If I was the government you wouldnât be allowed to BUY AND SELL puppies and kittens. Tahtâs the whole point - if someone really wants one they have to take a stary. I guess they could find one from the pound or some middle (goverment subsidised) organisation that cleans them up, sterilises them and lisences them, or maybe adopt straight off the street, but theyâd have to get it licensed.
The point is that you can get all those things like companionship, sense of responsibility etc from adopting a stray. If weâre so fussy we want a certain breed, not a stray mongrel, then weâre only considering our own interests, not those of the animal. The exception for licensed breeders is for those who need dogs for specific purposes like guide dogs, sheep dogs etc.
The whole purpose is to stop the culture where dogs and cats are bred to be sold as cute little animals and then abandoned where they keep breeding, and at the same time actually try and reduce the numbers of strays that are already around.
Bri,
What if what youâre looking for is in the genes? I am lucky enough to have a pure-bred lab. Even though I have rescued one stray dog before, I decided not to go that route this time, because I wanted my dog to have certain features that can usually be found only in certain breeds.
Labs are people dogs, and they do not get too hyper indoors. Neither do Great Danes, for that matter, while some small dogs (Jack Russell Terriers, for instance) will bounce off the walls. Tibetan Mastiffs make wonderful watchdogs and loyal devoted comapnions, but they only bond with one person, are aloof with people they know, and can be terrifying to people they donât. Itâs how they were bred.
Iâve seen local mutts that can follow a couple of basic instructions, but I have never seen one with the thirst for training and instruction that my dog has, apart from my good friend and neighbour who has two full-grown Golden Retrievers that he brought with him from Canada. Those are the best-mannered, personable, intelligent dogs I have ever seen.
I wanted a dog that would go swimming with me at the beach. Well, Labs are bred for coats that react well to salt-water, and their webbed toes make them keen swimmers.
I wanted a dog that reacts well to people. This is necessary, because in Taiwan, so many people want to pet him that I would always have to worry about a nervous or skittish dog biting someone who pulled the dogâs tail or ear too hard. My dog takes these things in stride.
I wanted a dog that could co-exist with my two cats. Well, the cats arenât crazy about him, but he has given them no worse than an unwanted licking.
I wanted a dog that would play frisbee and ball with me. Well, thatâs what retrievers do best.
BTW, My dog will be neutered in a few months, for health as well as ethical reasons. If you want to solve the problem of stray dogs, you need to focus on educating the idiots who get dogs whimsically, and then ditch them. Donât punish responsible, informed dog lovers.
EXACTLY!!! EDUCATE TAIWANESE CHILDREN ABOUT THE HUMANE TREATMENT OF ANIMALS!!!
Sorry for shouting.
But who else is going to do this but those from the international community?
The Taiwan school system? Yeah, rightâŚ
The parents? maybe a very,small percentageâŚ
The media? No, theyâll just show horrific imagesâŚ
If you are around small children in Taiwan everyday, please find ways to reinforce this message. If possible, bring pets into class so they can develop emotional ties, make it an ongoing activity in your classes to discuss how to take care of pets/animals and why humans should appreciate them, discuss subjects such as having pets at home and how they should be handled and cared for.
This issue should have nothing to do with selling dogs except that those creeps at the markets make bundles off of the uneducated who in turn perpetuate the problem by tossing the dogs out once they pass the cute stage.
The chip implanted under the skin I think only happens in pet shops which sell pure breds. People who invest in pure bred animals will likely take more care in their treatment and handling because, [hello?] they paid a lot for them. And they use them often as, [this is Taiwan] status symbols.
Itâs the mutts who need our help most. And the kids. The moron inbreds in the dog pound facilities need to be replaced by those with animal husbandry backgrounds and paid a good salary, and the government needs to take some real action on this issue rather than sending all the cops to nightclubs to round up âthe evil marauding ecstacy crowdâŚâ :x
Animal rights, Hartzell? Havenât heard a peep outaya.
If you adopt a feral animal, then it will not be feral any more, so it will no longer be a menace to the native wildlife. Then all you have to fret about is the cows, sheep, chickens, fish etc. that have to be slaughtered to feed your pet.
And anyway, 3q, there is a big difference between local views on wildlife and those on strays.
Still a sad state of affairs, no mistake, but at least there now exist the seeds of a concept that wildlife needs to be protected. A long way to go, for sure, but at least a mechanism is being sloooooowly eased into place to try to preserve what little is left here, and at least there are some forward-thinking minds at work on the problems.
Not so for the strays â thereâs just no âhelpâ mindset. Instead, its regarded as a dirty, messy problem that needs to be âgot rid of,â with only short-term, low-cost so-called âsolutionsâ dreamed up by mouth-breathing city officials.
SAndman - I cant see it. The number of pet alligators in fish tanks I see in flower shops and the like - the ourangutangs in Yangmingshan, the massive government run zoo for illegally imported animals in Taichung⌠I could go on. A small minority of locals have an interest and an even smaller number could name native species. Still back home people are just as useless. It is âeasierâ to care about pets than it is native animals⌠bah
Yeah, but youâre talking here about people keeping exotic animals, and thatâs common everywhere in the world, probably even more so in âdevelopedâ countries â fueled by huge, multinational networks of smugglers and illegal breeders, and certainly not limited to âbackwardâ countries.
Just today I did a story about some guy here caught in a sting here by conservationists. He was trying to sell them some kind of African pottoes, as well as binturongs â a kind of Southeast Asian creature belonging to the civet family.
A search on Google reveals that many people are keeping these endangered animals (well, the potto is, the binturong, apparently, is not â yet) but the overwhelming majority are in the U.S. and Europe, not Taiwan.
