I wrote to you a few weeks ago about how many mouths there are —
six hundred million
unwanted dogs worldwide. That’s one dog for every twelve people, and
that’s only counting dogs that do not already have loving homes.
Unchecked, that’s only two canine generations away from homeless dogs
outnumbering people two to one.
It may seem like an impossible, daunting problem, but there is
something you can do about it this year, this month, this week — right
now. February is Spay/Neuter Awareness Month, and this Tuesday, the
26th, is
World Spay Day.
An annual campaign by the Humane Society U.S. and Humane Society
International, this day is intended to raises awareness of the
importance of spaying and neutering in saving the lives of pets as wells
as strays that might otherwise wind up killed in shelters or abandoned
on the streets.
Last summer, while I was in Europe filming “
Leader of the Pack”,
I had the chance to visit Germany and see how they handle the stray dog
problem. There, spaying and neutering is mandatory and subsidized by
the government. Killing animals in shelters is not funded by the
government — because they don’t need to. In fact, their program was so
successful that they ran out of unwanted dogs, and their shelters had to
start taking them in from neighboring countries.
In the U.S., we have yet to move to the mandatory solution, but some
places are attempting to do the same by raising the price. In the city
of
Los Angeles,
for example, it’s a lot more expensive and complicated to license an
un-fixed dog — $ 335 per year versus only $ 20 — and it’s a lot cheaper
to get a dog or cat fixed. In fact, in a lot of places, you can have the
procedure done at little or no cost, especially during this month.
-- Cesar Millan
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