Comments on: Help Animals in Indiana – HB 1468

By: rushy

rushy — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 21:01:26 +0000

i think that people shouldn’t hurt animals because their people like us and its uncalled for i mean they just sit there looking cute and people just walk up and hurt them like its nothing i understand if their mad but take it out on a punching bag not a living, breathing creature i mean its not like they hurt us first!!

By: becciandrews

becciandrews — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 03:01:00 +0000

To; NAnderson. Chris was correct. I was in no way trying to relegate you, or others that provide the kind of loving care you do as bad, I was offering a different life perspective based on your bringing up the Bible. While this is not the correct forum, I completely agree with the need for more care to be put into the raising of our children. I have spent 20+ years providing Social Work and Therapy services to many client populations, and know only too well more needs to be done for families. Have a good Holiday NANDERSON! becciandrews

By: Kim

Kim — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 22:10:47 +0000

There are no laws that have been placed that have lessened the stress on shelter. Look at Florida and Louisville with their over the top strict laws and guess what.. The shelters are still over run. NOTHING changed. So get your head out of the sand. EDUCATE, Not 1468!

By: nanderson

nanderson — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 20:50:07 +0000

Sue White- NO there are going to be more animals in the shelters. Who is going to take all these older unwanted kennel dogs? YOU??? I bet not! There will be thousand of dogs put down, homeless, no food, water, ect. Exactly what you are trying to prevent. Most dogs in shelters are muts that your average person that has a dog and let them get knocked up by the neighbors dog. Then when no one wants them they leave them somewhere to die or they take them to a shelter. This bill will not prevent this in anyway. Your responsible breeders find the pups good homes by screening the new families just like rescues and animal shelters do. They also offer a return policy if for any reason they can no longer care for the dog or just do not want it anymore the breeder takes the dog back and finds it a new home. I have done this a few times myself and it has turned out wonderful. You have no clue of the real world of dog breeders. Talk to a few and get the real picture instead of looking at the news where they take one bad breeder and label us all that way. Besides that why should the animal shelters and rescues, ect. be exempt from this law? They should have to follow all of the same rules regarding space, excercise and kennel construction and ext. DO NOT PASS THIS BILL!!!!! IT’S THE QUALITY OF CARE YOU GIVE NOT THE QUANITY OF DOGS YOU HAVE! I know people that have one dog. It is on a chain and is lucky to get fed and watered, turned them in and nothing was done. So how is that better by haveing one dog and not caring for it and I have several and they are all well cared for. What is wrong with that picture?????

By: Sue White

Sue White — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 16:43:03 +0000

Please support this bill. These animals are being treated horribly all in the name of money. You would think with the way the economy is now, you would have the sense to pass this bill, to help with costs that are spent on shelters and other things related. Just think, pass the bill, fewer animals ending up in shelters which would cost less to run. Also, fewer strays wandering the streets, therefore, less money spent on animal control, less chance of the animals getting hurt as strays, less chance of humans getting injured by them. If a person thought hard enough, I’m sure they could think of more. Pretty much a no brainer here folks. Please make the right choice!

By: nanderson

nanderson — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 02:32:25 +0000

Hello, once again. Ok maybe I am a bit defensive and maybe all breeders are right now. We just feel like everyone is attacking us. This bill is ok in some points, but some are not ok. I don’t feel that this is the proper bill to have pass, to accomplish what needs to be done. You need more focus on your Joe Schmoe breeder that has no clue and is letting his dog get knocked up by who ever. Then also the larger breeders that give crappy care. There has to be another way. I think if someone can provide proper care to 100 dogs or more should be able to. I also think that all rescues and shelters should have to follow the same bill if it is going to be passed… Tell me why they should not have to follow these rules? It is just as important for a shelter dog to have proper kennel space, excercise, food, water, and housing as it is for a breeders dog to have these things right??? That is one of the things that makes me so mad. Why should we all have to do these things and not shelters? If a shelter is capable of caring for 100 dogs why cann’t a breeder. Just because a breeder only has 1,2, 3, 5, 10,20 dogs does not mean they are taken care of. I have seen breeders with 60 dogs that take better care of their dogs than the other breeder that only has 5 breeding dogs. Tell me why we can not try to educate buyers and sellers for that matter? I would love to be able to go to more local seminars and things. I do research on the internet and listen to a live phone confrence once a month. But, there are so many people that are uneducated about dogs and a lot of them would like the chance to be more educated. I think more education would help a lot. I think people would start to take more responsiblity and maybe turn in the puppy mill breeders. I know I don’t have all the answers, but neither does this bill. I think who ever wrote the bill should at least give the breeders a chance to speak and give their ideas that work and don’t work. Why would that be so hard to do? You know I would hate to have to give everyone I sell a pup to the health guarantee that they are asking us to give. We don’t know the conditions that pup has been in. Breeders need to have some room to lay down some laws with people. They can have say a Great Dane a year and be feeding it small breed puppy food. Take it to the vet at 1 yr of age and get a full refund or replacement pup if that pup has hip dysplasia. But, in large breed dogs if you don’t feed large breed puppy food they can get hip dysplasia from growing to fast and it would have nothing to do with my breeding program. But, yet the law would state that I have to give them another pup or a refund. That is crap!!! I know I don’t have all the answers but, I would like to be heard. NO on is listening though. I do appologize for classifying you with PETA if you are not. But, I feel like all breeders good and bad are being classified as Puppy Mills if you have over so many dogs.

