” is the pit. 25 hrs ago those homea had Dobes or Chows or whatevwr other breed had a “rep” for being “dangerous.”
To put this in perspective, a dog is statistically far less likely to die in a shelter than a white-tailed deer is to die from a hunter.
There are 30 million white-tailed deer in the US. 6 million are killed every year.
That’s 20 percent.
A white-tailed deer in any given year is ten times more likely to become table fare or a wall mount than a dog has of being killed in a shelter.
retrieverman recently posted..Yorkshire terriers finally allowed to participate in AKC earthdog tests
http://www.actionbioscience.org/biodiversity/rooney.html Source for the deer data.
retrieverman recently posted..Labrador pictus
Here’s hoping the deer that get shot die at the hands of a good marksman.
Uh, a mixing of tenses there. Let’s hope the deer that get shot all die at the hands of good marksMEN.
Sheesh.
Markspersons.
Jess recently posted..Road to Nowhere
Oh that is SO PC! ;D
To keep deer population thinning in perspective and not to be down on hunters at all…
I wonder how many deer are killed by cars. They are a major road hazard in our wooded but suburban setting. Last month I acquired 30 lbs of venison when one ran out into our road got hit by a car and staggered back to my front field to die. I took it to the state police and got a “deer possession ticket” and then took it to a deer butcher and had it made into fillets and other tasty meat.
In my lifetime of driving around here I have hit two deer and my husband had one run into his car (hit rear passenger door) last fall.
We have such a dense population in our reservoir water shed that there is no understory to the woodlands and a recent survey by air with an infrared detector on the helicopter showed a population density of 90 per square mile. The carrying capacity for the habitat is supposed to be 10 per square mile.
Two years ago we were sitting in a restaurant at a small local mall and two deer spooked across the parking lot and leaped through the plate glass windows of a store three stores away.
end of deer monologue
It would seem that Animal Shelters have the complex human behavior problems as well as faced with dog fanciers choices of breeds from one area to another. HSUS and PETA agenda supporters likely can be found anywhere even Shelters and Breed Clubs. These supporters can be a danger to any organization or breed when their presence is not recogized. Secondly, poorly considered pit bull breedings apparently are more problematic in varies geographical areas of the United States it would seem. I have seen great SPCA no kill shelters in those areas where Pit Bull overloads do not plague the Shelter.
Some good info here, some questionable assertions as well. Shelters tag all kinds of dogs as “pit bulls”. There are at least 25 breeds of dogs commonly tagged as “pit bulls”, including boxers, rottweilers and even Labrador retrievers. California Federation of Dog Clubs has a breed ID workshop that we present to shelters here in California, and it is a real eye-opener for them.
Also, I’d be intered to know where the statistics came from about how many dogs entering shelters are intact. As far as I know there is no reliable way to know for sure, particularly when it comes to bitches, and I don’t think shelters keep track of that information. I know our stats here in California do not include reproductive status. Where did you get the estimate of 2-10% of shelter intakes being from pet stores originally? That also seems high. The only study I know of on that point was done by “Heaven Can Wait” animal sanctuary in Nevada. They found that fewer than 5% were from pet stores.
http://time4dogs.blogspot.com/2011/05/do-pet-store-aanimals-fill-shelters.html
I don’t like to see us take unsubstantaited assertions by animal rights groups like the ASPCA. These groups are notorious for pulling facts and figures out of the air.
Geneva Coats recently posted..APHIS Illumination
None of these groups release their raw data, nor even a methodology. The ASPCA and the HSUS release much of the same data and then some different data and in the last several releases they have failed to distinguish dogs from cats, they simply lump them together.
This is unfortunate because the population structure of dogs and cats is so very different. They claim 20-25% of intake dogs go back to their owners, but only 2% of cats. They estimate that there are over 80 million pet cats but there could be up to 70 million feral cats. How many feral dogs are there? How much of this entire problem is coming from animals born in the wild?
How much of the drop in numbers might we then attribute to the rise of the urban coyotes? I know that in my area they are coming into yards and suburban areas more than ever before. The neighborhood e-mail lists have reports of attacks and killings all the time now. I see these coyotes during daylight hours, running down the street. I’ve chased one away from my neighbor’s lawn. This wasn’t a reality 5 years ago and it was unheard of 10 years ago. A few years ago there were a rash of missing cat posters and those have waned but there are still more than before. I wonder if that was the coyotes clearing out the outdoor pet cats and now few of those exist any more.
There are a lot of questions with these numbers and I don’t have $2k to purchase the annual pet survey to see what sort of break down they might have on that. I’ve seen it broken down before when it was quoted in a published study, but that’s 10 year old data at this point.
Chris we have 55 lb coyotes here 12 miles north of the Baltimore Beltway now. Hopefully it will help with the deer population. I have actual photos of two a local hunter shot and the skull from one of them. The skull is only 1 1/2 inches shorter than a Borzoi skull. I can share the pictures with you if you let me know how.
Chris might be a far out consideration. Could this over population of wild cats be drawing the hungry coyote back to old territories?
It’s a strong possibility.
The ASPCA website:
http://www.aspca.org/about-us/faq/pet-statistics.aspx
This is also similar to the data that originally came from the APPMA 1999-2000 pet survey. You can see the table near the end of this post:
http://www.border-wars.com/2008/11/myth-of-christmas-puppies-2.html
It was included in a published study. Notice they add to 155 since some boxes were checked twice. I’d like to see the raw data to see where the double counters come from.
Chris could it be these numbers are revealed with Shelters having adoption days at the Pet Stores?
Yes! I know, data is hard to come by, good data is very rare. And I don’t like using HSUS or ASPCA unsourced data either, but they have published these same numbers over the years and they show the same dramatic fall. They rarely make hay with this though, they almost always try and inflate the numbers by combining dogs and cats and giving ranges for them. They also rarely put their numbers into perspective as part of total dog ownership or anything else like that.
They also have done some incredibly stupid things in the past like quoting the exponential population equation of “one pregnant female can result in XXX dogs in just _ years” sort of nonsense. They’ve changed this recently I’ve noticed, they now say how many litters a cat or dog can have on average per year.
I’d love it if someone would e-mail me the APPMA report so I could see some more break down which is all coming from the same source. Differing sources is the reason we have questions on what constitutes a purebred and what percent of intakes are pit bulls or identified as such.
Again, the assertion that 90% of shelter animals are intact is qustionable. There are no shelters that keep track of such information, and indeed it would be impossible to know with any degree of certainty which animals are sterile and which are intact just by looking at them (we could only know in the case of the visually obviously castrated males). I believe the ASPCA pulled that percentage out of someplace where the sun don’t shine and now it will be passed along as gospel truth.
Geneva Coats recently posted..APHIS Illumination
Male dogs are obvious. So too are a number of female dogs. (1) Owner reporting, (2) Age, (3) Scars, (4) Ultrasound, (5) Discovery on Spay surgery.
I don’t think it’s as obscure as you’d think. Heck, there could even be a simple urine test.
Hmm great stats for some things.. not so much for others.. thanks for compiling this .. my county runs an excellent shelter.. they do not have an ultrasound machine.. nor is there a urine test to determine reproductive status. They also do not keep track of how many dogs are altered from their natural state upon intake.. they do take the owners word for it in the case of bitches.. dogs are indeed obvious.also in minute cases when older dogs are taken in they may already be sterile but who knows that? they alter them all before sale. I will use these stats.. all except that one..things are looking up for all dogs!!
And this is the difference between a press release and a published study: in a study the authors tell you how they ascertained their numbers and list their contact information! I’d love to have raw data to play with and a detailed method to read and consider.
One thing I will point out is that the HSUS and the ASPCA are sort of putting themselves out of business by publishing these numbers. It’s hard to drum up business and a sense of urgency when the problem you raise money for is disappearing. It’s actually against their best interests to publish, sort of like the AKC not publishing their dropping registration numbers anymore. So in this respect by looking at the same numbers from the same sources, I do get the strong impression that things are getting better and have been for years and years.
Is it not the case that the vast majority of shelters and rescues sell only dogs that have been S/N? If a significant number of dogs entering shelters have come from shelters, how can it be that 90% of the dogs entering shelters are intact? If 80% of owned dogs are S/N, can it be that the 20% that are intact(many of which are owned by people who can and do manage them appropriately), and whatever number of dogs are considered “unowned” (however that is defined) can make up the “90% of dogs entering shelters [that] are intact?” Seems like a mathematical impossibility.
I shouldn’t have used the same color green in both those diagrams. 90% of shelter intakes are not from shelters. The same ASPCA publication that makes the 90% intact claims makes the claim that 20% of owners who drop their dogs off at shelters GOT the dog at a shelter.
I think I remember reading that owner surrenders are half of all intakes, dogs picked up stray are the other 50%. This would mean that 5% of intakes are owner surrendered shelter “returns.” So it’s not a mathematical impossibility even if 100% of these dogs leave shelters intact.
Again, I’d love to see raw data, but that would require greater shelter transparency and reporting.
Look at the diagram with the orange and green dogs, the second picture. There are 78 million pet dogs, so there are 78 dogs in the picture total.
Each year 2.5-2.5 million dogs enter shelters so that’s 2.5-3.5 dog icons. I have them represented over there on the right. There are 2.5 dog icons, 90% of the color is green, 10% of the color is orange.
There are more than enough green dogs to supply the 2+ dogs each year, I count ~17 dogs.
The reason it is not a mathematical impossibility is that (1) there are a lot of dogs (2) there are very few that enter shelters (3) those dogs that enter shelters are not drawn evenly from the population.
This is very much the point of this post, to document that the problem isn’t a universal one, and that the “blame” for dogs ending up in shelters is being put at the foot of hobby breeders unfairly. I imagine if they tracked this sort of thing well and had good data, you’d find very very very few dogs purchased from a breeder would ever end up in shelters and only a smaller amount would be put down.
Agree they do not want to disclosse how many young puppies are being neutered too early in my opinion. They do not want the percentage of health issues revealed due to this practice. Most important it would seem the development of weak bones that break before they are six months old.
One volunteer of the ASPCA disclosed to me the Vets employed no not how to help a whelping rescued female.
have large trailers were they spay and neuter for less than $25.00 to add to the genocide. The stories of Vet bills of these ASPCA rescues owners are pitiful.
You should change the Frisbee donation sidebar to a ‘donate so I can buy the latest APPMA statistics’. 😉
statistics on “pit bulls” are completely meaningless.
The term “pit bull” is meaningless. No one knows what a “pit bull”.. . just about any shorthaired blocky headed dog is called a “pit bull”.
Denver lawyer Jennifer Edwards says that almost EVERY TIME she challenges a dog seizure for being a “pit bull” the dog turns out to be not even remotely close to an APBT/AST or SBT.
So of course, if you call most dogs “pit bulls”, most dogs killed in shelters are ‘pit bulls”
Chris, this is not much different from “border collies”… how many “border collies” are you asked to help rescue that turn out to be Shelties, Australian shepherds, English shepherds or obvious mixes? And OTOH, how many typical working border collies are identified in shelters as “mixed breeds” or something else entirely.
The only thing that makes pit bulls different is the incredible hysteria surrounding the dogs.
There’s no doubt that “blocky headed shorthaired dogs” are among the most popular type of dog in the US… And of those, a certain amount will be APBTs or APBT mixes. FEW will be Am Staffs. And virtually NONE will be SBTs. Many will be Lab mixes, boxer mixes, etc.
I’m aware there are issues in identifying all dogs that come into shelters. I’m also aware that there are particular biases on both sides that would lead one to label a non-pit bull as a pitbull and even a pit bull as something else like a boxer. You’ll notice my careful language here:
designated, not verified, “pit bull“ not Pit Bull, etc.
