While we are on the subject of health issues, it is wholly unfair that we pedigree dogs can only breed if we are considered perfectly fit and look just right, while humans and for that matter mongrels are allowed to get on with it without any intervention whatsoever. If every human that didn’t look quite right, or who had a heart murmur or the possibility of developing a genetic disease were precluded from having children then the human race would be a much smaller thing.
The same problem faces dogs in straightened circumstances. Dogs are not simply discouraged from having puppies if they can’t afford to bring them up. We are physically assaulted so that we can’t. Can you imagine the uproar if every unemployed human was neutered to make sure they didn’t add to their problems?
If it sounds as though this is spoken from the heart it is. I’ll admit, I can’t have puppies and I’m not happy about it. I have a heart murmur and for that matter I had an undecended testicle so I was operated on for health reasons. I would have liked to have been a dad. Why couldn’t they have allowed me to have even just one litter of puppies before my operation? I know I’m going to have the opportunity to be a foster father, but it isn’t the same thing. Where is my opportunity to take a puppy on one side and say ‘Son, this is how it is for us dogs.’?
It isn’t as though we pedigree dogs get to choose our own partners. We have the equivalent of ‘arranged marriages’. Then we don’t have the opportunity to form a proper relationship as the next time we mate we have to meet a different dog. Now I know there are humans that live like that, but they do it by choice – we don’t! I’ve got brothers and sisters that I don’t even now about. Then there is the whole question of fertility treatment, but I’ll leave that to another day.