Essay on Pet Overpopulation

    Due to the domestication of cats and dogs their populations have skyrocketed. This is due in part to the lack of pet owners acting in a responsible manner. These responsibilities include the spaying and neutering of  pets. These numbers of

Irresponsibility and lack of knowledge on the part of people buying pets is a huge problem. You need to know about the animals that are waiting in shelters and avoid buying our new pet. These are some shocking statistics about dogs and cats in the US.

Many people do not report cases of animal cruelty. Reports of animal cruelty are less common than crimes against people. This is because the cases do not go through state agencies. The animals that come to mind when someone mentions animal cruelty is often Dogs and cats. These animals do have a higher percent rate, with dogs at 70.1%, cats at 20.9% and all other animals at 24.1%. The percent’s come from cases that people report. If people were to fill all cases of animal cruelty, the rates would be much more different. A common form of negligence is people taking their animal to a place far from home to just leave them there. Animal control pick up these animals everyday and send them to shelter. For the most part the animals have a healthy portion of food and they have shelter from the environment. Most shelters are kill shelters. No-Kill shelters become less common to their counterpart. Animals not adopted within a certain period of time undergo euthanasia. This keeps room for more animals. No-kill shelters protect the animals and help rehabilitate them. The other 24.1% is the factory animals. The purpose of a factory animal's life is a food source. So the owners mistreat their animals because the animals purpose is to be a food source. It is almost as if they do not matter. They deserve animal rights just as much as the other animals do.

Attention Getter: We all see them, those sad little faces that look up at us with their sad eyes. They need homes and families that love them, they are stray animals.

In the United States, about 7.6 million companion animals enter animal shelters every year. The overpopulation of these animals and the fact that they have no homes leads to about 40% of them being euthanized (ASPCA). This is a global issue, but the root of it can be found within the local community at The Humane Society of the Ohio Valley.

Many American households own a pet, but their pets may have originated from a cruel background. Especially dogs, for many of them stem from one of the ten thousand puppy mills located across the United States. Puppy mills are large commercial breeding facilities that specializes in maximizing profit over the welfare and conditions of the animals. Animals live in unsustainable conditions which they are provided with the minimum amount of food, water, exercise, shelter, protection, and veterinary care; yet, these animals are forced to continue breeding for the sake of providing beautiful pets for our own personal expenses. The government should step in to advance regulations and inspections of large commercial breeding facilities because old rules no longer fit the current time anymore. For us to take home a new healthy family member, we should all know it comes from a safe place.

One of the most disturbing problems out of many, in puppy farming, is the nightmarish conditions in which the dogs are kept. These innocent animals are kept in constant confinement, packed together in ridiculously small cages. As well as living in cramped conditions, they are also neglected by their “caring” breeders, and have almost no human contact until they leave the farm. A lack of human contact can lead to many problems, such as aggressive behaviour, and extreme antisocial behaviour. In a recent news article, the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ISPCA) shut down a puppy farm in Carlow, Ireland. Inspectors described the scene as “appalling and horrific”. The ISPCA also reported that “dead animals were strewn around the premises,” and the animals that were not dead were in urgent need of attention. This harrowing report sickens me and highlights the exact reason why puppy farming

Later, most will end up "Testing Out" a different type of pet. The vast majority of people, who adopt a puppy or kitten, do not keep the animal for life. If this were to turn around and most people were to actually keep their pets through the good times and the bad, as they do their own children, the demand for these animals would go down. With less of a demand, breeders would not breed as many litters. Breeders are only breeding as many litters as they do, because people are buying them. The demand for a cute little puppy or kitten is great, because people do not keep the animal for life. Animals are recycled. If a breeder had a litter and could not sell the puppies, they would not keep having litter after litter. People are buying them, so breeders are breeding them. In a perfect world, breeders would breed less and force people to adopt from an animal rescue, but this is not a perfect world. The solution lies with the general public educating themselves, supply and demand, that's the solution. Lessen the demand and the supply will, on its own, lessen. The power lies within each and every one of us. Scripted by Kim Sturla (of the San Mateo ordinance fame) and her continual cross-country junketing preaching her message: "The problem is simple: we have too many dogs and cats. Too many for too few homes."

