QUESTIONS THAT COME TO MIND!
Susie is a very loving and very caring person, so she gives her Pot-Bellied Pigs a lot of attention. A good part of each day of her life is devoted to those pigs, all 150 of them. She has nursed the piglets on bottles, getting up time and again through the night to nourish them. There are stories I could cite that would amaze you at her determination and devotion, as well as the many people who help her. They're very dedicated.

There are people who do the same for colts, for kittens, puppies, deer, pigeons, birds, hawks, wild animals and tame animals of all kinds and all descriptions. I've done it as well, with kittens, puppies, rabbits and birds.

Yet, at what point do we draw a line, at what point are we going to far? I don't know. Do you?

On an island off the California coast there were hundreds of goats that were wild, but since they were not native to the island, they were destroying all the plants, grasses, bushes, and even trees that were indigenous to the group of islands to which they belonged. They had to be removed.

At first they allowed hunters to shoot them. After all, they're part of the diet to the people of Mexico and so they became game for them. But, we had people objecting to that, so they trapped them and took them elsewhere. Some managed to elude the traps, so they sent in additional people to capture them and even used helicopters to carry them out.

The cost of all of this was quite high, but it was authorized even though the state was in a financial crisis. There are those who question the wisdom of such an endeavor, do you?

There were wild sheep that were all trapped and sent to a refuge in Oregon, the costs probably exceeding the value of those sheep ten times over. Now they graze peacefully in Oregon and only old age will take them out of this world. There's a huge annual cost to all of this, and who bears it? Most often, we do. Yet, for Susie's operation SHE raises all the funds from people who feel a love for those little (and some are also VERY big animals).

Yet, if the money for the sheep or the goats came out of your retirement funds, would you spend it? Would you think the cause was worth the sacrifice?

Recently friends of mine spent over ten thousand dollars in vet's bills to save the life of a seven months old dog they had only recently adopted from the local shelter. It had run off and been hit by a car while they were exercising it in the country. That ten thousand came out of their retirement funds. They have three other dogs. So, it would not be as if it were their only pet, nor had they yet become so attached to it as they had with the six and eleven and twelve year old dogs.

Supposing they had not had it in the bank and it would have been necessary to put it on their credit cards? What's your view?

Another husband and wife spent fifteen thousand on radiation for their twelve year old dog, cancer of course. He said to me, "Why not? These two dogs are part of our family."

The Feds have spent more than $50 million on the wild horse program, trapping them, maintaining them until someone adopts them, and millions more go into that program every year. Wild mustangs. At one time the ranchers rounded up a lot of them each year and sold them to slaughter houses for use in dog meat. That did not cost the government anything, and was self-sustaining. Wolves eat horses after long chases, wild battles, and cruel deaths. What's wrong with the rancher's solution?

A man drowned some kittens a few years back and was arrested for cruelty to animals. He got a year or so in jail. Yet, when I was young, I remember my aunt taking five kittens away from our cat and drowning them, leaving just one for her to nurse. There were too many cats in the neighborhood, too much catterwauling at night as they fought on backyard fences, and they peed on the cellar windows of the house where people had females, leaving a horroble smell behind.

We were used to things like that; life was more basic, death a little closer. Chickens would have their heads chopped off in those days, plucked and in the pot in half an hour or so. Today we play by a different set of rules. Yet, feral cats in the woods are often plucked from the ground by a hawk or eagle and suffer a much more bizarre death than drowning. Coyotes regularly catch cats in the Hollywood hills and eat them. Is there some logic there somewhere?

It's a bit diffuclt to understand, especially for people who emigrate from Cambodia or VietNam where in some areas dogs are considered a delicacy, or from remote areas of Australia where native tribesmen now hunt cats instead of rabbits and kangaroos. But more than a year in jail for killing kittens by one method, when in the shelter they'd most likely gas the animals that fair to get adopted. It gives one pause, doen't it?

Years ago I spent a Thanksgiving at a home where they had a dog with paralysis of the hind quarters, so it was carefully diapered each morning. As we sat in the kitchen talking, the odor was foul.

Then, we moved into the dining room and they carved and served the turkey. Suddenly there came a "Yip, yip, yip." "Oh," said the hostess, "Jennie wants to be with us for Thanksgiving," and she went back into the kitchen and carried to box with the little dog in it to the dining room. I have a most sensitive nose and the odor, to me, was overwhelming.

tomorrow I'll add a comment section, as soon as I figure out how to do it, so come on back, if you want to say something.

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