For unwanted pets' sake - do better

We're failing them.

Animal shelters, rescue organizations, and foster homes are jammed with dogs and cats looking for homes, with more streaming in every day. And we, as humans, have both continued to contribute to the problem and have failed to solve it.

More than 359,000 dogs — a five-year peak — and 330,000 cats were euthanized at shelters last year, according to Shelter Animals Count, an Atlanta-based nonprofit founded by a cross section of animal welfare agencies. Shelter and rescue populations have surged by 900,000 overall since January 2021.

We're past the polite discussion stage here. This is truly a crisis that needs to be addressed by all of us. We have to find solutions no matter how many toes we step on because it's too important to do otherwise.

This isn't the fault of the animals. It's our fault. There's an assembly line out there producing dogs and cats — living, feeling things — the way you might turn out refrigerators or laptops for public purchase. We're breeding them at one end and killing them at the other. What the heck are we doing?

A pet is a lifetime commitment — that's the pet's lifetime, which will be much shorter than the owner's. That commitment includes dealing with issues that arise if possible, not dumping him in a shelter or worse, on a country road.

Then there are the people breeding dogs for no good reason. We have to make life much harder for these folks, in my opinion. We need backyard breeders to be fined if it's discovered their dog had a litter of puppies. I think we have to take away every incentive for your neighbor to let his dog become pregnant and then sell the resulting offspring.

We need to quit worshiping at the altar of the perfect dog, the show dog, the designer dog (which is really just a mutt when you think about it). I guarantee you, there are dogs in shelters and rescues right now who are just as good as any dog you'll buy from a breeder for hundreds of dollars more than an adoption fee.

I guarantee it.

We need to stop buying from professional breeders, too. I know that won't happen altogether, but the fewer they sell the less incentive they'll have to keep turning out litters. I think we have to put a cap on the number of litters they're allowed to have.

You may think that's not fair, but we have a problem and their dogs are part of it. They may not end up in a shelter, but they're taking up spaces in homes that could be filled by dogs already alive.

We have to crush the puppy mills, where dogs live in horrible conditions and are seen only as a money-making endeavor. Google puppy mill pictures and you'll see what I mean.

We also need to increase low-cost or free spay-and-neuter programs.

Politically, this is going to have to be done at the state and local levels. The federal government isn't going to get involved in this, and we know what a dysfunctional place Congress is, anyway.

It will take some political courage. I can hear the cries that government's infringing on breeders' "freedom." I don't think you have a constitutional right to breed as many dogs as you'd like.

Here's the reality: We have too many dogs and the only way to lower that number is to limit their breeding. There's no other solution. We either do something or we ignore the problem and it continues.

This problem won't get solved until we demand it gets solved. In the meantime, the unwanted dogs and cats and the rescue volunteers — the ones who exhibit the responsibility that so many others don't — are the ones that suffer.

More: Too many feral cats 'overrun' Erie County programs. How to help

I have a picture in my office of two dogs with the inscription "The secret to happiness? Spend more time with animals and less time with idiots."

Until we humans do better and quit failing these animals, that seems like good advice to me.

Rick Elia is a former newspaper reporter. He writes the political blog Musings of a Nobody (www.musingsofanobodyweb.wordpress.com) He's the proud owner of two rescue dogs.

This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Want fewer unwanted dogs and cats to die? Stop breeding them