Dice and Cody have an adventure

The following story occurred the other night - in the rain, and the cold, and at ten at night. 

What the dogs refer to as a kitty, was not, as they soon discovered, a kitty.

I will let them tell their story.

Dice, the Border-collie-in-charge

So, the other night, Dice, the border-collie-in-charge was on patrol and discovered an invader in the yard. It was a black and white kitty! Dice knew that this could not stand, and so he ran at the black and white kitty to tell it that he was the border-collie-in-charge, and black and white kitties are not welcome!

The black and white kitty did not run from Dice. Rather it lifted its tail and peed on him! Dice was shocked! He jumped back. the stench! This was a very bad black and white kitty indeed!

Dice elected to stand back from the stink-spraying black and white kitty and bark angrily at it until it left.

This did not work well. The kitty did not leave, and Dice could not get closer, since the kitty had no manners and peed stinky stuff on border-collies-in-charge. He barked and barked, hoping that maybe Ketchum or the back-up border collie would come and help out. 

Ketchum stayed on the porch and thought that black and white kitties should be left in peace. She too had tried to chase a black and white kitty, and she too had been peed on, and now in her job as elder statesdog she saw no reason to get kitty pee on herself.

Ketchum, the elder statesdog

Dice got assistance when the backup border collie, Cody was accidentally let out by the house human who armed with a flashlight and a tone of annoyance stepped out of the house to the sound in incessant barking and the stench of the black and white kitty. Dice heard her call his name, and assumed that she was yelling encouragement, so he kept barking, hoping the back up border collie was on the way.

Cody, the backup border collie

Cody, the back up border collie arrived like a shot, and quickly decided on a plan. Ignoring Dice's warning about kitty spray, she leapt at the kitty to tell it what for - bad kitty!!

The kitty peed on her too! It was terrible! It stung her eyes, and it assaulted her nostrils. She decided that the kitty had crossed a line of common decency. The kitty must die!!

The kitty sprayed her again and again, but she no longer cared. And finally with the shouts of the house human and Dice cheering her on she stepped back triumphantly. The black and white kitty would pee no more!

Apparently the house human was not shouting encouragement, she was angry, not at the criminally insane and now departed black and white kitty but at the border-collie-in-charge, and the back-up border collie!

She saw the scene, and immediately yelled at both collies to go home. It was raining and she was wet, and she had just tramped through cactus and boulders to reach the scene of The battle.

Still high on the success of her victory, Cody raced for the house. Dice was a little more subdued, uncertain, should he have dispatched the black and white kitty himself, or kept Cody back? The house human was annoyed, which made him uncertain. Also he was finding it hard to think with the kitty pee still scalding his nostrils.

When the house human caught up she did not let Cody into the house! Instead, Cody got to spend the night outside, so did the border-collie-in-charge. Cody felt so grown up and in-charge!! She had earned the right to sleep outside, where she could bark freely at the neighbor's dogs. Such fun!

The next day, and the day after that, the house human tried to drown her with a garden hose and fizzy sweet-smelling water!! It was pretty horrible. The good news was that the fizzy water did nothing to hide the still pungent - almost overwhelming stench of the black and white kitty!!  Every time Cody inhaled it she recalled again her breathtaking victory!!!

The ethics of 'No Kill'

I live in a town with a huge pit bull problem. Tucson is the source for most of Michael Vic's fighting dogs. Tucson's animal shelters are filled to overflowing with unaltered pits found wandering the streets, because it appears that pit owners have not discovered how to neuter or spay their dogs.

Pits, are by and large nice dogs, but they are hard as Hell to place.

Rescues try to alleviate pressure on our shelter by pulling dogs out and placing them into foster. The ultimate goal of this effort, is of course, adopting these dogs into permanent homes. In this manner, rescues are effectively raising the carrying capacity of the local shelters. Whether the rescue specializes in pits or poodles, every dog pulled from the shelter provides a stay of execution for those remaining in the shelter. This is simple math.

Simple math would also dictate that there are only so many foster homes available to take in these dogs.

This means that the more dogs that find homes, the more spaces available to pull dogs from the shelter.

In Tucson, as in most other communities, I assume, the rescue folks are a hodgepodge of individuals  and groups with differing goals and agendas.

Here is where things get muddy.

Years ago I wanted to adopt (for $1000, which means buy) a PMU horse from a local horse rescue. PMU horses are the horses up in Canada used to create the drug Premarin. The drug is made from pregnant mare urine, and the mares used are often large draft mares who produce more urine. The mares are often bred to quarter horses or thoroughbreds, producing mutt foals that could be useful for some limited sports. The foals are often sold (or were, I am not up to date on current policies) in large lots, making the purchase of these foals impossible for normal folks, so killers ended up with the bulk of these foals. This is where rescue stepped in. Rescues would buy these bulk foal lots and divvy the foals out to rescues across the country.

