Dead Dogs Walking

Dead Dogs Walking

We’re a society that loves dogs, but in the wretched shadows, make a lot of them suffer and a lot of them die, for reasons a dog would probably never understand; for reasons many rational people would never understand either.

     I got my first Airedale terrier when I was eight. He used to chase cars on Ramp Road, trying to bite the tires with his big teeth. Back then everyone let their dogs run loose. The dog catcher wasn’t so strict like they are now. He’d follow my dog Murphy right to our front door and greet my parents politely, like a valued member of the community. “I think I have someone who belongs to you,” he’d say. Then he’d leave, no harm done. After all, a dog was a valued member of someone’s family. No one spayed or neutered their dogs either. There was no need, and it seemed far too cruel. When a female came into heat, the owners simply sequestered her from the males, and mostly it worked.

     We paid a high price for letting Murphy run loose. I think he was stolen and sold to a research facility, along with our neighbor’s dog Skipper. It was a common practice back then. Veterinarian schools and science labs need dogs to experiment on and they’re not all acquired legally. However, some breeders can legally breed dogs just to sell to research facilities. Beagles are a common dog used because they’re very trusting and docile around people, and easy to handle. They won’t bite when they’re being tortured, like a Chow would. A Chow would fight and bite for his life one hundred percent, until his very last breath, but a Beagle wouldn’t do a thing. Beagles die in research facilities, along with other breeds, some in experiments that really don’t accomplish anything. Some of those beagles live their entire lives without seeing a blade of grass or the light of day. They’re bred into oppression and sold to be tortured and killed, purposely. At least dogs who are euthanized in animal shelters were there by accident, not by some psychotic, premeditated plan of brutality. And I don’t buy that ludicrous argument that some dogs must suffer for some future good for an entire species, which may or may not come.

     It’s very traumatic for me to think about what could have happened to Murphy, even to this day. I searched a month for him, thinking he’d eventually turn up. I learned years later that when a dog is gone for more than a few days, he was likely stolen, killed, or critically injured. In some states, the pound will sell dogs to animal research facilities and veterinarian schools for a few bucks. Schools will practice all kinds of horrific techniques on your dog, though, the use of dogs is supposed to be dropping. The dogs are required by law not to be awakened after the procedure and killed humanely, but there have been many cases where dogs were kept alive to be experimented on again. The fear and pain dogs like this experience are off the charts.

     Let me make some important points. A family dog could be stolen or hauled off to the pound, then sold to a veterinarian school, and then experimented on and killed without the owner’s knowledge. Never put up an ad for your dog saying free to a good home, because there are people who go around scooping up these free dogs to sell into experimentation. Vet schools teach castration to sterilize dogs and virtually no other less invasive methods. Plenty of research shows that dogs without their reproductive organs develop a whole list of health problems. These altered dogs wind up in vet hospitals, costing owners more money than they would have if they had not been altered, so vet hospitals make more money off altered dogs. Money can be an incentive to keep a dog less healthy. They tell you it’s healthier for your dog to be spayed or neutered with no scientific data to back up this claim. This is called propaganda, and often muddles the truth.

     People love dogs. There are a lot of dogs because there are a lot of people, and the ratio is about three to one, one dog to every three people in this country. So people don’t really want to stop all breeding or there’d be no more dogs. There’d be no dogs for animal research, and this is a multi-billion dollar industry involving people with a lot of power and money. They need a lot of dogs or a lot of people would lose their jobs. Vet hospitals need sick dogs for good business, and altered dogs get sick. Dog rescue operations have to clean up the mess of industries who put out a lot of dogs, like greyhound racing and Class A breeders of Beagles. You can go on line now and find a Beagle to rescue, one who was originally bred for research but saved for some reason.

     Quite simply, there are two massive opposing forces working against each other here, both legal forces. One is the combined masses of normal citizens who simply love dogs and want to reduce the unwanted dog population, so they spay and neuter thinking this is the right thing to do. Sometimes it is, but mostly they’ve been duped. In some countries it’s illegal to spay or neuter your dog. The other opposing force, which may not contain as many people, but has a lot of power, are the industries and institutions that need a lot of dogs to make money or justify their existence, so they must ultimately support breeding dogs, which can lead to the unwanted dog population that the above force is trying to nullify. Veterinarian hospitals, veterinarian schools, research facilities, dog pounds, dog catchers, animal shelters, dog racing facilities, guide dogs, dog shows, police dogs, military, dog dealers, pet stores, dog spas, dog boarders, etc, all need dogs. The list goes on. Dogs are not just man’s best friend anymore. They make big money for a lot of people, so not only do average dog-loving people need dogs, but so too do institutions and industries who exploit them at various levels of barbarism for gain that usually doesn’t take into account fully the well-being of the dog. I don’t think we’ll outlaw dog breeders anytime soon, maybe just the hybrids, which are the ones we should breed. They’re more genetically sound. The powerful would never allow an end to dog breeding.

     If you step back and look at all this, it may seem that the whole spay and neuter propaganda machine, whether intentional or not, whether it does any good or not, is a diversion from the real problem, which is the harm big business is doing to dogs and the money they’re making because of this. Propaganda is good at hiding the truth, and the truth is, even though most people love dogs, some people make a lot of money off their suffering.