And (honestly!) I am not "thumbing my nose" at anyone, but I DO choose to stand by the position that it is untenable to keep intact animals when so many tens of thousands are PTS daily because there are no homes for them.
An intact mail can "start" anywhere from two to twelves puppies in about ten minutes, and intact males ARE motivated to get out/escape/slip away and do just that. To keep an intact male "imprisoned" with those urges seems unnecessarily cruel to me. An intact female can kindle just as easily, and you'd be amazed how many folks think it is "unspeakably cruel" to have a pregnant spay performed, (I would spay up to a few weeks before birth). They end up bringing another litter into a place where hundreds of unwanted puppies were put down that same morning. etc. etc. and so on and so forth. To keep an intact female with all of her "urges", while simultaneously denying her those impulses seems cruel to me as well. I have a friend who teaches elementary school and is under CONSTANT scrutiny and suspicion because he's a male teaching small children.... he COULD be offended and upset by the scrutiny and outright suspicion that folks exhibit towards men in that profession, but (instead) he chooses to REALIZE that if it were HIS children he'd be careful and cautious to the nth degree as well towards their "caretakers", and he chooses to understand and accept that scrutiny - even to laud the parents for a bit of paranoia - proving to folks in time and over time that he IS (truly) one of the "good guys". In short, I have very little "political correctness" in me when it comes to animals.... if that offends someone I'm not really all that bothered.... the "reasons" for keeping a companion animal intact are pretty weak when you stack them against the benefits of spay/neuter, and if there's a side of that "fence" to come down on, I am definitely on one side - I don't straddle it, and I don't see a lot of valid "exceptions" to be made.... So sue me? Barry/Chicago > >
