"Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads."Henry David Thoreau
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Companion Animals and Their Unique Place in Society--Part 4
The Bible and The Chronicles of Narnia talk about companion animals What the Bible says about the role of animals in our lives In Genesis chapter 1, God made man in His own image, and then gave man dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, ...
Flea Control For Cats And Dogs
As a pet owner I'm sure you'd be frustrated at the sight of your pet scratching and suffering from fleas. If you look into the veterinary arsenal you will see that there are a number of products that help you fight the war against fleas. Of all these ...
Understanding Your Pet's Chewing Issues
If you are beginning to feel like an endangered species surrounded by the chewed up remnants of your previous existence, fear not. First of all you are not alone. There are dog owners like you suffering the same fate and having the same problems getting ...
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There are lots of ways that people choose a new family dog. Some may search the newspaper for advertisements from breeders who are selling new puppies; others find breeders via listings on the internet, while still more may simply purchase a puppy from a local pet store. Perhaps the best method, however, in terms of being helpful to society in general is to adopt a dog from a local animal shelter.
Adopting a dog brings a new friend into your life. It also helps to reduce the number of unwanted and homeless dogs in your area. Unless the shelter is a “no kill” facility (and these are sadly few and far between), it will also save a dog’s life. Animal lovers everywhere champion the adoption of dogs from shelters as opposed to any other method of bringing home a new pet for this reason alone, but there are other reasons to choose the adoption option.
Adopted pets have had their shots
Shelters often have information about a dog’s temperament
Adopting a pet frees space in the shelter for more dogs
When you adopt a dog you can be sure that the staff at the shelter has had the dog examined by a vet for diseases and parasites and that the dog has had its shots. This is not always true of dogs acquired by other means such as kids giving away “free puppies” from a box in front
of the local grocery store or PetsMart.
The dogs at a shelter are not just strays and often are turned in to the shelter by former owners for various reasons. When this happens, the shelter collects as much information about the dog as possible, including whether its good with children, how much it barks, how playful or obedient it is, whether its housebroken, and other important details. While it’s true that this information is only as good as the honesty of the former owner, most of the time it is fairly accurate.
Animal shelters provide a valuable service to the community that they serve by keeping the streets as free of stray animals as possible. Because many of them do this with little or no public funding or governmental support, they are very limited in the number of dogs they can have in the shelter at any given time. The only way that they can bring in more stray animals is if they remove the ones they currently have. This is done through adoption or euthanasia. Obviously they would prefer to have the dogs adopted rather than killed. Adopting a dog could very well save its life and allows the shelter to bring in another dog in its place.
About the Author
This article courtesy of http://www.better-dog-training.com
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