Today was my first day back at a Rabbit Haven (www.therabbithaven.org) adoption show in probably a year. I have some ideological differences with some of the people involved and needed a break. Last night when buying pet supplies, I spotted some volunteers I knew setting up for the show and went over to help and agreed to come by the following day to assist with the show.
It wasn’t the best show I’ve ever been a part of, or the worst. We had two adoptions. A good day would be five or six, but I’ve been to days with ten and zero, so it just depends.
I find the adoption shows to be incredibly depressing. There are so many wonderful, delightful rabbits in the world and not enough homes for them all. There are so many things that disqualify you from being a happy rabbit owner… allergies, lack of time, lack of interest, too much chaos in the home, other pets in the house that wouldn’t take kindly to a rabbit, inability to bend over the clean up after them on a daily basis, etc. I don’t put much (if any) pressure on the people I know to adopt because I can’t think of anyone that I would recommend rabbit adoption to (but, hey, if you’re interested, please give me a call!).
So, to me, it comes down to the need for more action on a big picture level. We need to stop the breeding of these rabbits in the first place so they don’t end up rotting in shelters or being shuffled between foster homes until they pass away. I wish I knew what to do to champion this cause, but I wouldn’t even know where to begin. So many people grew up being comfortable with the idea of breeding rabbits… doing 4H or just having a neighbor that had litters occasionally. How do you change everyone’s minds about what is an acceptable way to treat rabbits as a species? I mean, dog and cat people have been working on this for much longer than rabbit people and they still have breeding out of control and inhumane treatment.
I suppose change comes slowly in society. Perhaps someday our decedents will look back on the relatively unregulated breeding and sale of pet animals as a bizarre and cruel practice, but that does nothing for the wonderful animals alive today, through no fault or choice of their own. Sorry to end on a downer, but it’s a puzzle. I can’t adopt them all.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
7 comments:
Maybe it has been less time since rabbits stopped being a common food source. (in particular versu dogs and cats) I know that many people still raise rabbits for food or go out and hunt them for the same purpose but as soon as they stop being a viable food supply to most people, their numbers will increase unchecked as we shelter them from predators. I am not for or against eating rabbits, never tried it, or at least my parents never told us. I also understand the desire to protect them from harm. I just think that is a part of the issue.
I actually don't have a problem with people eating rabbits. Honestly. I eat meat (though not rabbit, just because I have spent so much time with them and gotten so attached). I am primarily concerned with the out-of-control breeding and sale of them as companion animals who end up dumped in shelters. None of the rabbits we get were bred or intended for food; they are almost all "fancy" breeds.
Some of the greatest cruelty to animals is done to dogs and cats, which Americans don't generally consider a food source and haven't for awhile.
If you take out of the equation all the undesirable homes rabbits are in and those being raised for food and just focus on those that end up, for whatever reason, in shelters in line to die, you have to wonder what the point of all of it is. How is it that we have the right to create/purchase life and then dispose of it for no good purpose when we no longer find it interesting enough to hold our attention? Doesn't that just seem wrong?
I don't claim to know the solution... I don't want the government telling me what to do any more than anyone else, but I am frustrated by what seems like a profound injustice to animals that we took from the wild and warped for our needs and then decided not to be good stewards of these unnatural creatures. If we bred them only to fulfill the needs of humans to survive (to eat) then at least there was a purpose to their end. But we didn't (and don't) stop there.
So seriously, you wouldn't mind if I got a little survivalist (OK, a little more survivalist) and raised meat rabbits? I don't actually think I have the guts to spill their guts, but I have avoided letting the kids get an outdoor bunny because that option would always be on the table for us, and I figured you would never speak to us again.
I would hope\think (although I am just trying to justify other actions at this point) that it would depend on how long the person\family had the pet. I think a lot more people keep cats or dogs as pets and there are a lot more breeders, but as they live and have them as pets longer or had the same species as a pet growing up that many people feel like they are part of the family.
The good news is after Easter every year the media\PETA does a better job of communicating the need to properly care for rabbits (as they are often gifts to young children this time of year).
You may be closer the situation than me, but it seems like we have a large pet population with cats and dogs too (e.g. shelters are full and they many are euthanized).
I wasn't trying to minimize the plight of cats and dogs. Yes, there are more of them that need homes since they are the #1 and #2 pets in popularity... supply and demand and all that. But rabbits are the #3 most relinquished pet in the US.
I think it's interesting that you feel that PETA and the media do a good job of the anti-Easter rabbit education. We see at least a 50% spike in intakes at shelters and rescue in the months following Easter. And Santa Cruz is a city that has very few places where you can actually buy rabbits, but people still seek them out. It's a problem every year, despite the media campaign.
The Rabbit Haven has 76 homeless rabbits currently listed and that's not all of them, those are just the ones we've had a chance to take pictures of. The organization gets calls literally daily of people wanting to surrender their rabbits. The local shelters are low-capacity, but are still almost always full.
I think the plight of pet rabbits is just not visible. In shelters, they are often stuck in back rooms and you may not even see them when you go in. There are rabbit rescue organizations all over the country to meet the demand. If you search petfinder.org for "rabbit" you'll get a ton of results (I was too lazy to count exactly how many).
I choose to focus on rabbits because I am very interested in them as creatures. But what applies to rabbits applies to all pet animals from dogs to lizards: there is an epidemic of homeless pet animals in the country and undeserving animals are destroyed for no purpose and treated callously and casually by humans.
And yes, Jessica, I would mind. But the reason I would mind is that the backyard hutch life is a miserable and dangerous one for a rabbit. Many good people have had rabbits in hutches, and I don’t hold anything against them. But, as Oprah says, when you know better you do better.
Fair enough- now that I have chickens, I hate to imagine laying hens penned up for years, with six birds in each four-square-foot cage. So I guess if I can't have a backyard bunny, I can expect you to buy free-range eggs, huh?
Actually, yes we do. But I try not to dwell on the food aspect too much because Steve won't appreciate it if I go all hippie on him. Six rabbits in a 400-sq ft garage is enough to cope with, I think.
Nobody's perfect, and you can pick apart the moral inconsistencies in anyone's beliefs. Is there a difference between a rabbit in a hutch out back and a milk cow stuffed in a crowded pasture? Probably not. And perhaps I should only eat free-range beef and drink milk from the happy cows you see in California milk commercials. Or maybe it's unjust to use animals at all and I should be vegan. But there's a point where you decide what is acceptable for your moral code as you move through the world and what is not. Everyone draws that line in a different spot at different times in life. I don't feel like a disingenuous person because I eat meat which is most likely not particularly humanely raised.
Post a Comment