Cow folk, just curious about this "rescue"

FarmerDenise

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I love all the stories about everyone's "abused" dogs and cats. :lol:

I think the point we are making, is that we take good care of our animals, protect them, provide for them, love and spoil them.
What we do may appear to the uneducated (about animal husbandry) and some extremists as abuse or neglect.

I think none of us are willing to jump to the conclusion that this farmer did anything wrong, without knowing more about the circumstances.

Lets see,
Abused and neglected animal one
My dog is outside all day, every day. Except when it is too hot, too cold or raining. She is outside at night, except in the winter, because it is too cold and it rains too much. She doesn't come inside to sleep in the summer due to heat, because it is usually cooler outside and we often go outside to sleep, So technically we join her outside on hot nights.
We do not take her to dog parks, because she gets intimidated by other dogs. We take her to DD's house for playdates with her dogs. (DD's dogs chase the chickens, so they don't get to come over) We don't walk her. She gets to run all she wants in our 1 acre lot. She loves chasing crows off the property and any other cats, that try to explore our yard. She watches for hawks and sleeps with the chickens and eats their food with them, and lets them eat her food.

Abused and neglected animals two and three
The cats. We have 2. Our older cat insists on using the potty outside. He refuses to use a litter box. No matter how badly he hurts, he insists on going outside to potty. He is more than 10 years old, is fixed and still gets into fights. He spends most of his time sleeping on what he deems the best location in the house at the moment.
When he wants to go out, he tracks us down and lets us know in no uncertain terms, that it is our job to open the door and wait until he slowly mosies out the door. He also likes his food dish freshened up every few hours.
The kitty goes out for a few hours every day. When he is ready, he jumps on the counter to where his collar lays. Or onto the kitchen table and looks out the window. We put his collar on and carry him into the back yard, where he spends his day chasing lizard birds and watching rat holes. Occasionally the dog and kitty chase each other. In the late afternoon he comes back in. Sometimes he asks to come in around 2-3 pm, because he wants to eat and use his litter box in the house.
Gosh we are so horrible. We let our cats outside, exposed to the elements and what not!!!

Abused and neglected animals: chickens.
We do lock our chickens up at night. They are also in a fenced yard in the summer, in the winter they free range in the field and we fence in the winter garden. We limit storebought mixes and don't medicate unless absolutely neccessary. We bring them in the house, if something is wrong. As a matter of fact I have one in the house right now. Susie has been loosing her feathers again and I bring her inside, because it is warmer in the house.

The worst case of abuse and neglect: the rabbit
We have a large (fixed) male rabbit. He lives outside in a very large pen. Concrete floor and chainlink fencing is nice and secure to protect him from escaping and thus getting caught by some other critter or escaping from our yard. The top is partially covered by a tarp to protect him from rain and too much sun. He has full view of everything that goes on in the yard. He interacts with the dog, kitty and the chickens. His pen is big enough to put a king sized bed in and furniture. Each of us spends time with him every day. It is easy for us to join him in his pen and he comes up for pets. He also has a nice cave like shelter and various interesting and fun places to jump up on and sit in. He loves his metal chair.
Yet the Humane Society won't let us get a companion for him, because he is housed outside!!!
 

hwillm1977

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FarmerDenise said:
Yet the Humane Society won't let us get a companion for him, because he is housed outside!!!
I was turned down by a dog rescue because the question on their application was are ALL your animals sterilized (spayed or neutered), and I said no, my horse isn't...

apparently they must have been worried about my mare breeding with a neutered dog, so I was turned down for refusing to sterilize my animals... I told her she was an idiot, and found a dog rescue that actually understood animals to adopt a dog from.
 

ohiofarmgirl

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hey FD - i love your list of abused animals. us too.. i'm sure we'll be picketed at any moment.

our most abused animals are The Insane Cat Posse. Especially Teddi... yesterday she ate about a pound of duck from when i made stock. yep. she's hurtin'...hurtin' cuz her belly is so full and she has to lay there on the heated bed all day!

i'm just waiting for them to show up. i'll probably be taken off to the pokey for emotionally abusing the pigs for callin' 'em names. good thing I quit calling Debbie the Goat, "Fattie".... i'm sure they would give her court ordered therapy so she could talk about her feelings.
;-)
 

bibliophile birds

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Quail_Antwerp said:
We have a 9 year old blue heeler named Earnhardt.... That's right, he bites.
sounds just like my red heeler Gus (who's the same age!). protecting his family and home are priority #1. strangers who are where they shouldn't be are subject to inspection and if you fail he will escort you off the property. he's only bitten one person (my uncle, who hit him with a stick when he growled at him- i support Gus's right to bite him whenever he wants) but he will most definitely let you know he's not pleased. as soon as he knows you, though, he is a giant baby- loves his squeaky toys and the cats, wants constant affection, loves car rides.

our UPS guy would never get out of the truck because he was afraid of Gus. if we weren't home he sat the packages on the trash can cause he could reach it from his truck. i finally convinced him to have his introduction and now he and Gus are pals. Gus jumps up into the truck with him most of the time and begs to go on a ride. but no other UPS people have been approved by Gus, so they are all warned about our house. we don't mind being "those people."
 