As much as poor breed ID skills and “St. Francis Terrier” nonsense exists in this culture, these numbers can not be simply explained away as meaningless. The bully landrace is not large enough and the other unmistakably non-pit bull breeds are substantial enough that it’s inane to conclude that there is a mass conspiracy happening all over the country and by the people compiling data are out for pit bulls.
It’s not just unfounded hysteria and to pretend as such is futile. You can’t solve problems that you pretend don’t exist.
I doubt this. All dogs are not equal, all dogs don’t have an equal chance of getting dumped at a shelter, and those dumped certainly don’t have the same chance of adoption. By even the most sympathetic interpretation of what a “blocky headed short-haired dog” is, they are greatly over represented in shelter entry dogs and they do so much worse from then on.
Since I have a boarding kennel we see a lot of dogs from the general pet population and I do specialized “how to control your dog” training sessions with individuals also. Our local shelters are reluctant to adopt out “pit bulls” so they adopt out a lot of “labrador” and “boxer” crosses.
Morphologically these dogs are not just blocky headed and short muzzled. They are blocky headed with little piggy eyes and very well muscled bodies – usually with greyhound muscled (jodhpur)thighs. Labs have a lot of HD and do not have those massive thighs. A lot of them are red dulutes with the pale brown or pink noses or brindles. First generation lab crosses will almost always be black dogs because even the yellow labs are black dogs with the extension yellow gene. True chocolate labs do have the brown dilute gene.
Behaviorly these dogs often show a lot of dominance to their owners and dog aggression.
In the absence of a “leader type” owner these two attributes make them difficult to own as adults even when desexed.
We also see rottie crosses. Rottie x G Shep seems to be a deliberately created cross. They are usually very nice dogs in my experience, highly trainable. They are a lot larger than the dogs that appear to me to be pit bull type. Of course Baltimore is a hub of deliberate pit bull breeding because of the “gangsta” culture and illegal dog fighting sport so one is not surprised that there are an excess of pit types in the shelters.
As for breed specific DNA ID. I am not convinced that the tests are reliable.
I would comment that Am Staffs/ APBT’s do not have “little piggy eyes’ they actually have large rather round eyes..
Eyes – Dark and round, low down in skull and set far apart. No pink eyelids. from the AKC standard for Am Staffs.. this is why we have so many problems..
Compared to other breeds their eyes do look small and “piggy” (relative to their huge heads at least). Their teeth are also weirdly small for their massive mouths… they just look disproportionate and “wrong” like so many other popular breeds (pugs, bulldogs etc).
I don’t know how you would prove beyond dispute that there is not enough of the bully landrace to explain their shelter numbers, apart from what was just established, which is that misidentification is common.
Under Allied Communication and the “Canine Racism” piece, there is a link to this:
http://stopbsl.org/bsloverview/impossibleid/
THe breed ID games are cool. Some may not be convinced the DNA testing is accurate, but it would be good to know.
Personally I have reason to believe that there COULD be a larger number of APBTs and bullies of the landrace, than there once was previously.
There IS a glut of these animals ending up with people of questionable or criminal backgrounds, or those destined to have a criminal background on paper shortly.
It seems plausible to guess that sheer numbers of a certain breed or type increases the likelihood that more of a certain breed or type, will end up in the shelter system, or in homes, or in any # of environments.
This may be due to cultural changes as well.
Mary notes how a street where the neighborhood changes seems to reflect a noticeable increase in certain breed or type dogs, including bullies. Something about this culture has become popular, and it is reflected in forms of dress, in certain kinds of rap and hip hop music, in degenerating behavior of CHILDREN in free public schools.
Popularity results in greater numbers. And yes, you may say I am biased, but more and more studies are coming out stating that half or the majority of a country’s people are living in cities, and gangsta culture is CITY culture.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2012/01/daily-chart-6
http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/planning/census_issues/archives/metropolitan_planning/cps2k.cfm
The burden of proof lies with those making claims against the evidence. The extraordinary claim is that there is a massive conspiracy against pit bulls and that shelter after shelter are committing fraud. You also have to believe that the bully landrace is massive, extraordinarily massive and that they are not being killed beyond their representation in the populace. Not one of those ideas has any proof. The least supportable notion is that shelter entry dogs are a random sampling of all dogs and that the factors which drive them there are not correlated with their breeds.
Pointing out that there are a few other breeds that look similar in some respects to pit bulls in photos (mind you the SIZE component is entirely removed here… there are ugly JRTs that sort of look like pit bulls), provides no convincing evidence against the documentation of shelter killings. Nor is the observation that there are strains and other very similar breeds evidence against the problems in pit bulls either! That entire meme is a product of anti-BSL thinking. It does not speak to pit bull culture at all. None of this post is in support of BSL.
The argument goes like this: Only one breed is banned but supposedly highly related other breeds, which are also targets for assholes, fighters, etc. are not being picked on. This isn’t FAIR!! wah wah wah. Animal control can’t even tell the difference between a Pit Bull and a ____ (insert other breed here, mostly harmless or crap like a Pressa Canario, etc.) so it’s not fair and other breeds that are also trained to fight and bite and savage are not being covered. And it’s not fair to the look alike breeds that have supposedly had their gameness bred out!
This is a problem with legislation and enforcement, it has nothing to do with the very free market of who brings dogs to shelters for disposal.
The truth is that many of the breeds that are similar to pit bulls are very rare. The idea that all of these breeds together are simply being mis-labeled and thus hugely inflating the poor pit bull’s numbers has no basis in any sort of accounting of the number of dogs in these breeds.
There’s also the problem that many of the closest looking dogs are just as problematic as pit bulls. If we had more Pressa Canarios here, it’s likely they’d be just as culpable in getting dumped in shelters and being used as horrible status symbols to thugs.
The other problem you have is the age these dogs are coming in at and being killed at. They are not 12 year old sick dogs that come in when Grandma goes to a nursing home, they are too often very young, under 2 years and entirely healthy. They are the byproducts of an industry/culture that doesn’t care about them as pets, only as entertainment and image and blood sport.
Breeds are not all the same, there is not a massive conspiracy to lie to people and make a problem where none exists, and to deny the reality of where these dogs are coming from and why and in what numbers does nothing but extend the travesty.
I totally believe this post is not in support of BSL.
I’m reading statements like “pointing out that there are a few other breeds that look similar in some respects to pit bulls..” and “.
Just to reiterate, the term “Pit bull” itself has become an endless source of confusion.
The term “pit bull” now is used often, to refer to many if not most or all lookalikes of the APBT. It is slang for dogs with certain dimensions merely resembling those of the APBT, or just giving that visual impression. Hence the “pit bull” IS the “lookalike” if one is referring to looking like an APBT.
It took me quite awhile to understand that “Pit bull” was no longer considered slang for just the APBT. In fact I used to correct all the rescue folks on this, but overwhelmingly they have all agreed upon “pit bull” as a term for APBTs, Am Staffs, Staffy bull terriers and all dogs resembling those breeds or their crosses.
That could include a boxer or lab mix if the appearance is right.
Having said that, the problem is NOT that only the “pit bull” gets picked on while the Presa Canario is not. To this day a lot of dog owners and shelter workers still could not tell a purebred Presa from any other dog and therefore it will get lumped in as a “pit bull”. So the issue, as I have experienced it, is not that others are excluded, but rather, that other dogs are being inadvertently INCLUDED, simply by coincidence of having similar physical features.
Quite a few folks can not come close to passing the “Find the pit bull” test.
And isn’t it interesting to note that while these tests are called “Can you find the PIT BULL”, they later say find the American Pit Bull Terrier. So in that case, it seems to refer to the OLD slang use. On top of that, the one game I sent says “pit bull” does in fact refer to the APBT, Am Staff or STaffy Bull; not mixes or other lookalikes.
This makes defining what to even use the term for so confusing, considering how many others use it to INCLUDE lookalikes, that the term itself HAS become quite meaningless. The term is basically whatever anyone wants it to be.
Until everyone, including rescues, stick to one term definition, they are actually feeding fire to courtrooms looking to put animals down for being a “Pit bull.” If you cannot define what it is, why take chances and keep the evil creature alive?
She asked with sarcasm.
I really don’t know how the term got thrown around so amuck. If people just stuck to it being a nickname for the APBT, one could easily fight to require all court systems to DNA test any dog in question under any BSL that IS standing, and quite a lot of lookalikes would be spared.
This WOULD engage the “wah wah” response, but it would save a lot of needless deaths.
There’s an issue in both directions with look-alikes, no? On one side, lookalikes are also very often related by either recent blood or purpose — they can be problematic in their heritage just like any specific pit bull breed. Dogs of like breeding and purpose might very well be adding to the problem. The dog that bit Kyle Dyer in the face is variously reported as a Pit Bull or a Dogo Argentino. Dogos might not be particularly dog-aggressive, but certain strains have been pulled into fighting and this creates a problem. We have a large powerful dog that was originally bred to kill other animals and which is protective of their human family but can be used for guard work as they can exhibit aggression against strangers, now being bred for dog aggression too. Is there really a problem if these dogs get lumped in with Pit Bulls? Is there anything except their comparative rarity in this country that keeps this breed, which is probably highly related to the bully landrace, from being problematic? Can we not say the same thing about Fila Brasileiros? Etc.
Exactly. The “not pit bull” breeds have more similarities than differences. It’s like saying that the english shepherd and the aussie are totally unique and have absolutely nothing in common.
They do have different working styles and temperaments, but they come from the same landrace of working farm dogs and look very similar (not counting the show aussie). They are both highly intelligent, trainable, and react in similar ways to similar situations.
If someone was trying to make Border Collies illegal, I’d be more concerned about fighting the legislation than trying to prove that English Shepherds are totally different, and making people out to be idiots if they can’t tell the two apart.
I get the impression that the Fila and Dogo have a much greater difference in breeding history from the APBT than the ES and Aussie. The Dogo alone, though he has many mastiffs in him, also has pointer, wolfhound, etc. He is a blend of many breeds. I don’t think that many breeds went into the APBT. Maybe just having Bull and Terrier is enough to copy characteristics though.
What if idiots that could not tell Aussies from ESs were putting Aussies down because of the legislation? Would you still just do one thing or shoot for both?
I’d do both. I’d do all I could, and many rescues do just that.
I do get the idea however, going back to Chris a bit, that to be completely realistic, there are responsibilities behind the true APBT, as well as Dogos, Presas and the like.
The idea behind the unfair APBT image is that this dog is, well, historically dog aggressive yes, but NOT historically human-aggressive.
The same horrible factions that create dog aggressive Dogos also create human aggressive APBTs, either through breeding for ANY type of aggression, or abuse or both.
There’s a conflict.
There is the truth behind owning large, powerful breeds, which is that you need to be prepared to have control and pay special attention to your dog, be it a Fila wondering who your friends are visiting HIS property and family, or an APBT who is not so far from his old game-bred instincts regardless of how he was bred today, and starts playing with the neighbor’s collie, and gets excited and “carried away.”
A load of terriers will get “carried away” but the APBT has the physical tools to take the damage to a level that surpasses many other dogs.
There IS a reality to this.
The flip side is that we live in a world that not only hypes media, which centers on thugs and their highly aggressive dogs, but also does not really have such familiarity with nature as before and mental tools to deal with it. Where some accidents used to be dealt with with a brew and tea, or maybe a cop would be called in in a true emergency, but that would be that. It was a casey by case basis.
Today we live in a camera ridden, litigious society.
The rescue response to the overblown drama behind one breed of dog and it’s misuse, is to overblow in the other direction, the loving, loyal side of the APBT.
I see video after video of cats sleeping with APBTs or just “pit bulls”, infants draped across them, etc.
Whether you can tell a “pit bull” from the true APBT, this is a mistake. It lulls people into a false notion of dog behavior. It’s dangerous.