Have a nice eve.

By: eChris

eChris — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 04:31:51 +0000

i’ve been busy with other things and don’t really have time to answer in depth to a lot of this, but it seems like most folks have said their piece anyway. so i’ll try to make this brief.

nanderson – sounds like you take care of your dogs and thereby aren’t who this bill is intended to oversee. maybe i missed something, but i don’t remember anyone accusing all small breeders (or even all breeders) of abuse and neglect. this should be a forum for discussion, not offensive and defensive rhetoric.

however, seems like we are still going to disagree over this bill because you seem to prefer a laissez faire approach to government. can’t say i blame you. it is a sad day when we have to depend on a government body to make laws of conscience.

since we are going to have to agree to disagree on this one, lets try to abstain from red herring arguments. this is why i am not answering your questions about the treatment of children. i do not feel they apply to this particular discussion. that is not to say we shouldn’t talk about the status of children in our society, but that is not the topic at hand. however, laws against child abuse are more potent and have greater penalties than those pertaining to non-human animal abuse.

also we are in no way associated with PETA. in fact, we have not bit our tongue when it comes to criticizing PETA (although probably for different reasons than your own). if you mean for such a claim to be derisive, then I will ask you to abstain from commenting on this site. this is a place for discussion, not childish name-calling.

on that note, i didn’t get the impression that becciandrews was trying to tell you that you are bad breeders, she was just pointing out that there are other ways of looking at the world than humans as dominant and all others as subordinate. maybe you saw something i didn’t, maybe its just you getting defensive. just trying to say how i saw things from my perspective.

on the topic of humans having dominion over animals (as the Bible states), i would recommend reading Dominion by Matthew Scully. he has an interesting perspective as someone fully entrenched in Conservative politics (used to be George Bush’s speechwriter and has been a longtime contributor to the magazine American Conservative).

as for humans being at the top of the food chain, that is only true if we are armed and alert (and trained). humans may not get eaten very often, but we do get eaten. sharks, bears, big cats, etc. but this is us getting off topic again.

SherL – again, not going to continue the discussion of child neglect and abuse. not the topic at hand. as for breeders who carefully screen their buyers, great! we do that, too. i would love for us to be at a point where all those dealing with companion animals are able to do that. but to get to that point, in my opinion, we need to regulate those breeders that don’t give a damn about the animals. they merely see them as products and machines turning profit for their own purposes. i agree that there are caring breeders out there. and i think that this bill leaves plenty of room for those breeders to exist. i would be happy to have a discussion about the specifics of the bill. rather than the ethereal or the hype.

Kim – we do need to get people to stop buying from puppy mills, but we cannot do that without this bill for a couple of reasons. 1) there is currently no definition of a puppy mill (this bill helps in that process by first defining what a commercial breeder is and then defining what a “bad” commercial breeder is), and 2) private entities do not currently have to say where the animals are coming from, and most will tell you that they get them from small family breeders (which many of you will agree is not so because most good breeders prefer to sell directly so that they can screen who is buying the animals and to maintain relationships with those animals/families).

its not a matter of owning 30 dogs. its a matter of owning 30 dogs that are not spayed/neutered and are over the age of 12 months. many cities have laws that say you can’t have more than three companion animals, spayed/neutered/or not. now that is a bit excessive in my opinion. at that point, it is not a matter of quantity, but quality of care.

sounds like “Hunter Joe” might be fine. if he has 30 dogs or less and cares for them the way that you mention, then there is not problem with this set up according to this bill. now if he starts to deny them food and water, forces them to live in inadequate housing, etc, then that is when the law begins to affect him. this bill doesn’t treat all breeders the same, it sets up standards of care. i don’t see what the problem is in that if you are already meeting or exceeding those standards, which you and others in this discussion seem to do.

