The pets hit by the credit crunch

[Vulpix]

What is wrong with these people? The last thing I would give up is my pet :mad::thumb down2


BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/hi/the_p_word/newsid_7762000/7762124.stm): The pets hit by the credit crunch

There's been a big increase in the number of people saying they can't afford to keep their dogs any more, according to the Dogs Trust charity.

It says rising bills and problems with the economy are forcing people to make cutbacks - and many dogs end up being abandoned. [...]
Meet Sugarplum. A big, bounding, bundle of energy who'll cover your arm in saliva the moment you start stroking her.

She was found on a freezing cold morning, tethered to a gate with no way of identifying her. She's one of many.

Walking past the rows of kennels, little yappy dogs and big growlers seem to be competing in a barking contest.

Extra expense

Others snooze on their beds, some even have worn-out armchairs to sit on. All of them need a home.

Assistant Manager John Cullen explained how bad things are: "Back in January, we had around 100 people wanting to get rid of their dogs.

"That had got as high as 700 just recently. It has to be put down to the financial situation at the moment."

"I think people are trying to balance the books and the dog is something that's causing them an expense."

Some parts of the UK are worse hit than others.

In just a few months, some re-homing centres in London have received double the number of calls from people who're struggling to pay for their pets.[...]

[Absinthe]

Bejaysus! :eek: That's total crap.

Well, if their idea of having a dog is feeding it class A canned food, getting it groomed twice a week and dressing in with Burberry coats...surely they'd discarded if that saves them money to buy another Luis Vuitton instead :rolleyes:

But in general a dog, even a big one, can be sustained with minimal expenses, can be fed practically all kinds of left-overs from the family table and asides vaccination & medical care that costs something (albeit less than one dinner at a fancy restaurant), all it needs is a warm corner, a walk in the park and lots of affection :)

[Eldritch]

This disgusts me. A dog or some other pet is not a toy, it's a living being and if you take one, you automatically commit yourself to caring for it for all of its natural life.

Some people are just too stupid, selfish and greedy. There are very few things I hate more than animal abuse or cruelty.

[Alison]

Shocking! We don't feed our dogs expensive tinned meat and biscuits. I make up a huge pot of very cheap meat with vegetables and a huge pot of rice or mealie meal every week. They get that every day, and it's far healthier for them, and very cheap. I would never give up my pets because times were tough. :(

[Albion]

There is in my opinion too many people breeding animals for a quick bit of cash in the UK, its getting out of hand and the numbers of domestic need to be allowed to drop before any more are bred. Just look on any UK pet classifieds and the amount of animals on there is amazing, this can only lead to animal overpopulation.

[Albion]

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/12/21/world/IRELAND/IRELAND-articleLarge.jpg


DUBLIN — In this country of lush green landscapes, celebrated for its traditional love of horses and the generations of racing thoroughbreds it has bred to conquer the racetracks of the world, the Dunsink tip on the outskirts of the Irish capital is a place that wounds the heart.


Atop a muddy dome stretching over hundreds of windblown acres, bitingly cold in the bitterest early winter many here can remember, roam some of the tens of thousands of horses and ponies that have been abandoned amid Ireland’s financial nightmare. Only miles from the heart of Dublin, the tip, a former landfill now covered with a thin thatch of grass, is the end of the road for all but the hardiest animals, a place where death awaits from exposure, starvation, untended sickness and injury.

Beside a busy expressway, on one of the tip’s distant corners, mounds of fresh dirt mark the graves of the weakest horses, freed from suffering by animal welfare inspectors with .32-caliber pistol shots to their heads. Overhead, airliners climb out of Dublin’s international airport, where a plush new terminal matches Dublin’s sprawl of gleaming steel-and-glass buildings built for the investment tide of the boom years.

The distress among the country’s horses began showing up more than two years ago, when Ireland’s property boom collapsed. That was a grim marker on the road to the crunch that hit this month, when Ireland accepted a $90 billion international bailout package, pledged on the government’s promise of instituting the harshest austerity measures in Europe.

By rough economic estimates, the $20 billion in spending cuts and tax increases promised over the next four years by Prime Minister Brian Cowen’s government will lead to a 10 percent cut in the disposable income of Ireland’s middle class, and greater hardships still for many of the country’s poor. They will be hit by welfare cuts, public-sector job losses and a sharp reduction in the minimum wage, as well as a wider economic turndown, on top of the 15 percent shrinkage in the economy since 2008, if the emergency measures fail to restore economic growth.

But the horses that are such an enduring part of Irish culture are paying a price, too. For generations, keeping horses has been an Irish passion — for those who like to enter them in flat-racing, steeplechase and show-jumping competitions, for those who keep them for recreational occasions like hunts and equestrian events, and for still others who see horse ownership as a symbol of prosperity, much as other people find pleasure in owning luxury cars.

How many horses and ponies have been abandoned is a matter of informed guesswork. Irish laws require all owners to have their animals registered, and tagged with microchips for identification, but the laws have been only sporadically enforced. What is certain is that the boom years brought a rapid growth in breeding, and that tens of thousands of people who could not previously afford a horse or pony entered the market, many of them keeping their animals in gardens, on fenced-off building sites or on common land like the Dunsink tip.

With the economic downturn, many found that they could no longer afford to feed or stable the animals at costs that can run to $40 a day and more and abandoned them to wander untended around construction sites, through towns and villages and along rural roads. One common estimate, put forward by Joe Collins, president of the Veterinary Council of Ireland, is that there are 10,000 to 20,000 “surplus horses” across the country. Another leading expert on horses, Ted Walsh, the father of one of the country’s most famous steeplechase jockeys, Ruby Walsh, has said that the number could be as high as 100,000.

Another way to measure the scale of the problem is to visit the Dunsink tip. Celebrated in history as the site of one of Europe’s most famous astronomical observatories, established in 1785 at a time when Dunsink lay in open country, it became in more recent times a trysting place for drug dealers, car thieves and desperate people who came to its desolate reaches to hang themselves from the trees sheltering on the lower reaches of the land. The sense of desolation is accentuated by the scatter of concrete venting pipes that draw off lethal methane gas from the generations of decomposing garbage below.

Full story... (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/21/world/europe/21ireland.html)

This is happening in Ireland due to the financial crisis, in Britain more people are going out of keeping horses too, but I haven't heard of any abandoned yet.

Whilst British Isles native ponies such as Welsh, Dartmoors, Exmoors or Connemaras would probably be able to find food and cope with the conditions since traditionally they were put out to the hills in summer or in some cases most of the year.
Most of Ireland's horses are for racing though - race horses are known for being very un-hardy and unsuited to Northern Europe in winter (most having some Arab horse blood in them) and are best stabled over winter.
Its a shame this is happening.

[Treffie]

Horses are being abandoned in the town next to me. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-west-wales-12114032) It's a strange mentality, wanting to keep a horse as a pet in your garden or tethered in a nearby field, without the correct food, bedding and shelter. :confused:

[Tom Cat]

There is in my opinion too many people breeding animals for a quick bit of cash in the UK, its getting out of hand and the numbers of domestic need to be allowed to drop before any more are bred. Just look on any UK pet classifieds and the amount of animals on there is amazing, this can only lead to animal overpopulation.

Indiana has only recently cracked down on unlicensed puppy mills. Conditions at some of these places have been found to be deplorable. Frankly, I think it should be more difficult for someone to obtain a kennel, or cattery license. And everyone else should be required to spay/neuter their canines and felines. If people can't afford these simple medical procedures, then, most likely, they're not going to be able properly care for their 'pets' in other respects.