Wrongdoings.

A forum I frequent has had disputes amongst members lately about "wrong doings" and "fixing things" and "inattentiveness" and "too many pets" ad nausem.  I've stayed out of it because... who really wants to be called out on what they did wrong six years ago, five months ago, yesterday?  If it was wrong, and the person knows it... I'd just be pretty darn sad if it kept coming up over, and over, and over... again.

With that said.  Irresponsible breeding kills me.  I have a hard time feeling sorry for people who have had litter, after litter, of non-health tested, non-otherwise tested stock.

Buzz was intact until 28 months old.  Bailey was 9 months old when Buzz was neutered.  Bailey was bough for me, to "possibly breed" with.  My dad thought if you have one of each sex and they're of the same breed, you might as well breed them, right?  Thankfully we neutered Buzz.  No Buzz puppies.

Bailey was intact until 14 months.  "We" (the family) had intentions of breeding her.  Then we went through a single hellacious heat cycle with her (half of which happened while we were on vacation, you see how wimpy we were) and she was spayed soon after coming out of heat.  They were then given the title of "just pets" or "farm dogs" or "hey, you, go chase the guinea hens off the cars."

So, while we were responsible with our dogs (I think that counts as being responsible--no litters), we had a barn kitty named Baby who had litter, after litter, after litter.  We loved playing with the kittens and they "always found homes" so, really, it was ok, right?  Wrong.  Baby was born in 1990 and had litters of kittens until 1997.  Seven years of uncontrolled reproducing.  She was our pet, and was vaccinated, but she had litters and litters of kittens.  We tried (unsuccessfully) for about a year and a half to contain her after weaning kittens to have her spayed.  She always escaped.  It did not fail.  Her second to last litter of kittens contained Rasza, our beautiful grey kitty boy.  She escaped ONE MORE TIME and had a singleton litter of a short haired calico female we named Mischief.  Baby was then, finally, spayed.  Except it didn't go so smoothly.  The vet "misunderstood" and declawed our outdoor, barn, kitty that we were trying to HELP (yeah, she was spayed too)!  My dad said NO More Cats In The House (we had Rascal and Rasza inside at this point), so she had to live outside, with no front claws.  Somehow, she still survived.  (The vet spayed her daughter Mischief for free to "try" to make up for declawing Baby... and Mischief died shortly thereafter.)

After a tragic family loss in 2005, everyone ended up coming to live in the house.  No more losses, no more tragic losses needed to take place.  We went from having one cat live inside permanently, to having five animals living inside all the time.  Some may say THAT was ridiculous, but it has worked for us.

I've done as much as I can humanly do for all of our animals, who didn't have the best start here, in an attempt to make up for it.  Nobody has had a truly bad life, but I've provided them with all the necessary veterinary care and good food and clean, safe, warm environments since then.  My perception of others has changed a lot, knowing how difficult it can be to make changes like that.

The point of this?  I'm human, I learn from (most) mistakes, and I have a genuine passion to provide the best life for my critters as I can.

As my dad would say, "Accident's don't just happen."  Well, he's right.