In the United States, 2,000 to 3,000 puppies and kittens are born every hour, yet only one out of ten of these animals will find a permanent home. The remaining animals will be left to fend for themselves on the streets, abandoned and lonely, with only about one year to live. Even with the rate of animals who will not find a home already, people are still determined to run puppy mills which increases that number, even if it is breaking the law. Puppy mills are bad because they keep the puppies under bad conditions, many of the dogs they breed get diseases and defects, and it can lead to animal abandonment and neglect.

Another important part of the problem are the businesses that contribute to the population of pets, the dog breeders, sometimes called puppy mills. The Oxford Dictionaries defines a puppy mill as “an establishment that breeds puppies for sale, typically on an intensive basis and in conditions regarded as inhumane” (“Puppy Mill,” 2015). The Friends of Animals (2013) Web site, gives some definitions of what a puppy mill is from an animal lover’s point of view. The housing for dogs is small pens and in which they may never have the chance to touch the grass in their lifetime. Veterinary care for the breeding dogs is a minimum to increase the profit from the sale of the puppies. Most of the puppy mills are located in central states, where Adams (1991) explains that the large factory chicken farms have taken over the local farmer’s cash crop of chickens resulting in the farmer breeding dogs for their cash

Have you ever been bored, or alone with nothing to do? Or maybe you have been in a situation where you

Countless lives locked away in cages and forgotten about have overwhelmed our society, it has left blood stains on our history as a species and if history has taught us anything, it’s that we have a choice to change our ways of adjusting to situations. A war which was fought in pursuit of ending such criminal means, yet we as human beings do little to nothing to end the horrific crimes of animal deaths in shelters. It is no secret that this world has become infused with problems that have extended from one side of the globe to the other. Amongst these problems lies a terrible truth: nearly every year, sums of almost eight million cats and dogs have been placed in shelters around the world. Out of these vast numbers, half will be

For centuries, humankind has enjoyed the unconditional love and companionship of pets. Inclusively, dogs have been stated as “man’s best friends.” By far, pets have become a bigger role in people’s lives. Consequently, pet ownership has turned out to be more popular through the years. Owning a pet can be one of the most rewarding experiences, but there is a fact that many individuals may not know. From what kind of places are people obtaining their pets? The two most presumed options are narrowed down to either buying at a pet store or adopting from a shelter. Even though people can get a pet from either option, there are many reasons why adopting is undoubtedly a smarter choice. Animal shelters serve for a bigger purpose, and that is to help the community and its animals. Prospective pet owners should choose pet adoption because of its health, economic, and life benefits.

Having a pet is a wonderful idea. Pets bring companionship, personality, and gut wrenching humor to households across the world. Having previously owned both a cat and a dog, and currently being without a pet, I began to think about getting a new furry friend. Born a dog lover, and bred into a cat lover, I had the difficult decision of choosing one of the two.

In my opinion, this is a terrible issue. These animals are dying because of this with no fault of their own. If the overpopulation in shelters continues we will not have a place to put all of these animals except for in the ground. A shelter is supposed to be used as a safe place for lost, homeless pets, but it is being abused and turned into a trashcan due to the overpopulation. Some may argue that there are “no kill” shelters, and although that is true to some extent, it is not entirely true. The sad truth is that “in most cases even when a shelter calls themselves a ‘no-kill’ shelter it simply means they give the dogs they don't want to a shelter that IS a kill shelter” (Maguire). Overpopulation is costing animals their lives. Do you know what else overpopulation is costing? Us. It costs the United States taxpayers $2 billion a year “to impound, shelter, euthanize, and dispose of homeless animals” (“Animal Overpopulation”). These statistics are hard to take in, but they are very real and this is why I think something needs to change.