I would never drape my infant across any dog. Mayyyyybe a Newfoundland at best, but even then, likely not.
Having said that, the Staffy Bull Terrier got the Nanny dog name( Not hte APBT as far as I know, although it was considered a good family pet in America). There had to have been a foundation of reliable human-friendly dogs for this to have been the norm, rather than discussion about dogs like Filas being lumped in with “pit bulls.”
As we were settled in a large part by the English ( after Dutch and so forth), there was understandably a good import of Staffordshire types to the USA. Naturally they are more commonplace than Filas. Bloodsport reigned then in dog rings and ratting, and it wasn’t even illegal countrywide as it is now, but the Staffordshires still somehow survived and held their place with the family.
Surely there must be something to that.
And I apologize once again for the grammatical errors and typos. I thought I had them all. Wish there was an “edit” after posting option. Ah well.
Cheers on all counts.
A reminder – a pair of Presa Canario were the dogs that killed Diane Whipple January 2001, in the hallway outside of her apartment and resulted in a murder trial of the two lawyers who owned the dogs.
Google returns many articles on the incident – here is a sample.
http://www.sfdogmauling.com/HomePageLinks/PresaCanario/Presacanario.html
“They are the byproducts of an industry/culture that doesn’t care about them as pets, only as entertainment and image and blood sport.”
They are also a product of obtaining that which is easy to locate. If you live in certain areas, the most common dog around probably has at least some pit bull type breed in it. The most common puppies available are offspring of those dogs. There are studies about the lack of grocery stores and reasonably priced foods in some areas of large cities. The same could be said for dogs.
For those with little money, little transportation options, even less use for government run institutions (especially shelters run by police) or that cannot pass a rescue group’s requirements- where do they get their dogs?Why from the neighborhood of course. Five bucks for a puppy from your neighbor is not only easier but actually possible when compared to the $150 and up for a rescue or shelter dog that requires home visits and references as well as getting to the shelter location. When picked up by the shelter; as a stray, taken in to a shelter by a landlord, neighbor or ex-, confiscated by police or in lieu of veterinary care- it can come down to economics. It is easier to get a new puppy than to pay the fines and come to the attention of local animal control.
It doesn’t always mean the dogs are not pets, but sometimes there is no choice.
Christopher you make very good points here. What I wish to present for your knowledge and opinion: 1. I have read that ASPCA is contemplating having Rescue breed puppies for the demand of puppies? 2. How Humane Society and ASPCA as well as Rescue can support spay and neutering puppies with knowledge of Risk to Endocrine organ system disease?
and p.s. SHAME ON YOU for citing dogsbite.org and Animal People News as sources. Dogsbite.org is run by a pit bull hater, notorious for just making sh** up, and APN’s work is done by Merrit Clifton who uses newspapers as his source for data. Anyone who has examined this issue will tell you that 1) newspapers only print bad-dog stories about pit bulls and 2) the identification of dogs in newspapers is often wrong. I suggest you look at National Canine Research Council’s work for facts.
Glad someone said something about Dogsbite.org being a horrible source.
Yes, dogsbite.org is pretty much the Westboro Baptist Church of the dog world. It’d be like trusting statistics that came from them. They get their information from news media, and numerous studies have found that the news media overreports “pit bull attacks”, underreports other breed attacks, and also misrepresents and grossly misunderstands what a pit bull actually is. The only pit bull is the American Pit Bull Terrier. Calling an American Staffordshire Terrier a Pit Bull is like calling a German Shepherd a Belgian Malinois, or a Labrador Retriever a Flat-Coated Retriever.
This would be a near perfect article if it did not misunderstand what a pit bull is and if it did not use dogsbite.org as sources.
You clearly want to distinguish what are probably your dogs from the maelstrom of crap that is the greater culture and reality of pit bull breeds, ghetto ponies, status dogs, and fighting dogs. But that doesn’t create a magical barrier in which the problems are all someone else’s and don’t apply to your breed.
That’s wilful ignorance. Trying to claim some fancy show version of the dogs who are mostly championed online by dog mommies with white knight syndrome is the only dog worthy of the name is a joke.
Pit bulls are what people call pit bulls. Creating unnecessary confusion here doesn’t win you any points.
I would like to see a report of an AmStaff or a Staffordshire Bull Terrier attacking people. They seem to have had most of the serious aggression bred out of them–though, like any terrier, I probably wouldn’t 100% trust them around strange dogs. Still, all the intact male Staffy Bulls and Staffy Bull mixes I have met were less cranky with other intact males than my intact male Sheltie, so that likely counts for something.
In other words–those breeds are indistinguishable from pit bulls (except that purebred AmStaffs usually have their ears cropped), so sorry. They are SO indistinguishable that one of the top AKC AmStaffs in Agility is a pit bull. Except that they have not been bred for aggression.
I hate this argument. It says that the UKC gets the entire rights to naming a landrace, which includes a lot of dogs that aren’t registered with the UKC. Pit bull terrier is a term that has existed long before there were breed clubs. It was just a term that meant that a particular bull terrier was not of the Hinks “white cavalier” strain. It was the American term for this dog.
BTW, it’s interesting that you bring up Labrador and flat-coated retrievers. At one time, wavy-coated retrievers, which are the type from which golden and flat-coated retrievers, were derived existed in two distinct types, the setter cross and the “Labrador” type. The word “Labrador’ referred to this dog, which also had smooth variants. The smooth variants became what we call a Labrador retriever– a very recent creation. This type wasn’t from “Labrador” but from Newfoundland, a type of dog that was then called the St. John’s water dog or lesser Newfoundland. So flat-coated retrievers were often called Labradors.
See? You don’t get to control the language, and because you don’t get to control the language, you don’t get to make this argument.
Chris and I do have some big disagreements on this bull and terrier derivatives. I’ve always liked them.
But the argument against BSL isn’t to hold onto to registry and breed purity and crow because I hate when other dog people do that with other breeds.
And this is one breed, just like with retrievers, were the claim that there is only one true dog simpy isn’t true.
Both retrievers and bull and terrier type are very recent creations and are actually a very diverse lineage that has since been culled off through blood purity dogma. The fighting pit bull people have ruined the genetics of their dogs through constant inbreeding. Their dogs are still pit bulls, whether you want to use that term or not.
Pit bull is easier to say than “non-Hinks strain bull terrier from North America,” don’t you think?
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The APPMA survey is an extremely small population sample, considering if you compare it to the owned dog population numbers it is really only representative of a small percentage, and can’t really be asserted as absolutes. There are a large amount of flaws with limited data collection in the sources you cited throughout this article, and a large amount of the data collected is from 16 or more years ago and may or may not be representative of today’s shelter situation. Even the ASPCA, which you cited as a source, is cognitive of this. It is not necessarily a fault of yours in choosing such citations, the simple fact is reliable data is extremely limited overall.
I do challenge you to find a much better source of your ‘pit bull’ information than ‘dogsbite.org’, which is notorious for anti-pit bull propaganda. If you simply look through their cited sources, you will see that in regards to the reputable articles, over 6 are more than 18 years old (one even from the 70’s), 3 more use data older than 18 years, few mention anything more than pit bull injuries causing more damage (not being more prevalent), and most of the rest are limited to a population sample of 1-2 hospitals. They also use internet media stories as a source for their asserted statistics, yet any reasonable person would not accept this type of data collection. To top it off they use a letter from the president of PETA on their home page, and we all know that she will use any manipulative force she can to end the existence of companion animals.
The CDC and AVMA both still have positions against breed specific legislation, I feel that they may be just a tad more reputable than a website that uses internet news stories for data collection, don’t you?
I’d like to end on this, if I may BORDER COLLIE: tested:292 passed: 238 failed: 54 pass rate: 81.5%
AMERICAN PIT BULL TERRIER: tested: 870, passed: 755, failed:115 pass rate 86.8% (source ATTS)
Now, I could just look at the pass rate percentage, and say the APBT is more stable, or I could look at the fail numbers (even though more APBT were tested) and say that 115 failed vs only 54 BCs. I could make either of these inferences and state that my source is the reputable ATTS, but I think it would be asinine to compare these two test results, being that over 500 more APBTs were tested. (And I say all of this having owned both breeds BC and APBT).
I would also like to clarify that “only 2%”, is still nearly 2 million dogs per year, a heartbreaking statistic that anyone who cares about dogs as a whole could not be dismissive of. I also wish you had not used a blanket term of “breeder” and had instead differentiated further between reputable hobby breeders and profit breeders, who certainly do contribute to the shelter population (a lot also breed ‘designer mixes’). They are actually likely to be the contributors of the majority of your 25%.
1.5-2 million dogs per year IS still 1.5 to 2 million dogs. Sure. But I’m not going to hyperventilate like the bleeding heart assholes want me to so they can manipulate me into condemning people who are not to blame and blowing the issue out of proportion because most people can’t do the obvious math in their head. There are 300+ million people in the country, approaching 120 million households. That a small fraction of those can’t get their shit together and abandon their dogs to shelters is not surprising and it’s not something that will EVER be zero or near zero. It’s the cost of life and entropy.
And it’s certainly not evidence of what so many AR groups want it to be evidence for… increased governmental RULES and LAWS to make pet ownership onerous and rare and eventually extinct by attacking all sorts of breeders and owners.
The mere size of the number does not support the campaign of slander against breeders and that is a point that is entirely lost in this debate.
> I also wish you had not used a blanket term of “breeder” and had instead differentiated further between reputable hobby breeders and profit breeders
Well, I wish that you’d pull your head out of your ass. I’m not going to participate in the idiotic language game of slandering breeders by insisting on bullshit epithets. This “must append reputable” before breeder is a lame attempt at bigotry and slander. Not going to play that game.
And no, there’s not a shred of evidence that ANY sort of “breeder” even the bad ones you want to make a caricature of, nor even the dreaded “puppy mills” are responsible in any appreciable way for dogs that end up in shelters. An no, nothing about any of them makes them “likely to be the contributors of the majority of [the] 25%” of shelter dogs that are purebred.
> The APPMA survey is an extremely small population sample
What do you mean? The APPMA is looking at the entire dog population in the USA using a sample size larger than any study you’re ever going to find. They’ve been doing surveys for 25 years and their analysis will cost you over $3,000. If you know of a more comprehensive analysis, DO NAME IT! If you’re unconvinced of the APPMA numbers, then you need to back it up with counter-facts, which you haven’t. Nor do I think you understand the basics of survey analysis and sampling. You really don’t have to question every house in the country to get a very accurate picture of how many houses own dogs. Using proper sampling techniques you can hone in on a number that has very high confidence without saturating the real sample. And yes, this is time tested and that’s why their analysis commands a high price. People who want to sell products to the dog market need good demographics.
> it is really only representative of a small percentage
No it’s not. You clearly know nothing about sampling, statistics, and modeling. This is actually a science with like MATH and stuff. You know, numbers and other confusing things for ignorant people who spout stupid proclamations without anything to back it up.
> There are a large amount of flaws
Name them with specifics and provide superior data that is sourced.
> I do challenge you to find a much better source of your ‘pit bull’ information than ‘dogsbite.org’, which is notorious for anti-pit bull propaganda.
No, you find a better source, then come back and post what the source says and what the source is. I have no reason to distrust the data unless you can document that it’s false.
> 18 years old (one even from the 70′s)
Again, either document that the data is inaccurate or document data the supersedes it. There’s nothing at all wrong about using a source for the 70s if the data is accurate, especially if you’re charting historical trends which necessitate doing so!
> They also use internet media stories as a source for their asserted statistics, yet any reasonable person would not accept this type of data collection.
