http://www.animalpeoplenews.org/FR/S...colSP0598.html
This is an AltaVista translation... its a bit sketchy but you will get the point... the article is pretty old, but its still that like that... I don't know if wether to cry or give a good fist at the table
I guess that one can't help it being ashamed of what happens here.
Ecology of the dog in Puerto Rico (ANIMAL PEOPLE, May of 1998.) By Merritt Clifton LUQUILLO, P.R. -- to save a sato, a type of street dog of Puerto Rico, legendary fact by Literature, is surprise difficult in these days, because to save it first it is necessary to find it. The post office of important humanitarian organizations caused that you thought that there are vagabond dogs everywhere in Puerto Rico. Nevertheless, I spent six days and five nights (from March 25 to the 30) making ecological an evaluation personal of the problem of the dogs and street cats, time in which I combed 320 miles square of the island, from Luquillo in the east to Mayaguez in the west, and from Old San Juan in the north to Ponce in the south. I lead by all the important highways, surrounding the island and intercrossing representative parts of her six times, two per night and four per day, mainly by narrow asphalt tapes in which hardly two automobiles fit simultaneously. During the first four days I crossed single, in an operation of observation, by slums, waste baskets, agricultural areas, boulevards, coastal zones, areas of restaurants near beaches, by the vicinity of the airport of Carolina, and by the tropical forest the Anvil. Later I continued observing during 16 hours more, in company of Fine Perry of Pet Savers (Rescatadores de Domestic Animales), social organization of the North Shore League Animal (League Animal of North Shore) that paid for my trip to clarify contradictory information about the problem of the street animals in this place. In the fifth day I traveled more than 20 miles on foot. First I ran from my lodging in the Grateful lodging, between Yunque and Luquillo, to the beach, returning by a different way. Later I walked towards the west, from the lodging and by secondary ways until the edge of the Anvil, I turned towards the east, and I combed the lateral streets of three small towns during the return to the Luquillo, where I reviewed the streets and alleys of the industrial district and the neighborhoods to the restaurant and the hotel. I ended a sweeping to the area of the beach, including a alley in the later part of the 16 bars and barbecues of chicken that serve the swimmers, as well as the ways that cross the highway of four routes. After entrance the night I continued the investigation, this time in automobile well. The sixth day I returned to visit the Anvil, later I returned by the way along the Canovanas River, through the old port of Loiza, and throughout the coast by the slow route towards the airport, from where I left in the last hours afternoon. For more than 75 times of observation, I exactly saw 100 loose dogs, of which not more than 20 they could have been genuine satos. The rest, often with necklaces, was probably domestic animals that they walked freely, impression that I confirmed in my trip on foot. That day I found 44 dogs tied with strap and 13 loose dogs, a much more high index of property of which it could be seen from a car. The cause could be because the dogs with owners, within the houses or behind the fences, feel more inclined to bark to a pedestrian who to a vehicle that happens. Also I found that 10 of the 13 loose dogs that I found that day in the street, ran towards a house door when it approached to me, test that they defended its territory. Of the three dogs that did not rise to go to their houses, later I discovered that the one that were in worse state of them, was an old domestic animal with displasia of hip, that as soon as it could move quickly. In my last day, again from the automobile, I observed only 14 dogs, of which 13 were loose. I often stopped to see what the dogs did. The 13 went towards their houses, where several of them were greeted by human beings -- including the three dogs that initially were persecuted in the street by a naked man who finished jumping of his bathtub and tried that the dogs took off of in front of my car. During the six days I saw 77 dogs maintained by chains, behind fences or with traÃ:censor:llas. Then one became pretends that half of the dogs with owners, in Puerto Rico, is checked of some form. So the taken care of standards on did not appear violet in greater extension than the standards for the care of children, and certainly, not in a degree greater than those than I found during the four years that ANIMAL PEOPLE published from the countryside of Adirondacks, in the north of the state of New York, throughout the border with Vermont. In Puerto Rico I also visited good