Sunday, April 06, 2008

The horrors of puppy mills



I'll never look at a pet store the same way again after finally watching Friday's "Oprah".
Photo from Oprah.com

Animal lovers, you need to skip this blog. Seriously. Just move on to the next entry.

I'm not an animal lover. I respect animals and their place in the world but I've never really owned a pet except for a stray cat that my family called Ralph. We would feed Ralph and would make sure that Ralph was OK but we never took him to a vet or let him in the house.

Friday, Oprah aired a show about puppy mills. I had never heard of a puppy mill before and had no idea that dogs and other animals were treated so poorly. They showed the inhumane conditions these animals lived in and it just broke my heart.

I always thought that the dogs from the pet store were strays or came from breeders but I didn't know about the horrors of puppy mills.

Oprah was a mess throughout the whole show. Her beloved dog Sophie just died and they aired a tribute to Sophie. As I watch, I knew a lot of folks in America were rolling their eyes at this, but you could see the love she had for that dog and it was sad to watch the tears stream down her face. If you even lost anyone or any animal you loved, you could feel her pain.

Lisa Ling who seems to be working solely for Oprah now, did an undercover investigation on the PMs and it was terrible what we saw. The saddest thing was one dog had been chained for so long, that the chain had embedded itself to its neck and hair was growing through it!

Another sad thing was watching dogs and cats being put down at the Fort Worth Texas Humane Society. They kept a list of why animals were put to sleep and it included things such as feral behavior and anti-social behavior. The guy who was explaining why was clearly sad about this but realized it needed to be done because they don't have the room.

Oprah begged folks to have their animals spayed and neutering. I'm surprised that she didn't have Bob Barker on because he's been saying that for years.

While sad, I know that this ranks up there as one of "O"s best shows.

Am I still cool?



My friend Jump the Snark, Ani, David B, Rose W and a few others have been on my case again.

These folks are in my circle of coolness along with Leslie, Liz, Karla and Pat.

Practically ALL of them have been on my butt to jump on the "Battlestar" train. I don't know why, but I guess I'm NOT a true die hard Sci-fi person or something.

I mean I haven't even seen "Star Wars" and fell into "Star Trek" sheerly by accident. As I'm writing this, I'm wearing this cool T-shirt that my friends Rose and Jeff bought me when they went up to Long Beach to check out an exhibit.
So for those of you who missed BSG on Friday, here's a little gift for you above!