Um, so your comment on the internet should be ignored then because it’s on the internet? LOL. Again, bring counter-facts to the table. All you’re doing here is a rather poor job of nit-picking irrelevant qualities of the data instead of the data itself or the argument being made. It’s basically an ad hominem-like attack. Ignore the facts and the argument and try to slander the source.
> The CDC and AVMA both still have positions against breed specific legislation, I feel that they may be just a tad more reputable than a website that uses internet news stories for data collection, don’t you?
You haven’t documented anything factually wrong with the data from Dogsbite.Org, so I don’t car what you think of their reputation. Nor do I see any data from the CDC that counters what I’ve written or what I cited from dogsbite.org. Specifically, the CDC showed that Pit bull types and mixes were responsible for more bites and deaths than any other breed or type.
The pit bull apologists always cite the ATTS as if it’s a reputable report or something. I’ve only ever seen THEM invoke it.
If you look at the ATTS, it doesn’t even attempt to assess the dogs for the BIGGEST ISSUE WITH PIT BULLS… namely DOG AGGRESSION. There isn’t even another dog present at all during the entire test. Nor is the human aggression of the dog really tested as the “stranger” is never within 18 feet of the dog’s handler and never within 10 feet of the dog. You can’t bite or kill someone if you’re not allowed anywhere near them.
And as you try and compare “American Pit Bull Terriers” to “Border Collies,” perhaps you should ask what caused the dogs to fail the test. The ATTS has a section where they fire a gun multiple times and rattle a can of rocks at the dogs and “strong avoidance” and “panic without recovery” … neither of which is dangerous to humans, are the grounds for failure along with “unprovoked aggression.” Border Collies are a breed with documented noise phobia, enough that there are more than one studies looking for the cause. So I wouldn’t be surprised if the reasons for Border Collie failure skewed heavily towards the noise sections of the test and perhaps the umbrella, and away from any sort of aggression at all.
So why you think that the ATTS proves anything, especially if you’re trying to make the point that Border Collies are more aggressive than American Pit Bull Terriers, I think you’ve clearly failed.
Yes Chris such a shortage that imports are going wild?
Shelter & Rescue | NAIA Official Blog
naiaonline.org/blog/category/shelter-rescue/
May 2, 2012 … It has been a serious problem for more than a decade; this is why we worked in Massachusetts to help local residents regulate importing rescue …
[ More results from naiaonline.org ]
Hancock County animal shelter rescues puppies from Guam …
bangordailynews.com/2012/04/24/news/hancock/hancock-county-animal-shelter-r…
Apr 24, 2012 … Shaw added that the Trenton shelter is open to other arrangements and already works with other animal rescue organizations that import dogs …
SHELTER & RESCUE IMPORTS, TRAFFICKING IN DOGS, by Linda …
http://www.thedogplace.org/SHELTERS/Shelter-Imports-10021_Witouski.asp
Shelter & Rescue Imports equate with trafficking in dogs, 2010 estimates exceed … Bringing in dogs of questionable background and health issues from other …
>The pit bull apologists always cite the ATTS as if it’s a reputable report or
> something. I’ve only ever seen THEM invoke it.
Yes. That. The test SAYS “The test is designed for the betterment of all breeds of dogs and takes into consideration each breed’s inherent tendencies.” Except, you know, it doesn’t. I actually think the Canine Good Citizen test is a better test in this respect.
One more point about the TT…it doesn’t prove ANYTHING about ANY breed of dog, for a multitude of reasons, including the fact that the sample sizes are too small, and self selected. The people who participate in the ATTS test are people who belong to dog clubs and are involved in training and/or competing with their dogs. Anyone with a dog that was truly reactive toward strangers would obviously not bother to take the test….the test is not a random sampling of any breed, it’s taken by those who are involved in training their dogs and think they will pass it.
Also, most people who take this test prep for it, I have friends who practiced opening an umbrella in their dog’s face for weeks before the test. So if the intent was to see how a dog responds to novel stimuli, the umbrella test won’t show that, because the dog has become quite used to the umbrella.
A dog can be dangerously dog aggressive and pass the TT with flying colors, as it doesn’t test for dog aggression. A dog can be a dangerous resource guarder, attacking anyone who comes near its food or toys, and pass the TT easily. A dog can be reactive to being touched or handled in certain places on its body, and pass the TT easily. The TT does not screen dogs for aggression. It was originally designed as a tool to screen dogs for protection sports and bite work. The test rewards boldness. Most dogs that fail don’t fail because they are aggressive, they may fail because they are afraid of gunshots, or because they won’t walk across a folded X-pen. Does anyone really think that the IGs failure rate is because they are aggressive? Or could it be that these dogs, who will refuse to go outside if its raining because they don’t like the way it feels on their sensitive paws, are refusing to walk across that X-pen?
Actually, the test purports to be breed specific, and to take into account a dog’s training. That means a GSD who has some Shutzhund training would fail the test if he hid behind his handler when the scary stranger appeared. So a dog can fail for not showing ENOUGH of an aggressive response.
Having a CGC or a TT is not an indication that a dog is not aggressive. People practice and prep for these tests, often taking them multiple times before passing. and they can be gamed with a sympathetic evaluator. If a male dog is reactive toward other male dogs, they may arrange to have a female dog serve as the “strange dog” the test dog needs to greet calmly…thus passing the CGC.
I know a dog that has both the CGC and the TT, and he needs to be muzzled at the vet. These two tests are all but meaningless as a way to determine the true temperament of a dog.
I have both Shelties and IGs, and was interested to see that IGs have a better pass rate than Shelties, though of course FAR fewer IGs have taken the test (52 IGs versus 502 Shelties). Though I don’t see any point in doing the TT with EITHER breed.
I think the CGC expects that you do a certain amount of training. The TT purports to test temperament.
How can I reblog this?
My personal experience is that most of the dogs in the local shelter-more than half- are some kind of pittie looking guys. I look at photos from several shelters each week looking for the “deer chihuahuas” and probably 25% of the shelter guys are called “Chihuahuas”- if they are small and Chi crosses if their ears are floppy or they have terrier hair. I rarely run into one that looks like an AKC chi. No 5 pound dog stay in any shelter for long- it is the 10 pounders that get abandoned.
Kate Williams recently posted..The Philosophy of Dog.
http://www.kennelspotlight.com/humane_or_insane.pdf
1. one has to question what definition the data collectors are using for “purebred”. Is it “looks like”? Is it “registered with a known registry” or is it “it’s black and tan therefore it is a GSD”.– I’ve seen lots of dogs id’d as German Shepherds that were clearly not GSDs, and unlikely to even be “mostly GSD”. Errors in identification get larger the more uncommon the breed is, the less educated the identifier is and the more a shelter wants to assert that *they* can provide the animal of choice to potential adopters.
2. “pit type” or Chi “type” are the current dogs of choice for many in low income and at least in some states, a cultural group. That cultural group does not have the same view of spay/neuter or even “leash or confine your dog”, the culture doesn’t have the same view towards dogs (dogs are more tools than pets) and is often highly mobile — which makes abandonment more likely. If you add that the low income means that even those who want to s/n, or have a yard, they can’t. Yet you have laws and regulations that ban “tethering” (be it humanely done or not, increase fees for ownership (without providing low cost or even free s/n for those who want it and provide no education on care/management of a dog.
3. the stats also include “requested euthanasia” I’m not going to get into if a person should take a dog/cat to a shelter rather than a vet for this service. I will note that in my area of CA using a vet will run at least $500.00 (personal knowledge) and a lot of people don’t HAVE that. Or they don’t have the $ to deal with terminal cancer, etc. I provide the Orange County CA stats which simply were the first ones I found using Google. http://egov.ocgov.com/vgnfiles/ocgov/OC%20Animal%20Care/Docs/2011%20Stats%20All%20Cities.pdf
I’ll note that I don’t know of any CA county that provides EDUCATION rather than fines and penalties — for example, barking dogs, or dog running off leash — you don’t see even a 10 week “basic obedience class” which might well do more to reduce that 2% than further harassment of those who have dogs but whose dogs (or cats, etc) are NOT a problem to their neighbors or community.
1> I imagine that very very few dogs come in with papers or registration. Not only are registered hobby bred dogs a minority, everything about those dogs keeps them from shelters. They cost a lot of money, this is a key factor in abandonment. There are popular cultural elements which work against shelter placement: spay neuter by contract or custom, breeders who take dogs back or assist with rehoming, purebred rescues, etc. There’s also significant Vet participation which is another very strong factor. People who can afford to go to the vet are more likely to turn to their vet to put a dog down than to dump and old or sick one at a shelter for “free.”
There’s also the abundant attitude that buyers who seek out breeder dogs have toward their pets. There are of course situations where this breaks down when a person dies and they leave their dogs to family who do not have the same attachment, etc. but I can’t imagine that this happens in large enough numbers to fuel the shelter industry.
I’ve read stories of people who claim that their dogs had papers but the shelter refused to turn them over, not sure what percent of dogs this would be.
Of course none of this is a guarantee, but they are strong factors against turning to a shelter to dispose of a dog.
Interesting social behavior changes you point out here Chris. Increasing more dog owners are asking the difficult question to answer even to thier Vet. What happens to my dog’s body if I do not take it home for burial or make other arrangements? Now folks want to know what the Shelters do with the bodies. Folks do not like the answers in larger numbers it would seem.
2> There’s a great report done by an LA shelter which covers their “Pit Bull” and Chi problem.
http://www.laanimalservices.com/About_Us/Statistics.htm
Read their 2008 report linked on that page.
from the LA, CA report for 2008: “Statistically the ratio of Pit Bulls coming into City shelters has been modestly decreasing. The ratio in 2001 and 2002 was 23%; in 2003 it was 22%; 2004 through 2007 it was 21%. The ratio in 2008 was 20.8%.” — I’ll wager it’s gone up for 2009 – 2012. Further, LA is one of those places that has imposed mandatory spay/neuter and who has been one of the most aggressive about denying intact dog licences for breeders. Yet they have not addressed at all the “pit bull” and Chi issues, nor the low income and barrio issues. LA county has pretty much followed in the city’s footsteps, even in the rural areas, where they recently tried to impose “health inspection” fees on all the horse and livestock owners in the rural areas of the Antelope Valley (a large scale community outcry put that on hold). It’s one of the disfunctional things about these groups. LA has in fact imported dogs for shelter adoption despite arguing they have too many to allow breeders in the area. Their latest gambit is “dogs for the homeless”. So they are giving dogs to people who are unable to house themselves and who very often have mental problems precluding functioning normally in society.
Are you sure you aren’t confusing LA with San Francisco here? It’s SF that is starting a program that will have panhandlers (not homeless ones) fostering rescue dogs. I haven’t heard anything about LA doing anything similar.
Pg 14 notes the “Beverly Hills Backlash.” I know you said buying a purebred does not guarantee not being placed in a shelter but reduces likelihood, but still, cases where this many of a breed are bought spontaneously w/o thought, and then dumped, suggest that the incident isn’t all that UNcommon either.
Every day people jump into something they are unprepared for. Every day people mismanage funds. A fool and his money are soon parted.
I know this is just an isolated example but a woman at work ( I consider her a big player of gov’t benefits and a loser), paid $1K for a yellow labrador from another state. She also paid for shipping. She is broke and just two years ago she told me she had her kids scrounging through couch cushions for enough change for 1 lb of meat,so she could mix it with Hamburger Helper and stretch it to feed the family of five.
How she found the money for this lab, I will never know. But she never got it fixed. She figured she’d find a mate, ANY mate, have pups and sell them to recoup her thousand.
Now the “Kids won’t take care of him” so she was screaming on the phone to take him to the kill shelter.
I asked if she’d contacted the breeder and if the breeder would take him back. SHe said “Yeah, but she wants ME to pay for shipping. Why should I pay to get nohting in return. I already paid $1K and she’ll just make a mint off of stud fees from him.”