districts, where all the patios carefully were surrounded, all the children had toys and appropriate clothes, and all the dogs seemed to be wanted and to be taken care of well. Also I visited vicinities where half-naked dogs and children looked for something to eat and played dangerously in the narrow ones and journeyed streets. In those vicinities I even saw few samples of food shortage between dogs or human beings -- but I saw many more dogs than they suffered clearly of internal and external parasites. Conjecturing, it would think that it is also more probable that the children of these vicinities can support better to similars miseries. In addition to the 177 alive dogs, I counted 30 dogs died in the highways, and a approximately equal number of small lizards, three rates of Norway (all in the same stretch of the way, next to an illegal garbage dump in the outskirts of Luquillo), three iguanas, three mangostas recently squashed, and two chickens --un number amazingly under considering that through Puerto Rico I saw average dozen of loose chickens by each dog At least two thirds and perhaps 80% of all the dogs that I saw in Puerto Rico, as much loose as checked, were male whole numbers. The females have a much more high mortality evidently, since also it had seen previously between street cats in the United States continental, where also the dogs are killed when being born more often. Between the 100 loose dogs, nine were females that lactaban and three females that no longer lactaban, but followed by puppies. A great sato, above in the Anvil, was ventured during the night with a young of four puppies. The other two, both small and untidy ones, with completely inadequate a long hair for the climate of the Caribbean, had a puppy each one. Two weakly held dogs had a small dog each one. Although the mothers could not vagar, the small dogs could without a doubt escape by openings in the fences with the possibility of dying in the way. The evident and relatively low fecundity would suggest them loose dogs cannot reproduce with the sufficient rapidity like comparing the deaths in the ways. If the population of dogs without home in Puerto Rico is increasing or it stays constant, most of the recruitment not probably must to the reproduction, but to the abandonment --no of the puppies, remarkably little between the population of street dogs, but of the adult dogs. In fact, the dogs give in in Puerto Rico, typically around the age a year, for reasons of behavior, according to my observations of almost eight hours in the refuges animals -- exactly like in the United States continental. But the abandonment seems to imply little intentional cruelty. Some refuges of Puerto Rico have a deserved reputation of fields of death for dogs; the typical abandonment seems to be of people that wishes to give an animal that creates cannot maintain. I was witness of women, and a small girl who cried at the moment for leaving their dogs, almost surely, under the orders of the men of the family. The tellers of the powerboat explained that the dogs that I saw in its environs had been lazy hours before by clients, who hoped that some other client gathered them -- treating of which she took one very pretty one to me, a brilliant chihuahua, until I saw that lactaba, possibly to puppies that were close, and that she requested more by food than by adoption, unless one also found and took its young. A confidence built during some time had been required to obtain that it showed the way to us towards her puppies. In the garbage dumps With the exception of the ambitious Regional and State Animal refuge Protective, in Caguas, and of very properly located to Control center and Animal Adoption, in the Municipality of San Juan, whose site is very well identified by means of signalings, I found the animal refuges of Puerto Rico not only difficult to locate, but that often I found its reluctant personnel to give to information by telephone on direction and schedule on watch, in the cases that telephone were, and typically little cooperative when asking the direction, after expressing my desire to take a domestic animal. I could locate or never connect by telephone with the refuge Friends United by Left Animals, in Low Fertile valley, that although without naming it, apparently was the target of the exhibition in the spring edition, 1998 of PETA's Times Animal. I could not either find Albergue de Animales of the Municipality of Arecibo, although a group of adolescents who work in a store of provision for animals, adjacent to a veterinary clinic of downtown that adopts street dogs, uselessly tried to give the direction me. The extreme example of a refuge animal that evidently does not make its work was the one of the Humanitarian Society of Puerto Rico, in Guaynabo. Founded on 1958, and directed during 40 years by now retired