Monday, April 14th, 2008...4:54 pm
#25: Puppies…(Rescued)
The Best Parent is better than you because they didn’t just buy their dog at Petco or even a local breeder. They “rescued” their pet. In the old days, this used to be known as “taking in a stray.” But the Best Parent needs everything to sound so much more fashionably heroic, as if that helpless schnauzer was wrenched from the jaws of death — say a raging river or the clutches of a grizzly bear — by a Best Parent with little more than a Bugaboo and a sippy cup filled with soy milk.
No doubt, saving little Toto or Benji from euthanasia at the shelter is a noble deed. But the point of being the Best Parent is not so much to be noble, as to let everyone KNOW you are noble. Thus, the white parent will always make you aware that the slobbering fleabag at their side is no ordinary “mutt” — a term that has never passed their lips, by the way. No, this brave hound is “a rescue,” a canine whose sole existence and survival in this world is due to the white parent’s benevolence. It is an act of extreme generosity akin to what Mother Teresa did for her lepers, or perhaps even Moses and the Israelites. Indeed, sainthood for the white parent dog owner is just a few milkbones and pooper scoopers away.
So take that, four-leggers everywhere! Unless you’ve been “rescued” by the white knights of Best Parenthood, you are little more than chum for the dog catcher. Yes, life truly is a bitch. Unless you’re the Best Parent, who chooses instead to call it a “rescue.”
10 Comments
April 15th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
“Rescuing” a dog is a good way of getting your children “bitten” by a dog that has never been around kids. If parents want a dog they should raise it from pup with children around and not take in a dog with its habits formed. If you rescue a puppy and raise it then fine but don’t take in a adult dog w/ kids around too many variables.
April 15th, 2008 at 5:54 pm
I get at least 2 chain mail- style emails a week from friends that are “best” parents AND animal lovers pleading to donate money or to “save spot” or similar type shite… I am nauseated by it so maybe I am not a “best” parent because I view a dog as another kid and 1.0 children is enough for me!
April 16th, 2008 at 2:45 am
@JoseOle the folks at shelters generally have a good idea of all their dogs temperaments and while there can be no guarantee that any dog would never bite a person they probably wouldn’t let a family with children adopt a dog who wasn’t comfortable around kids. They don’t want the dog coming back to them and they certainly don’t want the dog to end up being “destroyed”.
April 16th, 2008 at 12:30 pm
PitPoodle = stereotype this website is based on,
JoseOle= Realist
April 16th, 2008 at 4:28 pm
Honestly, they would advise the family that it wasn’t a good idea, but some people don’t listen and would adopt the animal anyway. Then, when it bites the child, they start yelling at the people at the shelter for adopting the animal out to them, whether they were warned or not.
April 16th, 2008 at 4:54 pm
I had dogs my entire life, got bit a few times and yet my life continues, and I still love my dogs. The bigger the better.
I’d also like to note that I’ve been bitten by some humans too, and not in the kinky fun way. We all got teeth, and they was made for bitin’. Welcome to earth.
April 16th, 2008 at 5:44 pm
rescuing a puppy no more makes me a BPE than roasting one on a spit makes me a hillbilly.
JoseOle - there is name for someone who would blithely bring a “bitey” dog home from the shelter: idiot.
April 17th, 2008 at 10:55 pm
For the record:
PitPoodle’s comment was based on years of volunteering (starting as a teenager) at a very real no-kill shelter.
April 27th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
Isn’t it ‘horses for courses’. Some people do not want to go through all the problems associated with a puppy. More power to them. Like PitPoodle I also volunteer at a dog shelter, that unfortunately is not a ‘no kill shelter’. I don’t care whether people call it adoption, rescuing or just taking in a stray, we need good homes for the dogs that we assess suitable for rehousing.
We live in what I call a ‘notch in the belt’ city. Military, mining and government workers do their tour of ‘hardship’ duty here for 3-5 years and then move back to more comfortable climates and the ‘big smoke’. When they leave, many of these people dump their dogs and cats at our refuge for us to be judge, jury, warder and too many times executioner.
The end of the calender year is the worst, as that is when most transfers happen.
So, I care that dogs are rehoused with appropriate people or families. That they look after the dog and realise that they are responsible for the dog for the rest of the dogs life.
What really find irrelevant is what they call the process of rehousing.
April 27th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
The other thing I am annoyed with is the people who put me on a pedestal or nearly beatify me, because volunteer at the shelter. I do it for very selfish reasons. I no longer have any dogs and I have moved into a ‘no pet apartment’. I get my dog ‘fix’ by walking dogs at the refuge a couple of times per week.
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