A great sadness in the world of dogs are owners who fail to recognize that dogs are fully sentient beings that need more than food, water, shelter, and sanitation. Dogs also need mental stimulation and exercise every day, no exceptions.
This means that if you kennel your dogs twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, you are failing your dogs. In fact, you are treating your dogs worse than the most hardened of psychopathic criminals on death row.
And yet, how often do we see this? All the time!
Go to any commercial breeding or long-term boarding kennel, and you will see cage after cage of dogs deprived of the most basic kind of mental stimulation. Most are rarely walked or even turned out from their cages. Instead, a high-pressure water hose is used to blast feces into the scuppers. The gate to the kennel run may not be opened in a week
This is not a life. This is abuse.
“Abuse?! But that’s the way we’ve always done it!”
Right.
Slavery and torture are also ancient traditions, but that doesn’t make them right does it?
We need to do better than this.
Dogs are not inanimate property. If you leave a shovel out in the rain and snow, it is of no concern to the state. But do the same thing to a dog, and not only will the state step in – it may fine you, remove your dog and, in extreme cases, jail you.
While there may be no legal obligation to provide exercise and mental stimulation for your dog, failure to live up to this responsibility is at the core of many, if not most, dysfunctional relationships.
Job One then is exercise and mental stimulation. Satisfy your dog’s needs in this regard, and you are half way home.
2 comments:
"Go to any commercial breeding or long-term boarding kennel, and you will see cage after cage of dogs deprived of the most basic kind of mental stimulation. Most are rarely walked or even turned out from their cages. Instead, a high-pressure water hose is used to blast feces into the scuppers. The gate to the kennel run may not be opened in a week"
About two years ago, 167 dogs were pulled from breeder/hoarder situation. Of those, 21 came to the ABCR. I was fortunate enough to foster Teddy or Taff half ear, as he was known while he was with me. When he first arrived, if he was in his crate and heard the sound of water running, he would throw himself to the back of the crate and scream in terror; a clear sign that the kennels were washed with a high-pressure hose.
[Taff half ear was with me for six months, learning to be a normal dog. He was adopted by a lady and her daughter who now take him on frequent runs in South Mountain Park and dote over him.]
This is true. I've seen it. I baby sat a rescued breeder dog for a week. He had HWs and was undergoing treatment but I made sure he was outside in the yard under supervision at least several hours a day. It was all he could stand before being overwhelmed. He had bumps under his skin. It seemed the kennel owner would get complaints of his dogs barking and shoot them in their cages with a bb gun. The dog is still in foster after a year and is coming out of his 4 years of horrow, from pup to breeder, and is a real sweetie. But he is shy. Gee. I wonder.
Debi and the 3 TX JRTs.
Post a Comment