Dennis Prager Radioshow Listeners Germany

 
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Friday, Feb 29, H1: Guest Host Mark Taylor: Very interesting talk about the problem of the huge number of wild and left behind dogs and cats in Los Angeles. What a desolate situation. I’m very sorry for the animals and I’m angry for those irresponsible wannabe-pet-owners, that just throw them away when they don’t get along with the responsibility or that let them breed only for egoistic reasons of the adventure of having cute cubs for a while.

I found Mark Taylors experiences as a volunteer in a dog shelter very interesting and some kind of heroic. There seems to be no other solution than euthanizing thousands of dogs and cats which is a very bad and sad thing. Mark seems to maintain the idea of an enforced-by-law neutering of dogs and cats. Michael Medved talked about the problem, too, in one of his radio shows last week. He objected the enforcement, because it’s a limitation of the pet owner’s free will. I would vote for protecting the pets, which means I would vote for law restrictions in such cases, because I think an animal is more than a material object, although not equal to a human being – but it has its own animal dignity and is a sensing part of God’s beloved nature, nevertheless unprotected and all depending on its human owners good will.

Therefore I didn’t like when Mark Taylor talked about euthanizing his own dog when it didn’t like Marks new born child. Obviously, if the dog doesn’t get along with the child, it must be separated and needs a new owner. Mark said, he was really looking and looking for someone who would take the dog but he couldn’t find anyone. So his dog was euthanized.

I don’t believe that it was impossible to find a new home for the dog. It’s a matter of will. I really don’t believe in humanizing animals and of course a child is infinitely more important than a pet. Nevertheless, once you take responsibility for a pet, you don’t kill it, if you cannot take care for it any longer. You look for another solution until you find one.

Would someone take the dog if Mark payed for the dogs food and visits to the vet – lifelong? Are there any special shelters, ‘retirement  homes’ for dogs of paying ex-owners in the United States? Probably there are. (If not – this is a good business idea, isn’t it?)

Some years ago we had three guinea pigs (for my son). When two of them died and only one was left I wanted to get rid of it. I didn’t want to continue with guinea pigs and I didn’t want to take care for a single one, because in nature, guinea pigs live in groups. So I searched the internet and finally found a horse farm close to Zürich in Switzerland (!), that sheltered a group of about 25 guinea pigs and would accept mine, adding it to the group. It’s not allowed to cross the border to Switzerland with an animal without papers of a veterinarian (because of the risk of importing deseases), so we hided the animal in a box in the back of our car and smuggled it over the border to the nearby farm. It was a beautiful place and our guinea pig immediately ran with his fellows. They had a huge meadow for them and a shelter house. We went home happy. Half a year later, I looked up the website of the farm and saw no more writing about the guinea pigs. I asked about it and the farmwoman told me that some weeks ago a fox sneaked in and it was a massacre, no guinea pig was left …
So our journey from Munich/Germany to Zürich/Switzerland was not REALLY successful … ;-)  … b u t   w e   t r i e d!

Our last guinea pig before its journey to the Swiss farm
(c)Füchsin