One more day to go – by tomorrow at 3pm it’ll all be over, one way or another.
Saw something that made me think today. In one of my clubs someone started a thread about how to breed feeder rats and mice for her snake. There were 5 replies before I got there and all of them seemed to accept that feeding live prey to a reptile is acceptable. Luckily it’s illegal over here (though of course it happens), but at least people doing it realise it’s not socially acceptable.
Which leads me to thinking – are there things in our society that we think is acceptable because our society does, whereas someone elses society thinks it’s not acceptable? I can think of plenty of things that American’s accept and we abhor – cropping, declawing, debarking and now feeding live food (obviously my reference range is someone limited to the animal industries) but it’s hard to think of something we don’t realise is potentially abhorant. Docking for example – we do it but in secret – we know we’re being naughty. Hunting – even if we agree with it we can’t ignore the fact that a large proportion of the country doesn’t. Even eating meat. If anyone can think of something we do that we accept blindly, let me know.
Ooo got one! We drink cow’s milk 😀 Apparently in the east they think that drinking milk once you’re weaned is odd enough, but to drink the milk of another species is just plain bonkers.
My blog is turning into a bit of a animal rights discussion forum. Odd.
Every Saturday there are islamic fundamentalist chanting insults to the rest of the world on a display, praising those perpetrators of crime who murder in the name of religion. When people went in to challenged themn they would be surrounded by their men – surely that is not morally acceptable in any country – yet the met police have done nothing about it, letting them verbally threatening the lives of the "non-believers" on a weekly basis – im so sick of it!
I thought of one thing that might be interesting for comparision, namely spaying/neutering of dogs. We’ve not had any population problems with dogs for closer to a hundred years here, therefore it’s has never been discussed much or been something people have cared too much about. I grew up reading "don’t litter" etc ads and whatnot all over internet, and was quite surprised to find out that spaying/neutering dogs used to be considered cruel here in Sweden – for many years, it was actually illegal, except for medical reasons! They’ve dropped that now, but even now it’s very rare to do it unless you really have to (eg medical/behavioural issues) and it’s a very expensive procedure. It’s long been allowed for cats – supposedly because we’ve got overpopulation problems with them still.
I’ve met less than five spayed/neutered dogs (that I know of!) which is a really low number considering I’m an agility instructor that hang out weekly at a local dog club, so I see quite a few dogs. An interesting comparision between countries today, when a lot of people in some countries go more or less balistic when you say you’ve got no plans to spay/neuter your dog :laugh:
That’s bizarre! Over here, it’s considered irresponsible to have a entire dog or cat, and people are pushing for rabbits to be spayed as well. As vet students we’re taught the pros and cons for spaying/neutering – the pro list is about 3 pages long and the cons list is barely a list! It’s drummed into our heads that entire bitches get pyometra and mammary cancer, entire dogs get prostate problems, entire jill ferrets get oestrogen toxicity, entire doe rats get mammary lumps, entire tom cats get FIV (cat HIV) from fighting and entire doe rabbits get uterine cancer. Cats are at risk of mammary cancer but you never see an entire female cat over 1 year of age here so it’s not recognised as a problem.
I’ve met quite a few entire dogs – dog breeding is more common in my area than cat breeding is but I’d say 70-80% of the dogs I’ve met have been neutered. And 95% of the cats I’ve met have been neutered. Neutering is cheaper than yearly vaccinations for cats! We don’t have a population problem in the sense of strays particularly, but more in the sense of irresponsible breeding – rescue centres are full. I wonder which method works best – encourage neutering to remove the choice from the owner or educate the owner to make the right choice…?