Cayuga County’s front line in the war against animal suffering including cruelty, neglect, abandonment, unwanted births and human indifference is our Finger Lakes SPCA of CNY. There an animal can find shelter and compassionate care, medical attention, spay and neuter surgery, and the chance to find a good home.

The shelter building is old and small. It can only house 50 cats but is often crowded with 70. There is room to house only 12-13 dogs because 4 kennels must always be left open for dogs brought in on contract from Skaneateles and Jordan Elbridge.

The director works long hours and is on call 24/7. Two animal caretakers, a shelter manager, 3 part time adoption counsellors keep the shelter doors open to the public five days a week and in operation all days and nights. In addition the phones are answered by people or message machine around the clock. During a 24 hour period they receive an average of 60-70 calls. Some 10-15 of them are cruelty or neglect calls.

A few examples of calls that come in: visiting nurse reports 3 dogs are being fed nothing but blood from a slaughter house; a box of newborn kittens is found in the Wegmans parking lot; an emaciated puppy is tied out at an abandoned house; someone walks in with a cat in the process of giving birth.

Volunteers schedule the spay/neuter clinic slots for the 2-4 clinics a month at the shelter. Volunteers also come to walk the dogs, take some for a ride, and play with the dogs and cats. Others perform services to help the staff and the animals. Volunteers put in some 20-25 hours a week. It is never enough.

Since Oct. of 2007 the shelter has spayed and neutered 1011 dogs and cats at the low cost clinics. This means the prevention of more than 2000 unwanted kittens and puppies. This too is never enough.

Counselling is offered and educational materials are always available. Like all good SPCA’s, rescue organizations, and humane societies the welfare of each animal is foremost in the screening for adoptions. Some organizations require a home visit before adoption. All are required by law to spay/neuter each animal before it leaves the shelter.

Each dog also gets a rabies shot, if old enough, plus distemper shot, kennel cough preventative and is tested for heartworm Each cat gets rabies vaccination , distemper, kennnel cough preventative and is tested for FIV/leukemia. Both are treated for fleas, worms ticks and earmites. These are all paid for by the shelter and the total makes up the adoption fee. Some people don’t stop to think what it all would cost in both time and money if done privately. Some also would not provide the animal with all these medical services. Fees are waived for senior to senior adoptions.

Out in the county and in the city SPCA investigators respond to reports of cruelty and neglect and, when called for, rescue/confiscate animals in urgent need. All this and much more is done on a sparse budget none of which is contributed to by the city or the county.

Shelter Outreach Services (SOS) and Cornell vet students respond to the great need for spay and neuter services and provide those services at very low cost for income eligible individuals

WHY ANIMAL SUFFERING MATTERS is a just published book in which the author, Andrew Linzey, argues that when analyzed impartially there is a rational case for extending moral solicitude to all sentient beings.

For some people, how we treat animals arouses strong emotions and they are repulsed by photographs of cruelty to animals and how we force animals to suffer for food, commerce, and sport. Others argue that it is a purely emotional issue and that animals lack reason or souls or language therefore harming them is not an offense. But now we read that there really are rational grounds for opposing our current treatment of animals.

Linzey suggests that just the opposite of the rationale for harming animals is true. He cites the inability of animals to give or withhold consent, their inability to represent their interests, their moral innocence, and their relative defenselessness all compel us to not harm them.

The author pioneers a new theory about why animal suffering matters, maintaining that sentient animals, like infants and young children, should be accorded a special moral status.

Linzey further shows that the arguments in favor of just three controversial practices–hunting with dogs, fur farming, and commercial sealing–cannot withstand rational critique. He considers the economic, legal, and political issues surrounding each of these practices, appealing not to our emotions (which nonetheless are surely valid) but to our reason, and shows that they are rationally unsupportable and morally repugnant.

As example Linzer cites efforts to ban foxhunting in Britain, while in other countries it is condemned (America included), for “causing suffering for pleasure.” Another chapter is devoted to fur farming and slams the practice of raising animals for their pelts, subjecting them “to prolonged suffering for trivial ends, such as fur coats.” A chapter devoted to commercial sealing dwells on the clubbing of baby seals. Such animal abuse is a precursor to serial murder and violence to children, the author suggests. He calls e calls He for an end to killing animals even for food, given that humans can live healthy lives “without recourse to flesh products.”

Andrew Linzey is Director of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, and a Member of the Faculty of Theology in the University of Oxford . He has published more than 20 books including: Animal Theology, Creatures of the Same God, and Animal Rites: Liturgies of Animal Care

Nationwide , in spite of a good deal of press and t.v. coverage, there are still people who don’t know that puppies sold in pet stores and on the internet are supplied by large inhumane breeding operations called puppy mills. There is simply no other way for pet stores to have a constant supply of puppies of different breeds.

