EBHS Unleashed
Staff and volunteers of the Elmbrook Humane Society will be blogging about what's going on at the society, as well as other observations about life in Wisconsin.
The mission of the Elmbrook Humane Society is to promote the human-animal bond through adoption and education, to provide shelter to homeless animals, and to prevent animal cruelty and neglect. EBHS services the city of Brookfield, the villages of Butler, Chenequa, Elm Grove and Nashotah, and the towns of Brookfield and Delafield. EBHS shelters unwanted pets and strays, and rescues injured domestic animals and wildlife, provides resources for individuals with companion animals and provides Humane Education to schools and civic groups.
Visit our web site at www.EBHS.org.
I will feel guilty about what happened to Violet forever...
I have been busy preparing for Wine & Whiskers, so I have not blogged as much as I would like to. I am pretty excited about this event, and I am really looking forward to meeting many of you in person at the event this year! Do not hesitate to come up and say hello, because I really love to meet EBHS supporters.
One thing that has cast a pall for me at this otherwise exciting time was a recent incident involving a dog that we adopted out, named Violet. The person who adopted this dog called us and told us that they needed to return Violet (a toy poodle from a puppy mill) because she was aggressive toward the pitbull that this person had. Now, I know this dog from when this person came in because the dog had skin allergies, and it was not a people friendly dog, but did seem to want to play with Violet. Violet was a happy little dog while she was here, we all liked her, and while we were a little concerned about this match, on paper everything looked good, the dogs got along with each other at the shelter, and we sent Violet home.
To Dock, or Not to Dock...
Received a forwarded email with a question about tail docking. It read something like this:
"Do ***-a-poos need their tails docked? I am not sure of the breed standard, and my puppy is now 3 months old. I know dogs can get health problems from tails if they are not supposed to have one. Any advice appreciated"
Mud Happens
Rain, rain go away! I am happy that spring is coming, and that it continues to get incrementally warmer each day, but for those of us with furry dogs this kind of weather means only one thing.
MUD.
The Girl Who Cried Puppy Mill
There will be another expose' tonight on Nightline (check your ABC affiliate - it should be on 10:35pm tonight in Central Time) on puppy mills. I will urge you all to watch it. We will see, again, how terrible puppy mills are. We will be up in arms. Then on Saturday, most people will be watching March Madness and checking their brackets, getting kids off to soccer games, and life will go on as normal.
When the videos came out of that slaughter house showing the cattle falling to the ground, being abused, and suffering on their way to becoming our dinner people got upset because we were going to ingest them and it might make us sick. Fines were given, rules were tightened, and the people all felt better despite all of us knowing deep down that these things are still happening. But we can try and reconcile our fears by feeling the problem was addressed, it is a lot easier than facing the truth and having to personally roll up our sleeves and do something about it.
Pitbulls Paying the Price
I have been thinking a lot about a problem that will have a huge impact on our area shelters in the future (though MADACC is already experiencing this and has been for a couple years). The problem has to do with pitbulls.
Now, contrary to what you might think, the problem is not with the dogs. My worry stems from the fact that shelters are starting to see more and more pitbulls and pitbull mixes, and most people will not adopt these dogs. I can have a pitbull that is perfectly obedience trained, great with kids, great with other dogs, housebroken, and can even do light housework, and people will not adopt it. I hear the reasons like "My neighbors will be afraid to come over" and "My children's lives are at stake".