I said “SO you’d rather kill this dog than see someone make a few bucks.”
That kind of snapped her in line, for a bit. I combed rescues to help her, found one, and then there was phone avoidance, etc. NOw the loser has been out of work for a month due to some fight over workmen’s comp and I have no idea whatever happened to the poor dog.
Again, I know this is one case but when you read someone say something is less likely to happen, and immediately you personally know where it HAS happened, it doesn’t seem so unlikely. I guess it’s that feeling of “Wow. What a coincidence!”
Also reminds me of all the WIC recipients that wait on line every day in my office building for their cards, all the while wearing high end labels and being picked up in BMWs. Good money management eh?
Maybe some of people picking WIC cardholders up are their “Johns.”
Improbable isn’t impossible! It just takes a lot of those anecdotes to get to 2.5-3.5 million dogs each year. Divide your total number of experiences over the number of years you’ve been observing, and it doesn’t seem as significant.
Then factor in your selection bias. What parts of the source market are you observing, which are you not?
For example, the statistics put out by these groups claim that there are 86.4 million pet cats and as many as 70 million stray/feral cats in the USA. I know that in my experience, I have seen many times more pet cats than feral cats. I would not have guessed based upon my exposure that the numbers are almost equal!
Very very few cat people get their cats from breeders. But I know a lot of people who have done so. My sample is biased.
I don’t really spend much time in the locations where feral cats are I guess, perhaps they are not evenly divided among the states and certain areas are loaded with them. Perhaps I don’t look at the right hours to see them. I visit friends’ houses that own cats, but when do I visit the strays?
In my work at a vet clinic, a high percentage of the cats we neuter/spay are stray/feral/”barn cats” brought in by good-hearted people who catch them and bring them in (and pay for the surgery). One couple has had more than 30 cats done on their informal “catch-neuter-release” program. The estimate of feral to owned cats being nearly equal doesn’t surprise.
In Pima County the humane society does them for free. Isn’t that great?
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They do that here, too (Pittsburgh). There are a few good low-cost clinics, and at least two places that do free spay/neuter for pit bulls.
Since I have a semi-rural property we do see feral cats. In general there is usually one on the property. If we trap it, get it a rabies shot, desex it and return it to its habitat it may be around for a second year. Before the coyotes showed up raccoons and foxes seemed to be killing most of the kittens in a litter, they did not survive to produce a feral cat population explosion in a rural setting. Their numbers are controlled by nature just as are the numbers of all the other small carnivores living in the wild.
Feral cats thrive when people put out food for them. Three years ago one of our local large hotel/motels down at the beltway had the kitchen staff supporting a population of 180 feral cats until rabies was detected and animal control moved in to do a serious removal episode. Rabies is epidemic in our part of Maryland and one does need to be careful about feral cats, raccoons and rabid beavers also.
http://archives.explorebaltimorecounty.com/news/6086162/rabid-beaver-blamed-two-incidents-reservoir/
3> Requested Euthanasia is an issue that I’ve brought up before in relation to these numbers. Some shelters filter these cases out, others don’t, from what I can tell. But of course, very few publish their raw data. I think I remember see this designated in the data that PeTA had to publish due to the VA regulations.
We took an old dog to the Denver Dumb Friends League for this service and it was a horrible mistake in hind-sight. He was incredibly healthy and hadn’t been to a vet in years. We stopped the vaccine schedule after 12 and had no other reason to visit a vet after our go-to guy retired. Arthritis and weakness in his hips and rear was the final issue and he had made it through his 14 year old winter but the next year he could no longer keep his balance on the snow or ice and he began hurting himself when his feet failed. 15 year old dogs are not surgery candidates and when he had been fixed years before he had a horrible reaction to the anesthesia and we almost lost him, so when the pain drugs and hip supplements lost the battle for quality of life, we knew the time was coming. One morning he couldn’t stand and even after a massage and help his legs just kept failing him. He gave us the look that said, it’s time.
It was gut wrenching to make that decision and I was already a mess just getting the dog in the car and driving over to the shelter. They didn’t inform me that I couldn’t stay for the procedure until everything was done and taken care of and they had taken my dog into the back room. I should have demanded my dog back and found another option because the entire rest of that day I couldn’t do anything else but obsess if the deed was done yet. I’ll never make that mistake again.
We found our current vet through a friend when it came time for the next old dog and that experience was a million times better. That he had gotten to know the dog in her final years and when he cried too when he let her go was really a blessing.
The best thing to have is a good cat dog that will kill every cat it sees on site.
Then, you don’t have a feral cat problem at all.
They won’t come onto your property because they know they will be killed.
I had damn good one.
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I have seen what you describe. There is a street that basically marks the change from middle class to lower income housing in our neighborhood and the dogs you see immediately upon crossing that street go from various sized pure-bred dogs and non-pit mixes to pit bulls and some chis. It is amazing.
Going by how inept most shelters are at correctly identifying breeds (be it Pits or any other) I hesitate to believe the ratio of Pits to other breeds is as high as this.
The fact is, medium-to-large breed mixes are the majority of shelter intakes Nationwide, with small purebreds being the least common.
The ratio isn’t surprising to me at all. It’s not even that questionable.
If you’ve ever taken economics or statistics, this principle explains the disparities in many natural systems.
Sometimes it isn’t ineptness, it’s deliberate. Some shelters in Ohio, where pits are illegal, will go to great lengths to rename dogs if they seem friendly. After all, if it’s friendly, it can’t be a pit bull, right? It must be a bulldog, boxer, terrier, or mastiff mix. Not *too* far from the truth, really.
I used to work at a vet clinic in an area that didn’t allow pits, and we did the same thing. Probably 25-30% of our clients had pit bulls or pit mixes.
Solid colored: lab mix.
Black and white: Border collie or dalmatian mix.
Red: Vizsla.
White: Bull terrier.
Blue: Weimeraner.
Brown/white: Hound.
Emaciated: Greyhound.
Undersize: Jack Russel.
Oversize: Great Dane.
There is a huge industry importing dogs from Mexico to pet stores.I wrote a post about it a few weeks ago.
In fact, all dogs who want new homes could get them- if the rescuers weren’t so difficult to convince to cut them loose. They artificially pump up the numbers of pets needing homes. Fact is, the rescued dogs already HAVE homes which are jealous and possessive about letting them go. By the time the rescuers are done in Tucson, all that’s left is oversized chi types, pitties and some shepherd mixes.
It is a fact that shelters move dogs around to other shelters to meet local demands.
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This is a sad but true fact for many rescuers, but also there are just as many that actually let them go. I would not lump them all into one statement like that. It’s just not true.
When I worked for the ASPCA, they had the kill contract for NYC and the board was working to dump it because they were looking for the “no kill” image because it APPEARED more humane. Dumping the problem hardly made them stellar in my eyes. It also showed me the trade’n’flip that has been going on for ages between shelters.
After the “A” sucessfully dumped the city contract, they would send workers to the new shelter the NYC AC&C, to drop off “unadoptable” dogs and pick up “adoptables.” Large dogs and “pit bulls” or any dog or cat with a cold, was un-adoptable, and essentially doomed. Puppies and kittens ( with no sneezing or runny eyes or noses), and small breeds, were “adoptable.”
North Shore Animal League has also done this regularly. They also import dogs from the south.
Some of this trading around is about boosting a shelter’s adoption numbers on paper. 501 C 3s who get grants and donations generally have to show some sort of “success” to keep the funds coming; to gain good imagery.
I do also think the trading around is, for some folks, about taking on some personal mission, to save the homeless animals of say, Mexico or Puerto Rico. It’s not unlike showing pictures of starving children in Africa and asking for money, when there are kids hungry in the USA.
Or adopting abandoned babies in Romanian orphanages who are pretty neglected, even though babies are in need in America. Possibly because there is still a higher demand for “the white infant” and Romanian imports are closer to that than the domestic African American child?
Folks with cash will often buy and import expensive purebreds from overseas when there are plenty of breeders of the same breed at home. For whatever reason – maybe because it’s hard to find an American bred dog of a certain breed that doesn’t have health or psychological deficiencies – the dogs here are not right for THEM.
There are lots of factors that go into moving animals around in all situations.
This is very popular in the Border Collie culture, enough so that I know the name of some UK breeders who are known to breed dogs just for the US tourist market. “Come pick up your pup!”
Hell, Don McCaig wrote an entire book about when he did it.
Yep, I have that book. I think a lot of the commentary leaned towards McCaig being overly romantic of the working BC and “aren’t there plenty of good enough dogs in the USA for a former Ad exec with a pittance of sheep?”
Something along those lines at least. 🙂
I mean, a lot of the commentary on the topic in YOUR blog.
I did like reading about encounters with the Scots though.
Watch out, they’re DANGEROUS!
Particularly if you start talking football ( what Americans call “soccer.”)
The strange thing is that McCaig is trying to impress on the world this variant of the border collie, as if this dog is some sort of salvation for the sins of the dog show fancy.
But the dog itself is impractical for most farmers east of the Mississippi, where the loose-eyed English shepherd reigned supreme for nearly two centuries.
I love that the sheeple all go to the UK to buy border collies to improve their stock. Europeans go to America to buy working strain golden retrievers. I think that should tell us a lot about the ability of Americans to produce quality golden retrievers and our failure to produce border collies.
I tried to read some sheeple stuff a while ago. They are so caught up on instinct that I think they could only ever train a border collie to herd. They wouldn’t know what to do with a Bouvier or mudi.
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Well, the best trainers in America are imports from the UK. America has never produced a dog or a trainer that has gone back to the UK and dominated. Nor is the US sheep industry anything to brag about, heck the UK industry pales in comparison to the industry in the land of the Barbie Collies: Australia and especially New Zealand.
As much as they like to crow, sheep herding sport is a hobby, not an essential industry partner. Decisions are made based upon winning, not upon sheep industry demands.
It’s my impression that a lot is changed in the sheep herding breeds to suit the American cattle industry. We are cattle folk! We likes our meat BIG and our dogs ornery enough to bring’em in!
I have seen ( in sites, books and pictures only) folks attempting to use BCs for that and I don’t know how well they fare.
Australian working kelpies are being used more for that in America too. When I check American sites for kelpies I hear more bragging about having “Bite” than I will on Australian sites. Haven’t investigated the European ones all that much yet.
Aussies do have more cattle than ever as I was told on a great visit down under, but breeder after breeder in Oz seem to take more brags for a “calm” worker that does not push when not necessary.
Tony Parsons favored the “wide cast”, which does take a lot of calmness and patience on the part of the dog, and said a lot of the older lines had more of it, while today’s farmer seems to like “back and bark”; “back” as in running over the backs of sheep. I think the issue was that this is not really necessary for practical farm work so often, but it is impressive at shows and trials.
Rman’s last notation on the lack of flexibilty of trainers is something I’ve seen a lot of kelpie folks who DO trial or have actual working farms take note of. They often don’t know what to do with a kelpie because they are not BCs, which shows remarkably low adaptation ability to me.
A kelpie is not exactly a BC, but as far as I know it’s the only other herding breed to have “eye”.
If they aren’t already doing it, herding trainers who don’t know how to handle other breeds should simply advertise themselves as BC specialists and save everyone a lot of aggravation.
Yes Kate have heard of dogs being smuggled from Mexico across border. These illegal entries come to Shelters such as in Texas. They had to close one Shelter due to Rabies from these illegal entries.
People do not have to smuggle dogs across the border. the only requirement, should I go down there and get a stray, is a health certificate from a vet upon entering the US, and they do have vets in Mexico. They are bringing in hundreds of trailer-loads totally legally, most of them with legal papers that the AKC will accept.
It has not been reported on very much, but is already a huge business.