Last Chance For Animals investigators, while doing in-store investigations, found that pet stores are openly defrauding the public. They repeatedly found that pet store owners, managers and employees routinely lie to shoppers. Among the lies they discovered were: We don’t do business with puppy mills; our puppies are raised in homes; our puppies are well socialized; our puppies are raised under foot and with lots of tender loving care.

One investigator said that stores rely on the cuteness factor to sell the puppies even at prices in the neighborhood of $1500. No one ever asks where are the parents or can we see the parents. Investigator , Walter Hargis, said when they asked these questions as potential buyers they never got straight answers. He believes it is obvious that most employees have been trained to avoid such qestions and give out misleading information like “we only get our puppies from small local breeders.” The implication is that such breeder”s dogs are being treated well and they are not.

All puppy mill breeders are in the business of making money and making the greatest profit margin possible. Veterinarian care, humane living conditions, socialization with other animals and with people are not profitable.

Another ploy used by pet retailers is to say “we only sell puppies from USDA liscensed breeders.” As I pointed out in my last column USDA lists more than 5000 dealers and brokers that go from operations of small dilapidated outdoor hutches to large factory operations. Activists and investigators who have seen these operations have been convinced that USDA has been very negligent in its enforcement of the Animal Welfare Act.

There are some steps being taken to improve the sad lives of breeding dogs in puppy mills.

On June 2, the Senate’s Agriculture Committee unanimously passed S.5392a, to limit the number of unsterilized dogs for the purposes of breeding that can be housed at a commercial dog breeding facility to 50. The bill has been referred to the Senate’s Codes Committee. It

cracks down on one of the worst abuses at large scale dog breeding operations by limiting the number of adult unsterilized animals a person can maintain.

It is a step in the right direction but puppy mills commonly house animals in overcrowded, filthy and inhumane conditions with inadequate shelter and care and the bill doesn’t address those conditions. The bill will not impact responsible breeders, animal shelters, research facilities, pet stores, veterinarians, groomers or boarding facilities. The Assembly version is A.7285b.

What can we all do? We can adopt rather than buy. There are pure breed as well as mixed breeds for adoption through www.petfinder.com and at local shelters and rescue groups.

The sad story of puppy mill dogs was told by many animal rescue groups and speakers yesterday at the Syracuse Fairgrounds, during the second annual Bark Heard Round The World event.

Some rescued parent dogs that were bred over and over and lived in small cages for their lifetime were on display. They had been allowed only six inches in front of them in the mill cages they came from and got no exercise or socialization until they were rescued. Most had suffered from serious physical afflictions until they were rescued and still showed such evidence as rotten teeth, hernias, missing eyes, malformed legs, infections and various other injuries that were left untreated by the puppy mill owners. None had ever experienced the life of a normal dog. They were terrified at first and were unused to sounds and sights in the world including fresh air and grass.

A spokesperson from LCA (Last Chance For Animals) said “When we met the mill dogs and held their tired and brokern little bodies in our arms their gratitude for their newfound freedom added fervor to our mission” Another rescuer adopted one of the breeding moms and says of her ”She’s a resilient little dog, scarred from being forced to have so many litters but is now learning to live without fear of humans. She still turns around obsesively in tight circles, a reminder of the only exercise she got in her cage for so many years.”

According to the organizers, there are thousands of these substandard commercial breeding operations throughout this country. This is a national problem. Only a small percentage of these sufferiing dogs are rescued. They are a cash crop for the owners and only the older or sick dogs are given up to rescuers if any at all are. Some puppy millers simply shoot or drown or smash them against a wall to kill the ones considered no longer useful to produce puppies.

Most of these puppy mill operations exist in secrecy in out of the way or hidden places. They exist here in our county and surrounding counties.

Over one thousand dogs and puppies were rescued in Parkersburg, West Virginia recently creating enormous overload conditions for the rescue organizations.

Most of these mills are, shocklingly, USDA liscensed breeders. The USDA lists more than 5,000 dealers and breeders. Some are small operations of dilapidated outdoor hutches and some are large facilities that look like canine super prisons. And some even breed dogs specifically for the torture in bio-medical research. They too are USDA approved.

If you want to believe that our government is actually making sure dogs are not being abused in facilities with USDA approval go to the USDA website and read the minimum standard of care. And realize that these facilities are only inspected annually. Imagine what goes on the rest of the year! It is often much worse than the USDA’s minimum standard of care.

According to Deborah Howard, president of the Companion Animal Protection Society, the USDA’s implementation of the Animal Welfare Act has been grieviously insufficient and negligent over the years.

Though there has been a good deal of press coverage on the subject, there are still people who don’t know that these large scale brokers and inhumane breeding operations are in business to supply pet stores with puppies, very expensive pupppies. My next column will elaborate on this link and how pet stores selling puppies often delude the public.

Pet stores typically have no concerns regarding if their puppies ultimately land in a good home, and do absolutely nothing to prepare ‘puppy shoppers’ for breed specific issues