Supply and Demand

Mob rushes animal shelter for Yorkies

A mob of nearly 100 people gathered at the Hillsborough County Animal Services building for a chance to adopt one of 23 rescued Yorkshire Terrier puppies.

The doors opened just before 9 a.m. Thursday and all the dogs were gone by 10:15 a.m. Some people had actually spent the night in front of the building to make sure they got a dog.

With demand like this, any takers on whether SUPPLY will be increased?

Here's the story about the raids.

The raiders are trying to file animal cruelty charges, and the dogs were adopted a mere week after the raids were conducted.

No time for due process! People want their Yorkies NOW!

A website called "Yorkie Talk" has a thread on the raids. According to poster "sarahheartmaddy", one 14 year old Yorkie with no teeth and mammary tumors was going to be the most expensive to rehabilitate. A 14 year old Yorkie without teeth. Surely a puppymill. A 14 year old dog with mammary tumors. Only at the worst of breeding facilities.

We need to make sure that she is not PTS~which is a real possibility if her vet care will be too high.

With demand like that, is there any doubt the criteria for raids will be loosened?

The breeder was an 83 year old woman, who's health gave out. No matter! She is still the devil incarnate. These people can't fathom why living conditions deteriorated for these dogs. They can't fathom that maybe the old woman didn't give them up because...she loved them.

Maybe that love blinded her to her inability to care for the dogs. It happens. It's pathetic. It's not the devil.

Many of those posters wanted to line up to increase their own Yorkie population (wonder how many are all ready violating their local pet ordinance numbers). Hopefully they will never get old.

From the Tampa Tribune:

Delaine Bacon of Seminole Heights was first in line.

Since 1990, Bacon has had eight Yorkshire terriers, most of which came from a breeder who was raided last week, she said. "I wanted another Yorkie from that breeder and I figured this was my only chance."

She said the breeder, who has not been charged, ran a clean operation, but as she grew older, it became harder to care for the animals.

"She's a great person," Bacon said. "But she is elderly and I guess it became more challenging."

Government won't have any problems increasing demand (for a while). Where Governments' always fail is customer loyalty.

Quality, you see, is a function of a free market. But in this regulated society, we don't help people. We report them. And for government, it's a win-win.

The Rescue Store

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From Here to There

Well I promised you the fascinating road from here to "Biting the Hand that Pets the Dog", and you shall have it.

It started yesterday when I clicked over to Nathan Winograds' blog to see what the No-Kill guru was up to. Mr. Winograd has a great blog, and I have listed it in my "Cures for Ennui". He brings a heck of a lot of common sense and rational thinking to a novel thought - No Kill Shelters can be successful. No Kill shelters really can contribute to reducing the unwanted pet population even further, without any anti-human petamongering or Nazi animal control laws. In other words, a win-win.

So, once at The No Kill Blog, the top post was his interview of The Dog Man of Kansas City. Brent Toellner has his own blog, the KC Dog Blog, another site that is, you guess it, hitting the "Cures for Ennui".

At first glance, the Kansas City Dog Man appears to be another welcome voice of common sense and rational (though hardly libertarian) thought. (So rare in dogdom these days). And the Kansas City Dog Man (ok, so I like typing Kansas City Dog Man. Wonder if he's a star? ;-) ) highlighted the Chicago Tribune story "No Pets for You!" Now this story is a great read too; don't stay up past your bedtime with all this reading, but do have a gander at the comments while you are over in the Tribune land.

Because in the comments, someone linked to, (you guessed it) "Biting the Hand that Pets the Dog".

A lot of times comments are more interesting than the actual story. It's one thing I love about the internet, you could find the most obscure news story in the world, and SOMEBODY will post in the comments that they personally know the victim (villan) and the whole story is a gross misrepresentation. The victim (villan) is actually Mother Theresa back from the dead.

Sometimes the comment section is good to gauge the tone of the general populace, and sometimes its just full of idiots clinging with religious fervor to their pet neurosis and psychosis. And sometimes, the comments section will be full of links and information that enhance the story. The Tribune article comments were mostly the latter.

Property Rights and Rescue Wrongs

A blogger from Illinois wrote an instant classic in 2005 about dog rescues.

Regrettably it has taken 3 years for Biting the Hand that Pets the Dog to travel the internet to Ms. X's attention, or I surely would have posted it years ago.

But now that we have it, READ it! And soon I will post the path I took to find it. That to, will be worth reading.

Imports bring rabies

Three bitten by rabid dog in Britain

I could file this with my other Shelter Dog posts, because this story isn't about breeders or dogs imported for breeding or working. No, this shelter in Britain is importing strays from foreign countries to sell - oops *adopt* to Brits. This is not an uncommon practice in our own country. Unfortunately for the shelter workers in this story, it was a practice that, shall we say, came back to bite them.