But the main point of my previous post is neatly illustrated by this story â that there exists a conservation protection group here with sufficient gumption and commitment to cooperate with customs and police in order to mount a sting operation.
Also, look at the photo of those martens on the front page of todayâs China Post. Taken by a group of zoologists trying, I believe, to conduct some kind of census on wildlife in the mountains of Pingtung County, or maybe theyâre searching for evidence of the clouded leopard, canât remember for sure.
As I said, small steps, but steps in the right direction, at least.
Itâs not that some of us donât care about native wildlife; in all honesty I thought theyâd eaten it all; everywhere weâve been, weâve seen signs about the wildlife that used to live in said place⌠except for the monkeys near Kaohsiung. Itâs honestly a lack of awareness. Also, in fairness, though I certainly donât care less for them for this reason, most of the animals you mention are illegally imported and therefore not native wildlife.
I guess itâs also that, as humans, we take a degree of responsibility for the wellbeing of dogs and cats, since to my knowledge neither are native to Taiwan, and so many are tame and obviously throwaways in a disposable culture. When my pup was still tiny, I took her to a class so the kids could handle her, and the way that 90% of people were with her, they were asking to be bitten; skittish, scampering away, teasing her. Those were the ones not plastered against the wall in fear of the 2kg beast!! By the end, several were handling her semi-properly, but then a couple of parents complained because dogs are âdirtyâ and have no place in a school, even a bushiban. Never mind that their own children are notorious for belching, foot picking and nosepicking in class. Thus is the Taiwanese logic and mentality, I suppose.
What really gets me is that the puppy kept all of her functions under control; their daughter has had a few âaccidentsâ in class⌠hmmmmmmâŚ
I should think dogs have been in Taiwan for at least as long as humans have, which is a very long time. There is a kind of dog called a Formosan or Taiwan native dog (Taiwan tugou,) which is a quite big, dark, speckled short-haired breed. They look rather like pitbull terriers. You can recognise them by the very prominent pads on their feet, which they evolved for running up and down Taiwanâs steep mountain slopes. Now that I have described them, you will see them around. There are one or two in a motorcycle repair shop at the junction of Xinsheng South Road Section 1 and Jinan Road. This breed has almost disappeared due to crossing with imported breeds, but some people are trying to recreate the breed by mating dogs that share the aforementioned basic characteristics. Your typical North Chinese dog is quite different - fluffy with a curled-up tail - a Chow (Zhougou), basically.
As to cats, if there were leopards in Taiwan, then I think there were probably cats, too.
What there really used to be a lot of in Taiwan was deer. Unfortunately they were slaughtered in very great numbers to make scabbards for Japanese samurai. The centre for the deerskin trade was Lugang in Zhanghua County.
Yeah, it would be nice if we could just satrt educating everyone to be nice to animals and it would all work out lovely, but the problem with stary cats and dogs is just too serious now and requires drastic action. Once things got âback to normalâ and we had a new generation of responsible pet keeprs, we could relax these drastic measures. I know thereâs plenty of reasons for wanting pure-bred animals of the breed you want, but weâd have to sacrifice our preferences for the sake of the animals. To want otherwise is selfish.
This is hypothetical anyway, as I doubt t6he government will ever do anythign much, let alone as strict as what I would advocate.
I donât see where there is a benefit to focusing on only purebred dogs; many people, myself included, prefer mixed breeds due to the mismanagement of breeding programs and problems produced due to unlicensed breeders trying to turn out more dogs for a profit. Needless to say, if a strictly-purebred system were implemented in Taiwan, it would be as unregulated and dysfunctional as most of the systems here, and the animals would suffer, due to genetic problems and human unwillingness to deal with the problems.
It is impossible to âcullâ (read: beat to death) the dog population in Taiwan in any long term sense; as long as people here continue to think of dogs as disposable toys, they will be discarded and will breed litter after litter. We need a more grassroots solution: education. I think the only way the government will actually try to make a difference is if there is a lot of negative American (they like American stuff) publicity about the plight of animals here. A feature on 60 minutes or somethingâŚ
I know it sounds like a pipe dream, but there has to be a more humane solution than killing the dogs, which, after all, are thinking, feeling individuals.
Thereâs a joint on Heping E Rd. on the right hand side going west between Xinsheng and Jinshan⌠its a little coffee shop place that welcomes dogs and cats.
What about the rural areas in your own countries? I grew up in rural central California and we have a massive stray dog problem. The problem being city people dumping their dogs in the country and hoping theyâll go native. They donât, they form packs and take down cattle and are eventually shot by ranchers, much to their chagrine (both ranchers and I assume, dogs). Just because you donât see it, doesn
What are you talking about? People take their dogs to work all the time here! My friend takes hers to the Internet Cafe where she works, thereâs a 7-11 I know where the proprieter keeps hersâŚ
I just came across a very interesting article describing successes and problems in dealing with dog overpopulation in the U.S.A. The article is rather long and includes numerous references to Taiwan.
Due to the numerous gou rou can ting, this problem doesnât exist in China.
what i really despise are people who buy exotic animals (ooh they are so cute, etc), then after a month or two, when they are bored with the pet, or the pet is no longer a cute little âkidâ, they will just dump the animal somewhere, a garbage can if small, a dog-sized animal in the country, a large dangerous animal (like those numbnuts who buy tigers and think itâs cool or adds to their masculinity) they have to put down. of course this âfadâ just fuels the exotic animal trade, legal and illegal, even more.
you wouldnât be allowed to BUY AND SELL puppies and kittens. Tahtâs the whole point - if someone really wants one they have to take a stary. I guess they could find one from the pound or some middle (goverment subsidised) organisation that cleans them up, sterilises them and lisences them, or maybe adopt straight off the street, but theyâd have to get it licensed.