Should You Spay or Neuter Your Pet? Duh

I seriously feel that we need to pass a law that requires spaying or neutering of any and all pets. Okay, maybe not ALL pets. Obviously, at some point, we will need pets to reproduce if we want to continue our love affair with our cats and dogs. My point is that the overpopulation of unwanted animals is seriously out of control.

My sister works for animal control in Odessa, Texas. Bless her heart a million times over, I don't know how she can stand that job. There are good parts of her job. They do everything they can to match unwanted pets with loving humans, and when they succeed the job is extremely rewarding. But they also euthanize the animals that nobody wants, or that are in such unbelievably bad condition from either abuse or neglect that they are unadoptable. And you would not believe how many animals that is.

When are we going to wise up? When are we really going to start caring about the well-being of our furry friends?

When our children were little, we had one of our cats spayed. The girls were appalled. Poor, poor Worthless - hey, you haven't met the cat. If the name fits ... Anyhow, they were mortified that we put their poor, beloved cat through such trauma when there was nothing wrong with her. We explained, the best we could, why spaying was so very important. They remained unconvinced, but Worthless recovered quickly and we were mostly forgiven. Not long after that, some friends bought a house and the previous owners left a pregnant dog with them. Now, our friends didn't even want the dog, much less the puppies. But they kept the dog, nature took its course, and they ended up with an adult dog and three puppies to try to get rid of. They spent a lot of money feeding those dogs, and then even more money trying to get rid of those dogs. Nothing worked, and in the end they put all four dogs down. This horrific experience gave our daughters a little lesson about why spaying and neutering is such a good idea. Now, if our daughters, who were very young at the time - 8 years-old and younger - could get the idea from this example, why can't adults do the same?