Kate Williams recently posted..WaWa Watch 6-13-2012
I’m curious how many of these numbers are inflated by double and triple counting the same dogs. Since they don’t provide raw data or methods, how are we supposed to know that all dogs that are transferred from shelter A to shelter B aren’t getting double counted. I’m sure this is something that could be accounted for, but without raw data or methods, it’s a possibility.
I am all for that 26%of dogs obtained through friends and family. That is a truly legitimate way to obtain puppies.The original and mostly only way to get a dog until about 100 plus years ago.
Kate Williams recently posted..WaWa Watch 6-13-2012
As a former shelter kennel manager, I also would like to note that many of the ‘purebreds’ may very well NOT be purebred. I *could* have assigned a ‘purebred’ label of SOME breed to almost every mutt that came in the door. In my town, although I’ve never seen more than 3-7 REAL flat coated retrievers at the local BIG Eukanuba cup eligibility show during the three-five day cluster, you can find 3-7 ‘flat coated retrievers’ in the three shelters/rescues. Around here, if it is black, has drop ears, and long hair, it is a flat coat. So I question hte ‘purebred’ designation, especially with pits, chihuahuas, labs, flat coated retrievers, and beagles.
Shelters are notorious for mis-identification of dogs as blends of two breeds or even as purebreds that they don’t even remotely resemble if you know breeds.
Even the mixes they come up with leave me puzzled. If a DNA test has led them to their conclusions in a lot of cases, I would relent, but of course this is not the case due to the expense and trouble.
As Jana, Pai and Peggy have noted,some of this is ineptness, but some of this is deceipt, because a “boxer mix” is more likely to get a home than a “pit bull.” To the shelter volunteers it may be about giving a basically sweet dog a chance. To the managers, it may be about boosting adoption numbers.
It still goes back to the term PB meaning nothing and in fact proves it, but if this “boxer mix” label is in fact given to a dog that has a lot of APBT, AM Staff, if not a purebred, then the adopting public is not being done any favors. As Bonnie noted, a lot of these dogs show “dominance” ( I quotate because this term is being constantly re-taught per Pat McConnell PhD and other behaviorists, etc) or what could be construed as high energy, super confidence, etc. Call it what you will, it makes for a difficult-to-handle animal. Terriers and dogs with significant amounts of terrier, are known for being difficult to train. They ARE dogs that were created intentionally made to kill other animals, independent of human partnership. Denying this sort of information to an adoptor may leave them little prepared on what to expect from their new dog, and the results will not help the APBT whatsoever.
I have to scan Craigslist regularly for my breed rescue. On one or two occasions, I felt compelled to contact someone posting a dog with a blatant Mis ID. The response both times, was simply hostile. “Who cares what kind of dog it is? I’m trying to get it a home!”
I calmly replied that with a breed comes expectations, and that lying to the public basically means you are setting the tone that the public cannot trust the shelter folks to know what they are doing. It does not matter what the type of lie is. It’s still a lie, though better to say a mongrel is a Belgian Malinois ( this was one of the cases), than to say a Belgian Mal was a mix. The latter would be more likely to cause a problem, as a Mal is an extremely energetic and often territorial creature.
I would not doubt that the latter could or has happened somewhere out there.
Another reason not to lie: pit bull advocates want to see their dogs in positive situations. By pretending the dog is something else, you lose the chance to leave a positive image of the breed.
That friendly, happy, non-aggressive dog who was a beloved family pet for 12 years? Oh, boxer-mix. Definitely not a pit bull.
Thanks for taking time to compile this info. It’s awesome!
While the key finding of this study — tenfold reduction in percentage euthanized by shelters — is credible (and WONDERFUL) I do wonder about the source figures.
Hobby breeders 26% of all dogs is incredibly HIGH — that’s ~2 million hobby puppies a year and the AKC (largest hobby registry) is registering only ~600k/year.
At the same time pet stores at 2-10% is incredibly LOW.
Where are the many thousands of small direct sale retail-only commercial breeders (50-100 dog scale) counted?
I’m thinking we need to know a lot more about the methodology here. I’ll look at the ASPCA and APPA links.
Well … I think I see the problem. Go here:
http://www.americanpetproducts.org/press_industrytrends.asp
Halfway down the page you’ll see annual per owner expenditures for dogs and cats. The first number for dogs is $407 for vet surgery. The total for dogs (other vet, food, toys, treats …) is $1542.
How many Americans spend $1542 on each of their dogs every year? RIGHT … a great many of those Americans who can afford to buy from hobby breeders.
In other words, the survey’s sample is screwed up. It was probably drawn heavily from affluent urban/suburban areas.
While the tenfold reduction is probably trustworthy, hardly anything else is. Most of this data should be ‘scooped.’
Shame on you, APPA. I’d say the same for HSUS and the ASPCA but this is standard practice for them.
I have an old draft that’s titled “Vet Care: 2 years, 2 dogs, $2500” which is what I added up my vet bills for two perfectly healthy juvenile dogs, neither of which had to have spay/neuter surgery. Sure, there are costs that are front loaded with dogs and there are costs that are stacked on for older dogs as well, but that’s a good deal of cash for healthy dogs.
I’m not too surprised by the $1500 at all if it includes food and toys, etc.
I’m not too put off by their sample either (although I’d love it for someone to e-mail me their full survey so I can data mine it… sorry, I don’t have $3k to buy it myself!) given that it’s an industry consumer study which is primarily aimed at people who are going to sell products and services, people who don’t spend much money on their dogs at all are likely under-represented.
While I agree with all your general points, I think it’s wildly unfair to blame “pit bull culture”. The volume of pit bulls we see in shelters is simply a reflection of the popularity of the breed across the board, and the fact that a generation or two down the road of “random breeding”, all dogs look vaguely pit bull-like.
See also: carolina dogs. Any number of random bred dogs breeding randomly will eventually show a little blockiness around the muzzle, almond-shaped eyes, short coats. Anything broad-headed and short coated is slapped with the “pit bull” label in a shelter.
What we’re seeing is no different than the fact that for a couple decades after the peak popularity of GSDs, half the shelter dogs looked vaguely shepherd-like. Pits are popular now, and their influence is showing in the random-source dog population, that’s all.
But isn’t that part of pit bull culture? Those that choose these dogs and what they choose to do with them? I can’t think of a better word for it until someone comes along and does some real good analysis of where shelter dogs are coming from and what factors are creating that. As total shelter intake numbers drop, the strategy for further improvement will have to change because what used to be minor contributions to the problem that are not addressed by the current efforts will not drop.
For example, say there’s a steady supply of 200,000 dogs per year coming from canine racing… well, when there were 8 million dogs per year from all sources, that wasn’t such a big factor, but when there’s only 500,000 dogs per year, that 200k is a big factor. (obviously this is just a made up example)
More over, what numbers we do have shows us that expensive pure bred dogs sold to people who have the living situations to care for them long term are not to be blamed for dogs dying in shelters. And, across the board it’s getting better for all dogs at a rate that is impressive.
Wouldn’t canine racing culture be more like “dog fighting” culture than “Pit bull” culture? Both suggest uses for dogs, not breeds or types.
I think we’ve been discussing two kinds of “pit bull culture” here in fact. The thug one, and the rescue one.
Yes! By pit bull culture I mean the greatest possible interpretation of this. Sure, there are elements within these sub-cultures which are likely not problematic and even working against the problems, but as a singular metric “pit bull” correlates highly with problematic outcomes.
There’s another interesting element here in dividing up greater pit bull culture into its constituent parts. The people who use these dogs as status symbols of machismo don’t really read and write blogs, do they? People who fight these dogs to the death really aren’t representing themselves in BARK magazine, lobbying for more favorable laws, writing cute little photo blogs or going on twitter, now are they. As much as we have our disagreements, is any of this getting through to the most severe cases?
No it certainly is NOT getting through to the most severe cases you refer to. And for those who snap up every issue of BARK with a supportive “pit bull” article or editorial, the choir is being preached to.
It’s a matter of gaining more understanding from the public at large, which does not put as much of their time and attention onto dog issues the way folks like those on this blog do; folks with above average interests in these matters.
For them, you have about three minutes a pop perhaps, for argument’s sake, to make an impression. Most of the time that impression will be garnered from news shows, whatever papers remain and news websites. Although you get your occasional “Adoptable pet of the Week” story there, the few attacks that occur from victims of thug culture get more press and are more memorable. What folks don’t even stop to realize is part of what makes them memorable IS the very fact that such events are rare.
Just like shark attacks. Handgun assaults may barely get a flinch out of someone, at least my way. Animal attacks are a big deal.
I guess because we just don’t see ourselves as just another part of the vulnerable natural world anymore, or because the idea of being predated upon goes back to something more primitive within us?
Most chances for good impressions are arranged under special circumstances with limited audiences. The retirement home, a dog event where only folks with an above-average love for dogs will likely go, etc. Smaller audiences = less coverage.
Well, not exactly. I think what you’re seeing is half a “breed/type” choice for a cheerful, meaty, rough-and-tumble type everydog with low grooming demands and few health problems, and half the byproduct of popularity. In other words, low-income people choose pit bulls partly because they’re just all-around good dogs, and partly because they’re cheap or free in every newspaper.
I’ve got zero quibble with the assertion that planned, wanted breedings are more successfully homed and retained in those homes than products of unplanned, unwanted breedings. The same is true for human offspring. Both have far more to do with socioeconomic factors than with DNA. It doesn’t mean that foster children are inherently bad kids or that some innate qualities can be presumed by the fact that a family or racial type is over-represented in this category.
My shelter back home in farming country is packed full of border collie mixes, aussie mixes, kelpie and mcnab mixes, and lots of labs. It’s not because they’re bad dogs or because bad people choose free dogs of dubious parentage. It’s because they’re all high-drive working dogs that need a lot of attention and direction, and because their owners didn’t have much invested in them to begin with so when the average adolescent problems arose, they were easily discarded. Herding breeds and labs are common working dogs here, commonly left intact and commonly spend time roaming. Therefore, they are abundant among people who aren’t likely to just drown them in a river but who aren’t likely to scour the country looking for “forever” homes for them, either.
That dogs (and children) are discarded in shelters seems to have little to do with the dogs (or children) themselves.
Dogs are all around good dogs. Pit Bulls have nothing above the average here.
The other part is pretty accurate. Mutts and Pit Bulls are in part popular because they are low-cost and by being low-cost they are much more likely to be neglected and sent to shelters.
It’s the rare person who abandons a Ferrari, but any college campus is filled with abandoned bicycles and junk yards are full of beater cars that were low cost to start with.
http://autos.yahoo.com/news/ferrari-enzo-abandoned-in-dubai.html
Socioeconomic factors might very well play a huge part in the shelter dog problem, but what are you going to do about it, ban the poor and classless from having pets?
And yes, the reasons most dogs get abandoned in shelters has little to do with the dogs. That still doesn’t make the pit bull contribution go away.
“Dogs are all around good dogs. Pit Bulls have nothing above the average here.”
Of course, except that they are a singular combination of all the good traits of all-around good dogs. They have some drawbacks, too, but I’d far rather manage the drive and energy level of a bulldog than the drive, manic energy, and coat of a collie type. So would a lot of people.
The rest of this post just repeats exactly what I said. I’m glad we’re in agreement, here. Your ability to keep pointing at black people and saying that we can’t ignore the color of their skin and shape of their nose as a determining factor for why they end up disproportionately populating our prisons is… more than slightly baffling.
Empirical evidence speaks loudly against this. After actually experiencing the breed, people say “no thanks” more to pit bulls than any other dogs, then people who are already sold on saving dogs say “no thanks” to pit bulls more than any other breed. So shelters kill more pit bulls than all other breeds combined. These are dogs that have plenty of chances and plenty of people who are pro-pit bull have failed the dogs at this point.
