Ledger-Enquirer Acting a Fool

I wish this article written by Mike Owen was an April Fool's Day joke.

The truth of the story is unknown, because the research skills of Owen appear to be smaller than a gnat or he somehow expects all of us to know the back history.

All I know is a dog named Elijah has been returned back to the shelter because he got in a fight with his adopter's current dog.

If there was ever a 15-lb dog Mina had a right to eat, she was Chloe.

According to the shelter director Teresa Tomlinson, there has never ever been in the history of dogdom a Pit Bull who can live with a smaller dog and not eat the little tyke. She does not merely claim Elijah has problems with Beagles but that all Pit Bulls are "very aggressive", especially "to other animals". If surprise was a color, I'd be getting it all war-paint-like all over my face.

The real story, though, isn't Elijah and his ribcage - it's those darn "animal rights radicals". You know, the ones polluting the earth with their desire to not kill healthy, adoptable dogs and cats. What is wrong with these people? Can you believe they actually want dogs and cats to go into homes instead of being gassed or lethally injected? That is so weird.



I don't get it. Really. Like it boggles my mind that any national or local organization purporting to care about the welfare of animals is freaked out - literally - about a pro-adoption movement that seeks to get more dogs and cats into permanent homes in lieu of killing them. What are they afraid of?

All we have in this world is one breath after the next. We are summation of breaths accompanied by great and small stories. Being alive is important to all of us. And it is important to dogs and cows and cats and pigs and chickens and whales and, well, so many more nonhumans. When you kill a healthy animal out of convenience or palate or want (not need)...that is denying another living being their story. That has always felt off-kilter to me.

Most people identify with dogs and cats, see them as companions. Which is why many people find the current animal shelter system so strange, so disconnected from how we want to treat dogs and cats. It's why most people find convenience killing so discomfiting. I know most people aren't ready to tackle the issue of eating animals as intelligent and engaging as dogs. But animals seen as companions? We should already be there.

We also invented frisbees, yo. FRISBEES FOR ALL.

Shame on Mayor Tomlinson. Shame on Mike Owen for trying to portray compassion as grotesque. And shame on every organization and person that perpetuates the unfounded myth we need to kill healthy dogs and cats in this country. We don't. We have the homes. We have the power. We have the ability.

People, we invented the motherfucking slinky. We fly in airplanes like it's no big deal. Look around you, despite our myriad shortcomings, we are one inventive species. I am pretty sure that makes us capable enough to stop the senseless killing.