Quote:
Originally Posted by luckypenny
I believe it is improving, slowly but surely. Not sure how old you are Cassie but, when I was a kid only 30 years or so ago  , no one I ever knew spayed or neutered their pets  . Now that I think of it though, not too many people in our neighborhood had pets. I don't remember any cats living on our street and only two homes had dogs. Where I live now, at least every second house on the road has either dogs or cats.
As you should when you need to  . |
I think the increased awareness over the past 20 years has really helped to decrease the number of pets euthanized every year. And certainly people seem to have more pets these days... I remember growing up it was common for a home to maybe have one dog or cat, but very rarely did homes have multiple dogs and/or cats like we see now!
What's disturbing though is pre-1990's more than 15 million animals were PTS in the US. I believe these days it is down around 2-3 million. There certainly were less pets in people's homes pre-90's so that means that a good majority of animals were being PTS. Also means with all the pets we have these days, there are not nearly as many percentage wise being PTS. Maybe there wasn't the resources at that time to deal with the # of animals surrendered. Certainly in the last few years many rescues have sprung up, and the internet (in someways) has helped with the creation of sites such as PetFinder. And even though its taken 2 decades, we are obviously making some progress. I love the work rescues, shelters, HS, etc. do but to be honest I really think these days there is just too many alternatives to keeping your pet. Which is fortunate otherwise most of these pets may end up with a very tragic ending
IMO, I think it has become so easy for people to "dump" off their pets somewhere - even though shelters are over full, they can usually find someone to take their animal somewhere. It has become very easy for people to just put their "problem" on another person and not hold up to their responsibilities.