Farmfresh

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hwillm1977 said:
I was turned down by a dog rescue because the question on their application was are ALL your animals sterilized (spayed or neutered), and I said no, my horse isn't...

apparently they must have been worried about my mare breeding with a neutered dog, so I was turned down for refusing to sterilize my animals... I told her she was an idiot, and found a dog rescue that actually understood animals to adopt a dog from.
Now THAT is ridiculous!
 

dacjohns

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Are all of your chickens incapable of reproducing?

Oh, and what about your aquarium fish?
 

bibliophile birds

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dacjohns said:
Oh, and what about your aquarium fish?
that depends on what kind of fish you have. a lot of "specialty" fish have genetic codes that are actually OWNED by companies. sound familiar? anyway, there are some fish that you literally CAN'T purchase a breeding pair of- i had tequila sunrise guppies for a while and was shocked to find that, at the time, you couldn't buy females from stores. i called probably 15 places and no one had them. they all said the same thing: the genetic code (of the store bought fish at least) was owned by a company in Japan and, to decrease competition, they wouldn't sell females or allow them to be sold by stores....

yes, it's weird. and kinda off topic, sorry.

tequila sunrise guppy males
sunrise_add_best_Asm.JPG


eta: apparently this has changed, for these specific fish at least. you can find females now. don't know why it changed, but am glad it did.
 

Bettacreek

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The Glofish are patented. You cannot legally sell, trade, barter, exchange them unless you bought them from the supplier and have a permit to sell them. You can't sell any offspring. Crazy crap, huh?

There are some other weird patents, like on specific shades of colors of seeds/beans. Our world is crazy.
 

rebecca100

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You guys may think this is horrid, but I actually lived in fear for a while about our "rescued" pit. My bil left(not of his own will) and his wife decieded she wanted a divorce and moved in with her family nearly 80 miles away. Well she had our old tiller and a couple of things at her old place so we went there to get them and found my bil pit and her border collie left there with no food or water. (actually we found the pit a mile down the road in the country looking for food). We picked him up, but we couldn't get the collie to come to us. We brought the pit home and went back to try to catch the border collie. It was gone. We never saw it again. I still hope someone picked it up and gave it a good home. It was absolutely nowhere to be found. Anyway both were quite literally just before dying. You could see every bone on the pit and it hurt to touch him, like touching a skeleton. I cried and cried over the way he looked. I had known him since he was a little puppy when bil got him. We absolutely didn't have the money to pay $60 for a vet visit(not including meds, tests, ect.) we barely had the money make our payments. I called the shelter and they refused to take him saying they were overrun already. Soooo......here's where it get bad. I dewormed him myself and gave him dogfood and prayed everyday that no one would turn me in for having a half dead dog in my yard. I literally didn't know what to do with him. He had wandered the roads half-dead for quite a while before we found him. Well today he is easily over twice the weight he was and he bounces and plays and my ds plays with him until bil comes back to claim him. I feel bad that we couldn't afford a vet and hate that she left us in that position to take in a dog we couldn't afford or let it die. I talked to one of her old friends and had him "ask" why she left them. Apparently she just didn't want them anymore and she told the neighbor that she was suprised they were still alive. For the first time ever I wanted to go stomp someone. I can't make my mind understand how she could have left them there to die. Bil always asked how his dog was doing when he would write, the dog was up there on the list with his kids and she left it to die.
You would think they could leave our farm animals alone and deal with real abuse like that. BTW according to a certain animal rights organization, keeping rabbits in wire hutches is animal cruelty.
 

FarmerDenise

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I think it is great that you took that dog and took care of it for your BIL.
Sometimes I think they make more of a fuss about dogs and cats, then they do about kids. Anyone can have kids, but if you don't have a bedroom for the dog, no no no you can't have that doggie.
I'm being facecious, but come on. Before long only the rich will be allowed to have pets and then only if they have pet insurance.

They already banned pitbulls in many cities, or make you "fix" them (as if they are broken) and just try to get homeowners insurance, if the insurance company knows you have a "bully" breed.
 

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