Progressive Wednesday

This Wednesday: 9 Lives in Dog Years

June 6th, 2007 by Progressive Wednesday

For those of you keeping score at home, 9 lives in dog years would equal 1.285714 repeated.

Problem:

I write about this issue with a degree of expertise that is unmatched by any other topic. I had no pets growing up. Well, that’s if you don’t count the newt I had when I was ten that crawled out the tank and went missing, only to turn up two months later alive and well, swimming in our basement that was flooded with two feet of water. (”This is the happiest day of my life!” I yelled, as my mother wept for the destruction of all the furniture in the basement.)

Then I married a vet student; that was the end of that. Three rabbits, a parrot, two tortoises, two terrapins, a saltwater fish tank, a dog, and countless hours helping my wife study for exams later, to say that I know a thing or two about animals and pet ownership is like saying Wayne Gretzky was a good goal scorer. (Did I just compare myself to Wayne Gretzky? Oh well.)

Needless to say, or perhaps not so needless, our animals get great care. Having a live-in vet doesn’t hurt anything. But many pets get neglected, abused, abandoned, and thrown in shelters at the rate of 8 million per year. People are forced to put animals down because they lack the funds for proper veterinary care. They can�’t give their animals the lives they deserve. We can help change that.

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Make Progress:

Mahatma Gandhi once said: “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”

We’ve domesticated these animals; we have an obligation to provide the highest level of care possible. By Gandhi’s standards, it follows that we have an obligation to make our nation greater. Here’s how we can do that.

• Donate
• Contribute or Apply
• Visit
• Adopt
• Report