By: nanderson

nanderson — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 21:03:49 +0000

To: becciandrews
Take this how you want. I am not a Native American and I have my own beliefs just like you do. When an animal can have a house, get a job, drive a car, and support its family, then I will consider my animals as an equal. Until then they are my pets that I promise to always love and take care of if that is not good enough for you then I don’t know what to tell you. I am actually someone that cares about their pets. So, you need to get over your self and leave people like me and several of the others alone. We are good respectfull breeders and you people are trying to tell us we are not. We are not attacking you, you are attacking us and trying to run our lives. Why didn’t you answer any of the questions about raising children? Are they not an equal? At least they are human, unlike pets. Oh, if we are all equal why are humans at the top of the food chain? So, are you going to let a dog on a raw diet eat you or your children for lunch???

Have a nice evening!

By: Kim

Kim — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 03:11:50 +0000

You are also assuming that if someone owns 30 dogs they are breeding them ALL every heat and making big bucks. You say what would any one person need with 30 dogs? Well personally I would never own that many but who am I to say someone else can’t? While puppy mills are an issue, this bill does not target only a puppy mill. Hunter Joe might have 30 hunting and trial dogs that he spends his whole life dedicated to them, training them, showing them, hunting with them and breeding whenever he wishes to keep something from his own line to continue his hobby. The puppy mill guy has his all in filthy cages, never socialized, bred for money only. Thats a problem with me when ALL breeders are targeted and treated the same. I show my dogs. I have 5 intact females. 3 of which are geriatric and have not had a litter for a couple of years and wont have another. I spent around 8000.00 to finish my last CH. That was hotels, entry fee’s, gas, handler fee’s, show pictures etc. I feed a very pricey raw diet to my dogs. They all live in the house and sleep our bed our couch or their own custom made dog beds. I am breeding my new Champion when she comes in season. She could have 8 or 14 puppies! It’s a surgical implant breeding with a stud dog who lives in WA state. Careful selection, health testing via OFA has all been done and was not cheap either. The stud fee is 1500.00, the semen collection and shipping is another few hundred. The surgical implant is anywhere from 5 to 8 hundred depending on how many progesterone test we have to run. I am chaging a pretty penny for my puppies. I MUST if I want to continue my passion in my breed. It is not cheap to do things right. I could creless if anyone wants to ‘think’ I am making a boat load of money off my dogs. It is a VERY common misconception pushed by those who want to rule everyone elses life. I hope she has 12. I will charge 1800.00 per puppy and I hope to make enough to break even on this years expenses and start showing my next show girl. This law will label me a ‘pet dealer’. This is unfair and wrong on so many levels. It is easier to buy a car then it is to qualify for one of my pups. I have a great relationship with my pet owners. I know where ALL of my puppies are. If they do not go to show homes, they go on limited registration, spay neuter contract. I AM NOT THE PUPPY MILL PROBLEM and I do not want to be treated as such! I do not want to be labeled a ‘pet dealer’. I do not want to be treated like a criminal for being a responsible breeder. Education is the key to stopping puppy mills. Not new laws that harm everyone and lump anyone who ever breeds a dog all into the same twisted catagory.
Take all the money it will cost to try and enforce this law and put it into education instead. Forget about ‘Stop Puppy Mills’ and throw all that energy into How to purchase a pet campaigns. Billboards, Educational News paper ads, Visits to schools to talk to kids about the importance of responsible pet owning etc. The fastest way to stop a puppy mill is getting people to STOP BUYING FROM THEM.

By: becciandrews

becciandrews — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 18:44:13 +0000

To nanderson. Why do you separate yourself from animal rights activists? In your blogs, you discuss ad infinitum
about how much you care for your animals, and get them medical care before getting medical care yourself? As for the innuendo/insult about “if you read the bible”, and then went on to state that animals were put here to serve “man”, but “are not equal”. Nanderson, if you were to read about or know anything about many Native American beliefs, ALL THINGS ARE CREATED EQUALLY, NONE ARE BETTER THAN OTHERS! Check it out, you might be delightfully surprised at the notion of equality. FYI: The texts included in the modern bible were chosen by the emperor Constantine, a Roman convert. There were many, many apocraphies left out. Keep searching and you may get the ‘rest of the story’. Have a good day!