Someone bred them, people who both have and want pit bulls. Someone acquired them. Someone who wanted and liked pit bulls. But then they said no thanks. Then the shelters can’t find homes for these dogs because people really don’t want them nearly as much as other breeds. That’s an astronomical failure rate all around. And it all starts with several layers of people who love the dogs.
Empirical evidence speaks loudly against this. After actually experiencing the breed, people say “no thanks” more to pit bulls than any other dogs, then people who are already sold on saving dogs say “no thanks” to pit bulls more than any other breed. So shelters kill more pit bulls than all other breeds combined. These are dogs that have plenty of chances and plenty of people who are pro-pit bull have failed the dogs at this point.
Someone bred them, people who both have and want pit bulls. Someone acquired them. Someone who wanted and liked pit bulls. But then they said no thanks. Then the shelters can’t find homes for these dogs because people really don’t want them nearly as much as other breeds. That’s an astronomical failure rate all around. And it all starts with several layers of people who love the dogs.
I am so enjoying this sane discussion.. I show and breed whippets.. I need couch surfers in my life not busy.. But good for you guys who have time and energy to work the lovely BC. A couple of things.. Get their dogs from a breeder.. What does that mean some dude who bred his two pits together? Or some other individual that does not have a clue about producing a healthy quality dog.. Whether for work show or pet.. That’s most of what I see.. I live in bay area.. Pits abound, pit mixes, am bullies, am staffies, and other that are pushy and look enough bully due to an errant bull terrier in the mix. we did a wisdom test.. DNA.. My take is they are good dogs… Qualifier in the right hands. People who are dominant and
OCD and love to babysit 2 years olds.. Pushy and can be busy, dog agressive, cats as food.. not as bad as Rotties re trying to bite me and I’m a vet.. I rescue but not pits.. the folks making them need to start caring about then vs all the rescuers.. I’d rather pass a law that said every dog sold has to be microchipped so the shelter can return it to its breeder.. Little undercover work on CL and the advertisements.. For a few years would fix it.. thanks for great post and blog.. My borzoi friend sent it to me..
How strange is it that a person who breeds dogs bred for hundreds of years to chase and kill small animals is so suspicious of a dog that among many other duties, also killed small animals once upon a time.
Sure, bulldogs can be pushy. So is every gundog I’ve ever met whose demands for hands-on attention never cease.
I definitely don’t mean to sound defensive, here, it just seems that those who are suspicious of bulldogs will cheerfully illustrate drawbacks in them that they fail to appreciate in any other breed.
And “cats as food”?! I’ve heard more concerns about that from the greyhound adoption people than I ever have had concerns with any given bulldog of my acquaintance. Try asking some basenji or shiba inu people how their “rescue” dogs typically fare with cats.
Any breed of dog is a “good dog, in the right hands”. Any breed of dog can be trouble in unprepared or undedicated hands.
Yeah, I don’t think seeing cats as prey is in any way a uniquely ‘bulldog’ issue.
Look at the annual report for the Denver Dumb Friends League. That is where I work. In Denver, “pit bulls” are banned and have been for several years. While I don’t have exact numbers, due to this ban, we do not receive many “pit bull” types. Though we receive 60-80 animals PER DAY, I would say we generally have fewer that 1-2 pit bull type dogs in the shelter on any given day. Those that we get are evaluated for aggression, and those that pads are transferred to an organization that can adopt then out. The point of this story is that pit bulls do not make up a large proportion of this organization’s dog population, and this is the largest organization in the region, not just the state. So I’m a little confused by these numbers…we take in and euthanize very few pit bull types, so our euthanasia rate, according to these studies, should be less than one percent. But it definitely it not, and our live release rate for dogs hovers around 80_90
Hi Terri, thanks for commenting.
From my understanding Denver and other municipalities that have banned Pit Bulls still get around 2-3% of these dogs coming in, this softly supports the observation that these dogs make up about that percent of the dog population at large.
I also don’t think you’re interpreting the numbers correctly. For one, it’d be telling to look at the numbers before and after the ban. Second, if you look at the chart you’ll see that there are in general more shelter dogs killed nationwide than returned to homes. This is a success rate that is below 50%. So a release rate that is 80-90% is a significant improvement on that. How much the DDFL’s rate can be attributed to a lessened pit bull problem is up for debate and would require more numbers to look at, but as it is, it appears to be supportive of such a large portion of the problem being pit bulls.
Doing some quick and dirty math, we see nation-wide the estimate that 40% of dogs killed are non-pit bulls. Let’s say that at the DDFL it’s 100% and that pit bulls are not an issue nor contributing to the DDFL population. And let’s say your kill rate is 15%. What would the kill rate be if pit bulls were reintroduced in numbers that reflect the national average? By the chart, we could assume that you’d have 30% more business in general coming from pit bulls. This additional business dilutes the non-pit bull kill rate down to 11.5%. Other shelters see the 60% pit bull to 40% non-pit bulls kill rate, so 1.5 to 1. This suggests that pit bulls would add 17.25% to the kill rate, bringing it up to 28.75%.
So if we added pit bulls back in, we’d expect you to have a ~70% live release rate instead of an 85% live release rate and you’d have to process a lot more dogs.
Terri said:
I wrote:
AH, I see what you’re thinking. The 1% I am referring to is not the shelter’s kill rate: [# of dogs euthanized / # of dogs taken in], rather it is [# dogs euthanized / US dog population].
I don’t believe you can ever get the euthanasia rate down to 1%… what about all the dogs that are on-demand euthanasias? I have used the Denver Dumb Friends League for this service myself when my vet at the time retired and my old friend succumbed to old age related illness versus acute disease that required me finding a new Vet.
It is actually possible that individual shelters will have higher kill rates as a percent in the future but will kill many fewer dogs as culture-wide problems are minimized and fewer healthy and adoptable dogs even come to shelters in the first place. PeTA uses this currently false scenario to defend their horrible kill rate… they claim that all those dogs are simply unadoptable.
Would that it were true! That all urban shelters in big cities only had to kill a few dogs per year and almost all of them could be claimed to be euthanasia versus population control and needless killing.
A week ago The Purina Incredible Dog Challenge was televised. It was in Denver, and there were some pit bulls entered in the disc competition.
I was curious to know how they evaded the city ban law. Is there an exception for transients?
Did I say “ban law?” Oy!
One thing that they don’t address is the fact that rescue groups can’t rescue more dogs from the shelters because they are taking in breeder releases as well. If shelters/rescues didn’t have to rescue dogs from puppymills that have been shut down, or take in dogs when the breeders were done with them, it would allow them to take in more strays from the local shelters.
Well, given the source of the statistics, the number of dogs that go to rescue and never see a shelter aren’t counted either, and we don’t know the success rate of rescues, although most rescues I know don’t really put many dogs down at all for failure to find homes (and those dogs might be taken to shelters to do so versus privately at a vet.
I do not where you live, but strays are extremely rare these days in most parts of the country. I know one exception is Carolinas from my understanding. As a child strays were fairly common. I can remember two occasions where we took in females ready to whelp. This just is not that common place now as far as I know.
Interesting. I can’t argue with data that I can’t see and am not sure I trust the conclusions of the groups you reference. The numbers you cite are perhaps supported by local data, but I think the conclusions you make are extremely optimistic and misleading. For example, North Carolina has maintained a record of animals received in Animal Shelters for the last decade.
You can find it here: http://ncagr.gov/vet/aws/fix/
(scroll down and go to “Look at the Numbers”)
NC is a diverse state, topographically and demographically. If you look at the data (unfortunately, not broken down by breed) you’ll see that a rural county such as Robeson, which straddles South Carolina, reports a 96% euth rate in 2001 and a 51% euth rate in 2011 with the intake remaining roughly the same (2001- 3,725 dogs, 2011- 3,386 dogs). According to the 2010 census, Robeson’s median income is $29,667 with 30% of the population living in poverty and 12% of the population having received a college degree. At another extreme, look at Orange Co (Chapel Hill) you’ll find the median income at $52,981, w/ 16% of the population living in poverty and 54% of the people there with college degrees. The Orange County Animal Shelter’s euth rate has remained relatively constant over the last few years: 35ish%. Their intake HAS decreased around 20% since they started reporting to the state in 2004.
Though I can’t place these dogs as a percent of the total dog population within each county the relatively small decline in intake numbers in the last decade suggests to me that S/N programs are not as successful here as they MAY be elsewhere. Of course, there may be other economic factors at work. The decrease in euthanasia rates seems to me to be attributable to the increased effectiveness of rescue organizations.
Regarding breed. Anecdotally speaking, the majority of dogs I see in Animal Control are Lab x and Hounds, which makes sense as they are, at least locally, the most popular breeds. Regarding your other conclusions:
Purebreds are less likely to end up in shelters than mixed-breeds. Of course. There are far fewer purebred dogs in the population.
Dogs purchased from breeders or pet stores are less likely to end up in shelters/Dogs given as gifts or acquired for more than $100 are less likely to end up in a shelter/Dogs acquired for less than $30 or dogs adopted from a shelter are more likely to end up in a shelter.
People are far more likely to take care of something they’ve paid “cash money” for.
That’s fantastic progress, especially considering how poor the existing culture and infrastructure was at homing pets, only 4% save rate in 2001? That data fully supports the progress that has been made.
Also note that shelters don’t have to save 99% of the dogs that come in to get to the 1%. That’s not what I calculated. Just consider that most dogs never enter a shelter, period. Then consider that in any given year only a fraction of dogs that will ever see a shelter will be there that year. The 1% number is this… looking at all dogs in the country in any year, how many are we killing in shelters. And that’s 1% of the total, the biggest number of dogs we can look at.
That might be a factor. In fact, if you think about it, the more successful you are in keeping dogs out of shelters the higher percent that they are going to euthanize because there will always be a steady flow of end-of-life dogs. This only applies when whole numbers are low, though, it does not always hold true. Basically, there will be say 100 dogs per year that are brought in for Euth versus rehoming, or there are going to be so many dogs that are simply not candidates each year. The more successful you are at keeping good dogs out of shelters then the larger these dogs are AS A PERCENT. If you have 1000 dogs coming in, those 100 are only a 10% factor to your kill rate. But as you get more successful, say down to 300 dogs coming in, then those 100 dogs are 33% of your kill rate. Etc.
This is a per-capita calculation. It’s not just that there are fewer purebreds, it’s that there are fewer purebreds when compared with their market-share.
No one questions that the data regarding shelter numbers are not being correctly tabulated. A recent post might of the Boston Newspaper which a message to Carolina shelters to keep thier Jackels.
No one can deny that Breed Rescue programs are keeping the majority of pure breds out of shelters. Could this be a response to pet adoptive folks seeking breed rescue programs? They generally do a much better placement and evaluation of right dog with right owners?
This is a horribly misleading article. HSUS and the ASPCA concur that approximately 65% of all dogs surrendered to shelters nationwide are killed every year.
Horribly misleading? It’s explained very clearly in perfect English.
PeTA kills 95% of the animals that enter their shelters. Thank god, very few dogs enter PeTA’s shelters compared to the national population of dogs. The same is true of dogs. There is a huge national reservoir that is constantly being filled and constantly emptying, and only 2% of that volume is being killed in a shelter each year.
Not wanting to pop anyone’s bubble here, I doubt if any of these numbers being tossed around are correct. Since the University of TN has been working very hard for the shelters to disclose the kill rates they have been stymied time after time from information being with held, by the professional killers (Shelters) are in business to do just that kill unwanted dogs and they do a good job of it. The kill ratio’s or the numbers are huge, disclosing the fact of what they do is bad press. Heck, even people here are so concerned about being politically correct they make numerous posts in an attempt to appease the (Whoever)
Don’t be fooled The ASPCA and the HSUS and the HS Shelters are busy going about the work of killing animals everyday, by the hundreds of thousands. Much to the delight of Wayne Pacelle,
Hiding how many dogs they’re killing? That’s not my impression. They seem to revel in telling the public how evil they are for ditching their dogs and how poor the caring shelters are for having to kill MILLIONS OF DOGS EVERY YEAR!!!!!!!
