February 01, 2007

I own a dog, and I vote

It's a new politically savvy voice of dog owners: Dog Politics.

They are watching the PETA "We Kill Dogs Better" trial, of course.

In day eight of the trial, PETA euthanasia boss Daphna Nachminovitch admitted that PETA "owns" animals (for a short time). Funny, I thought that they did not believe in anyone owning animals for any purpose whatsoever.

You will have scroll way down the page. Look for this passage:

The only thing stranger than Nachminovitch's legal hedging throughout this discussion was the odd sound of a PETA employee referring to people as the "owners" of dogs and cats. We'd never experienced that before—it's usually "guardians" and "companion animals."

But when it's convenient, PETA will apparently assert ownership over the animals it has otherwise sworn to "liberate."

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

http://epilot2.hamptonroads.com/Repository/ml.asp?Ref=VmlyZ2luaWFuUGlsb3QvMjAwNy8wMi8wMiNBcjAyNDAy&Mode=Gif&Locale=english-skin-custom

“North Carolina’s treatment of animals is the crime”
By Phyllis Stein
Virginian-Pilot
February 2, 2007

The fact that authorities accused PETA workers of animal cruelty in Hertford County is a twisted miscarriage of justice. The people in North Carolina should be outraged, but not at the PETA workers. They should be outraged and ashamed at the longstanding terrible conditions that drew PETA workers there in the first place.

I have never been a member of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. But as executive director of the Chesapeake Humane Society and a Virginia state humane officer in the 1970s, I had many calls from people in North Carolina who routinely dropped injured or unwanted animals across the state line because they got no help from their own counties.

Thirty years ago Chesapeake was also in the headlines after an investigator from The Humane Society of the United States told us that we had “the second worst animal facility in the United States.” The newly formed Chesapeake Humane Society had called for the investigation of our city pound, in large part because of the barbaric way unwanted animals were disposed of.

At that time, the Chesapeake wardens were using the same methods that are still being used in North Carolina. They either shot the animals or suffocated them in gas chambers.

Following the suggestion of HSUS, we asked veterinarians in Chesapeake for help. It was agreed that The Chesapeake Humane Society would pay for the sodium pentobarbital and the veterinarians would take turns each week euthanizing the animals until the wardens could be trained to do it.

The wardens were not used to handling the animals up close. They used snare poles, (long poles with nooses) even when putting the animals into the gas chamber. They would swing them by their necks like fish from poles, and cram them all together in the box, grown dogs and cats along with puppies and kittens.

It was brutal and shocking to witness, but I saw it and made a call to HSUS in Washington, D.C.

Furious that I had reported them, the chief warden came up with an idea that he thought would send me away for good. He said that the wardens would learn the more humane way of euthanizing the animals but only if I learned to do it too.

I was stunned and left the pound in shock. I called the investigator from HSUS and asked her what I should do.

“Learn to do it,” she said. “You can’t ask them to do things that you aren’t willing to do yourself.” I spent a sick and sleepless night and then called Maynard Johnson, the humane officer at Norfolk SPCA. As heartbreaking as the job was, he showed me that at least the animals were held, calmed and petted before being given the injection. It was obviously a kinder and easier death that what they endured at the Chesapeake pound.

I accompanied one of the veterinarians to the pound the next day and euthanized two dogs myself, one adult female and one tri-colored puppy who licked my hand as I held him.

I am now 75 years old, and that act remains the most horrible experience in my life. But it also reminds me of one time in my life when my love for animals gave me the courage to do what the PETA workers now on trial in North Carolina are accused of doing.

This is not a problem just in North Carolina and Virginia. Until people all over the country do something about the number of unwanted animals coming into shelters in far greater numbers than can be placed in adoptive homes, they must face the ugly truth that some animals will have to be killed.

And until the people of North Carolina step up and assume responsibility for caring for the animals in their own community, I hope they will at least have the common decency to thank the PETA workers who are doing their dirty work for them.

Chas S. Clifton said...

Funny, I don't read anything in Ms. Stein's letter about lying about your intentions or dumping carcasses in somebody else's dumpsters. We should thank PETA for that too?