#never wrestle with pigs bc you both get dirty and the pig likes it

[dr--teeth]

^guy who comes at people without asking what they're talking about. you know what, yeah how dare i say anything on my shitty little personal blog without sources or nuance gasp! you all but asked for an essay, and buddy I Love To Talk so here i fucking go

i work at a small, poorly funded, municipal kill shelter in the south. we have an obligation to our district to respond to all animal control calls as well as our (LARGE) local stray and feral populations, so we are usually really really full. we are a kill shelter, not because we're evil and hate animals or whatever, but because we all get what the government pays for (especially the animals). we're also verrry understaffed! we do what we can by transporting animals through the ASPCA to no-kill shelters, but they can only take so many from us. also did you know that "no-kill" shelters still totally have to euthanize animals? yeah i didn't know that either, for years of my life. they just have to sit under a 10% euthanasia rate to legally call themselves no-kill. hell even rescues have to get animals euthanized. ANIMAL SANCTUARIES need euthanasia sometimes. animal death is a massive part of animal rescue.

i'm also in school to become an ecologist, so this is the angle i'm coming from. i believe purchasing purebred pets is silly snd unethical when i see so many perfectly adoptable, sweet, loving, and beautiful animals get shuffled around until they either get adopted or get put to sleep.

okay. so can you tell me the shelter statistics right now? here in the US, we're facing decreased adoption rates, which is leading to crowding, and increased euthanasia rates because we can't keep up with the amounts of seized, dumped, or stray dogs and cats. even no-kill shelters are struggling because fewer people are adopting right now. when they fill up, it takes a lot longer for them to free more space, so municipal no-kills are finding themselves incapable of meeting the demand of their jurisdictions. every pet that is bought from a breeder is a pet that cannot be saved from a shelter. so even in the best case it's just a bit fucking selfish imo. feel free to disagree, i don't care.

on another note, what is currently the greatest threat to wildlife diversity on earth right now? pesticide poisoning? cars? no actually studies show its stray, feral, and free roaming cats, which kill about a billion migratory birds every year in north america alone. (Article Source: The impact of free-ranging domestic cats on wildlife of the US, Ross et al 2013, DOI: 10.1038/ncomms2380 if you have access to a database). every cat that is bought from a breeder is a cat that isnt saved from a shelter. and then really smart and sooo nuanced people turn around and bitch about euthanasia rates in shelters like it's our (shelter workers) fault we can't achieve the "no kill america" everyone thinks we deserve.

also where did i say every breeder is irresponsible? i said most are, which is empirically true lmao. i cant find my source in my folder right now, but statistically speaking there are just more puppy mills and backyard breeders than reputable ones with best management practices. believe it or not, it's expensive to do things right, so most people don't want to. pet purchases are decreasing along with adoption rates right now, and many backyard breeders have been surrendering unsold puppies and some breeding stock to shelters, adding pretty massively to the problem.

anecdote time: my shelter recently received 24 purebred shiba-inu dogs and puppies (ALL WITH PAPERS!!!) from a couple that had been keeping them in a shed in their backyard. except for the puppies, they were all but feral, and completely unsocialized and terrified of humans. one of the bitches had a secondary skin infection from a flea allergy that was so bad she had no hair on her body. we kept them all for a good 4 months longer than our shelter policy usually allows because we wanted to try and rehabilitate as many of them as we could. but only like two of the adults were able to recover enough to be eligible for ASPCA transport (all of the puppies got to go, thankfully!)

so yeah whatever, guy. if you really need a purebred sphynx cat or whatever spend your money how you like, idc. i just didn't want to write an ESSAY on my TUMBLR BLOG. my bad though i should always be prepared to hear from dudes like you lmao

btw if you got a kitten from a “breeder” but they can’t tell you what breed of cat it is? that is not a breeder, that is an irresponsible owner who didn’t get their cat fixed.