I don’t see any of them advertising the fact that the kill rates have been dropping steadily for 40 years now. They publish the numbers but you have to do the work to go back in time and see that they are dropping so fast.
So either we believe your conspiracy theory that over the last 40 years successive executives at these organizations have been subtly lowing their kill numbers a bit at a time, while simultaneously begging for money because the problem is SO HUGE!
What’s their plan when the numbers near rock-bottom which is rather soon, all things considered?
Making the same argument as “The Better Angels of Our Nature”? 😀
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I only skimmed through this, so I may have missed some comments.
The HSUS is a worthless operation. Every rescuer knows this. They only show up for the photo ops. I wouldn’t believe them.
PETA is even worse, if that’s possible.
A little over half of all dogs that enter shelters never make it out. Most that come in are not neutered or spayed. The estimate of dogs entering shelters is a high a 12 million. Some shelters have an 80% kill rate.
99% percent of all dogs in a pet store came from a puppy mill, right here in the good ol’ US of A. Puppy mills add millions of puppies to an already overburdened system.
Shelters are full of bully breeds. They comprise the largest list of adoptable pets on Petfinder.
You can hate on the sources all you want (you will find no love for HSUS or PETA anywhere on this blog, feel free to search around) but they have been the ones publishing the same data every few years for decades. And they have no reason to undershoot their estimates. They make more money the more they can champion just how big the problem is.
So it’s a perfectly fair assessment to use the same numbers taken under the same methods by the same groups over many years to show the trend.
And if you look at one of the studies I’ve posted on this blog you’ll see that coming from a pet store actually makes a dog LESS likely to get turned into a shelter than average. What makes a dog the most likely to get returned to a shelter? Coming from a rescue or shelter.
Where did you read that pet shop dogs are less likely to end up in a shelter? I kind of find that hard to believe.
While pet shops retail puppy mill dogs, it is not the miller’s only outlet. They sell out of their farms, online, through the newspaper. There are a lot of unlicensed puppy mills that aren’t part of the statistics.
How do I know this? I live in the heart of puppy mill country and was part of a grass roots organization that pressured the state for reform. The Amish and Mennonites run nearly all of the puppy mills here. The Amish believe that animals have no soul, so they treat their dogs about as well as a bag of rocks.
I don’t doubt that a lot of shelter dogs are returned. Many shelters have holding cages that you can dump your dog off anonymously. A reputable rescue always takes the dog back, no questions asked. I know that doesn’t always happen. Putting a chip in the dog helps to have the dog returned to the rescue, although no guarantee.
I invite you to do some rescue work. It’ll certainly change your outlook on litter production. Right now, on Petfinder, there are 4,661 border collies looking for a home. In comparison, there are only 766 Dalmatians and a lot of those are mixes. Thankfully, the puppy mills stopped cranking out Dalmatians at lightening speed. Those Dallies dumped in a shelter back at the height of their popularity most likely came from a puppy mill.
Hard to believe but true.
Patronek, G.J., Glickman, L.T., Beck, A.M., McCabe, G.P., & Ecker, C. (1996a). Risk Factors for relinquishment of dogs to an animal shelter. Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, 209.
I reproduce the chart here:
http://www.border-wars.com/2008/11/myth-of-christmas-puppies-2.html
There are 30,000+ ABCA Border Collie registered every year and ~3k AKC BCs every year. There are fewer than a thousand AKC Dalmatians every year. That’s pretty horrible odds for Dalmatians. There are almost as many in rescue as being registered in the largest registry for them.
Source that number, please.
I couldn’t find the link just now, but I wanted to say I have a link on my hairless Chihuahua blog to a news story from the last couple of years, that said due to puppy demand shortages in the US, Mexico is importing record numbers of AKC dogs every year to meet the market. Just sayin’
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http://www.petfinder.com/pro/for-shelters/facts-about-animal-sheltering/
Those are ASPCA statistics, the very same source I used. It’s just they’re 10 years behind! 2002. More proof just how much the numbers continue to drop.
http://www.state.nj.us/health/animalwelfare/facts.shtml Okay, this link says 12 million are euthanized. According to their numbers (61% don’t make it out), it would mean that 19.7 million dogs get dumped in a shelter each year.
There are a surprising amount of shelters that are poor to horrible. I have heard of shelters not releasing how many animals are euthanized. I also know of a big influx of dogs at shelters because of the economy in the past few years.
I don’t know, it just doesn’t sit right with me.
You’re making a fool of yourself posting undated and undocumented data that was bullshit when it was new.
That first line is horribly outdated. There are closer to 80 million dogs now: about 78.2 million dogs and about 86.4 million cats are owned in the United States. (Source: APPA 2012)
And the unspayed female cat thing is one of the most pernicious and ludicrous lies coming out of the shelter industry. Anyone using something that is obviously that stupid is trying to manipulate you. Just rub two brain cells together. If any cat had 420k offspring in 7 years the globe would be filled with cats waist deep by now.
http://www.sfgate.com/pets/yourwholepet/article/Damn-lies-and-cat-statistics-2479652.php
Actually, let me update that since the APPA 2013 is out now.
“The current Survey reports a total of 83.3 million dogs and 95.6 million cats in the U.S.”
http://media.americanpetproducts.org/press.php?include=144262
Don’t insult my brain cells! Your charts about dog ownership are from 1999! Might things have changed since then??
That survey means nothing to me until I can see how they came up with these answers. I just don’t buy it.
And, as far as the amount on Petfinder, no one breeds Dalmatians anymore! The breeders don’t even breed! And if you took the time to look, so many of the dogs listed as Dalmatians are really mixes, not purebreds, and some are only listed as a Dalmatian because they some spots. They probably don’t have an ounce of Dal blood in them. And why the hell are so many border collies being bred?
If there has been newer data published, go find it and show that it has changed. I gave you a link to a published study that’s widely referenced. You don’t like it? It’s 1000x better than bullshit hearsay.
I use current data whenever available. So my pet statistics are FRESH instead if whatever old crap you went looking for. See that’s the difference, you purposely sought out old and unsourced data. I publish NEW and documented data. Mine is superior.
I don’t care if you don’t “buy it” because you’re not presenting anything in return except speculation. I gave you a full study citation, GO READ IT.
Do you really think that Dalmatians are going to get called crosses more than other breeds? More than Border Collies? Heh, any dog with Irish white markings can be confused for a BC mix.
And the number of BCs has been rather stable for years, so I guess it’s because people like the dogs and want that many.
Don’t you think the numbers for pits being euthanized is skewed because it’s one of the only breeds that since the 1970’s, that many municipalities have adopted policies that they will not adopt out a pit bull, regardless of it’s temperament? Many who could pass any temp test are still euthanized because the shelter puts down any pit-like dog on intake. That’s not about the breed. Those numbers are just bad policy. If a dog is showing temperament problems, by all means, put it down. But I don’t believe they should be put down based solely on their looks. Especially when you consider your average shelter worker’s education on telling breeds apart is pathetic. I’m not a pit ‘apologist’ – but I also think you look at the DOG, not the breed when deciding to put them down.
The sheer magnitude of the problem makes “skewing” a non issue. There are more pit bull types killed than registered dogs born in the US every year. So um, no, I don’t think it’s just a little math issue.
BSL covers a very small portion of the population. Not even significant.
And it is about the breed, the type, the landrace because they are flooding shelters on the way in and have shitty adoption rates on the way out, even in shelters that don’t put them down without trying or what not. Even the places that lie about them and call them lab mixes.
I thank you from my heart for getting this info out there…. I am almost in tears for some reason. Just telling I guess that I know have more info to support my nearly 30 years of dog breeding….thank you from my heart.
Are there references available for the “new data released”? The individual organizations websites are reporting slightly different stats. When was this article published/written?
This article was published June of 2012. The information was timely and accurate as of that date.
I find it hard to trust sources that have a vested financial interest in this. And the fact still remains that many shelters are adopting out known aggressive dogs and attacks and fatalities by shelter dog are at an all time HIGH and rising rapidly. Shelters are even trying to GET RID of behavioral testing-how is that possibly in the interest of public safety? http://www.animals24-7.org/2015/09/06/albuquerque-city-shelter-released-dangerous-dogs/
It doesn’t matter what the % is or the number–it’s still too many–spay/neuter/repeat until we save them all!!!
The numbers you cite are ludicrous! It’s closer to 50% of animals entering shelters are killed today. In the 70’s it was at least 75%.
Pure breed dogs are found in shelters every single day. That’s why there are so many rescue groups that ONLY take pure breed dogs from the shelters.
there are absolutely reputable breeders, but more times than not. Those “responsible breeders” are puppy mills and back yard breeders who keep dogs in inhumane conditions, never providing even basic medical soley to make a profit.
Monica, your comment is ludicrous! You pull numbers out of your ass and don’t provide a single citation of why my numbers which are actually pulled from the national authorities, are supposedly wrong. Get a clue, dear and if you want to cast doubt, bring some facts.
Betsy and Monica are lost causes. They would have been great at the Salen witch trials. They still think the moon is made out of cream cheese and that the world is flat ( maybe that is where all the dogs go.. they fall over the side) We know the real story Chris and thank you for bringing it to us in a studied well written blog. Shelter numbers are dropping and that is great. I am sure they will continue to drop in the future and your stats will be even more positive in your next report
http://www.aspcapro.org/where-will-the-puppies-come-from This is right from the ASPCA’s mouth. I have talked to several Veterinarians that have said the HSUS is talking about setting up breeding programs to and to include other “shelters” just to meet the need for puppies and pets. I say NO to this idea, after all of the years condemning others and all the while still asking for donations they should kiss the ass of everyone they have smoozed out of cash in the last few months full well knowing and talking about creating puppies with other rescues should change their non profit status. This is a bunch of crapola and needs to be dealt with by people taking in honest information. Everyone should educate themselves on this subject. Because the rhetoric is going to cause people to never be able to own a dog, the price will be far to high.
I totally agree with your opinion. This from my personal knowledge has already been in action for two years likely as Pilot programs? I wish to add have seen this Pet Smart Charity in action with a “No Kill Shelter”.
When they do get puppies of course puppy has to be spay or neuter BEFORE they can Adopt. They remove critical component of the endocrine system. necessary for a growing puppy. Hormones are necessary for more than producing puppies. Bone, brain, and healthy immune system. They hit the young puppy heavy with vaccines. These puppies cost these owners often more than they can afford in Vet bills. Thank you for naming it all from early spay/neuter .as rhetoric,..No brainier and this so call shortage was easy to predict years ago.
Those who have bought into the spay/neuter BS should read this article and share even with your Vet as the cash register rings for them. https://healthyandhappydog.wordpress.com/
Honestly, the numbers is still too large.
Well, you can wait it out as it’s been falling for decades, or you could do something about it.
But what we should not do is get taken in by the alarmism and the ill aimed blame used to slam breeders and purebreds.
How can we help to reduce that number??
Oh, I don’t know, don’t the answers seem obvious? You can get your dogs from shelters, you can not dump your dogs at shelters. When you see at large dogs you can find the owner yourself instead of dumping them at a shelter. Foster a dog.
You can support the sorts of dogs, breeders, and owners that don’t end up in shelters (paying for your dog, taking it to a vet, supporting a breeder and a purebred, avoiding fad breeds).
Doesn’t make me feel better. We need 0.