@berry_lips – I don’t want a pat on the back either for having gotten my dog from a shelter, the pound, or the street. What I do want is for every dog owner to love and respect their dog and give them a good and comfortable life until death comes, as it does to all of us.
What I don’t want are folks like my neighbors and their “AKC registered Chihuahuas” that run loose in the street because the man won’t buy a cedar board to fix the fence. Instead, when folks complain enough, he ties a bucket on a rope to the dogs’ collars so they can’t get all the way out of the yard.
What I don’t want are people who never bother to give their pets the once a month treatment for heartworms so I have to watch and listen as their dogs die when their hearts are blocked. Or when I have to pay $600 to treat a dog I have rescued that has heartworm.
What I don’t want are people like my neighbor who never minded that her male dog invariably ate the puppies produced by her female dog, because “It’s just God’s way.” She didn’t particularly want puppies, but she firmly believed that neutering an animal is going against the will of God.
What I don’t want is paying $2500 to repair the leg of a dog whose original owner (who paid about $3000 to a breeder for her) never got her leg treated when she was a puppy, so as she grew it became deformed to such a point that amputation was a possibility. She is a wonderful, sweet dog, but her leg, while functional, is not what it should have been.
What I don’t want is to find any more skeletal dogs tied up in someone’s yard with no water and flies attacking its eyes.
There are many, many more examples of what I don’t want.