Several ended up down here in southern Arizona, and one on a website looked promising as a dressage prospect. So I called the woman who ran the rescue and asked if I could see the horse in question.

She seemed disturbed that I did not wish to buy the horse outright and that I would not drop $1000 on a horse until I saw it move and it proved sound. She did not understand that I had a specific use in mind for the horse and that if it did not fit that use, that I would not buy the horse. She kept repeating, "but it is a rescue".

I kept wanting to reply, no, it is a horse, an animal which will live 20 years, will cost me $1000 today and countless tens of thousands of dollars over its lifetime. I did not want a thousand pound lawn ornament, and this fact offended the rescuer.

She told me that the horse was 'bonded' to another horse, and that they could not go individually.

I walked away, and a horse that could've had a home sat in 'rescue' while up north foals that could've taken its place were sent to killers. I ultimately bought a thoroughbred off the racetrack with nice movement and a long future of dressage. The horse landed in a good home and lived to be 22 years old.

Years ago there was a no kill group that worked closely with a veterinary hospital I managed. I considered the lot of them to be nutters, because they chose the most unadoptable nightmare chow-mix things to pull from the shelter, and while many of these maladjusted nightmares lingered in never-never foster land, litters of perfectly healthy puppies died at the local shelter.

They adopted out a wacked out chow mix to a family, and when I saw the dog it was wearing a muzzle and giving me the hairy eyeball. It growled when I stepped within two feet of it. The gentleman who brought the dog in had adopted the dog from this group five days prior. In the past five days the dog had bitten his wife and cornered a child in the kitchen. The dog trapped the owner's other dog under a bed and refused to let it out until the owner lassoed it with a leash and pulled it from the scene.

He was at the vet's office not to (logically) have the dog euthanized, but rather to have it vaccinated, because the rescue refused to take back the dog until he had boostered the DA2PPC(!?!?!)

I spoke to the man, and by all accounts the dog was friendly as long as the world worked on his terms, but the second things didn't go his way he became aggressive. Had he not been wearing a muzzle this dog would've eaten me - and all I was doing was standing in it's personal space (which apparently extended out about two feet).

Now, I am not here to tell you that all aggressive dogs should be euthanized, or that all cases of aggression are the dog's fault. What I am here to say is that this dog, for whatever reason, was aggressive, and it was homeless, and the idiots to which this poor man was about to return this dog (according to contract) were going to rehome the thing again!

I do not care if a dog is aggressive because it is frightened, because it is traumatized or because it stayed up late and saw a scary movie, when that dog has no home, and the people who are fostering it have done nothing to address the issue, but are adhering to a strict and unrealistic 'no kill' policy, then no good will come of it.

I told the man kindly that he should disregard the contract and have the dog euthanized. Why pass this nightmare onto some other unsuspecting family?

Again, while this nightmare was clogging up the system, perfectly happy, healthy dogs were dying at animal control.

I work with a rescue. They are not 'no-kill' and they temperament test every dog that comes into their foster care system. If a dog is not appropriate for rehoming due to temperament, they leave it where it is.

This does not mean they won't take dogs that are work. I fostered a dog for them that was a shadow chaser who had bitten a kid. The dog was otherwise kind and willing, she was young and had too much drive for her situation. This is the kind of information one gathers when doing due diligence. They worked with me to ensure that she got the care and guidance she needed. And since I foster failed her and ended up with her, everything turned out ok.

Only now I have five dogs and have no room at the inn to foster more. This is a reality that all rescues must face. There are only a finite number of homes and fosters available, and every dog in the system is another dog that cannot be helped.

I suspect that the PMU horse rescue lady was subsidizing her horse collection with tax-free dollars. I suspect that people who pull nightmare unadoptable dogs from the shelter are trying to 'rescue' more than a dog, and are in fact wrestling with deeper issues.

We cannot save them all, no matter how hard we try, and as much as it seems hard hearted, we choose who lives and who dies when we walk through a shelter past adoptable dogs to pull a specific dog. We hope those other dogs find homes, but we know that many will not. So, if we are truly 'no kill' we must understand that we are killing dogs that we do not take in, and that the faster we are able to move our dogs through our foster system (with due diligence paid to temperament testing and remedial training and assessment) the more of these we will in fact, ultimately save.

Thank you for reading, please join the conversation on Facebook.