Belgian consul Richard Dirham. In the middle of 1985 the HSPR fell under the attack by Internet of Karen Fehrenbach, a civil employee of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency assigned to Puerto Rico. Endorsed by some local rescatadores of animals and ally to the Caribbean Recycling Foundation (Foundation of Recycling of the Caribbean), that then and now it tried to settle down like an agency for the humanitarian groups of Puerto Rico, Fehrenbach accused the HSPR to allow that dogs and cats died of hunger, and that death deaths because of injuries nontreated underwent. Nevertheless, when I asked for a verification, Fehrenbach rejected to document nobodies of its demands, or with photographies or declarations of witnesses, and in his place it triggered a string of attacks against me by means of planks of announcements of Internet. The declarations of support possibly done by allies of Fehrenbach, seemed consistent little, partly because some of them repeated the own declarations of Fehrenbach word by word, and partly also because they were contradicted by a report of first hand of Neil Trent, of the World for Society the Protection of Animals (Protective Animal Society World-wide), that had visited the HSPR refuges, said he, only days before Fehrenbach said that it had seen those atrocities. Durham had gone away long before which I visited the HSPR, and also Fehrenbach, that according to both sources, the DEA and other rescatadores of active animals in Puerto Rico, entered hardships with the commission of internal subjects of the DEA, by allegations of to have abused its position. Apparently its case is still under revision of the DEA. Nevertheless, without defending the conduct of Fehrenbach, I found reasons to think that the negligence was and continues being a habitual procedure of the HSPR. When I called by telephone, who was evidently the one in charge of the refuge before informed about the exit of Durham nine months to me, and it gave the direction me with careful lack of appetite, identifying himself to itself like Freddy, and he explained, that although I had come directly from the state of Washington to see it, went to closing the refuge at the time of lunch precise, 12:00 M, and that therefore he would not be there when I arrived. When I arrived at the installation, to more than one mile of distance of the written direction of the refuge, Freddy was still trying to close the door and to escape, prevented by people groups who came in two cars and who insisted on giving dogs to him. A middle-aged pair dropped a sato patient in a plastic stock market in the street, next to the sweepings. "Ellos throw sweepings before ours ojos", Freddy commented. In fact they did it. To leave Freddy left allowed me to throw a glance without nuisance to the HSPR and its environs, as much as I could from the outside. I both observed mountains of wastes from access sides the building, in both sides of the street. The high fences with top of barbed wire prevented any person to arrive at the patio. Al to watch more close by I noticed that the sweepings almost entirely consisted of boxes of cardboard and plastic bags in as people had brought the animals to leave them, together to the rags inside of the packages for comfort of the animals. Also there were plates for the food of the animals and occasionally toys for animals. A black, hybrid dog, that lactaba, took a walk nervous around the container of sweepings, doing contingency not covered by law to the eatable remainders, apparently looking for the puppies that must have been within the container. Decided to give to Freddy the benefit of the doubt, assuming that it acted by ignorance it approaches how appropriately to direct the refuge and not by negligence, and remembering the frequent warning of the director of the North refuge Shore League Animal, Michael Adams, of which if a refuge were allowed to seem a waste basket, would be treated like an animal garbage dump, I decided to gather the sweepings. I packed the cardboard boxes the sufficiently robust thing to be sprinted. There was container no to put the boxes, reason why I piled up the boxes throughout the edge of the sidewalk, next to my rented car, preputting to consult to Freddy advanced to me more on towards where it had to take them. Then I tried to take a plastic stock market from the street, directly in front of the door of the garage of the refuge. Inside I found rest of small dogs or kittens --no could say as -- disturbed until the liquefaction, bones, and skin. A worker of the refuge arrived from the distant end of the building and captured the black dog. Moments later Freddy he returned. ... ls and the other man unloaded and took inside so many wastes of cat as ANIMAL PEOPLE uses in a day for 18 cats, and as much dry food of dog as the one that we used in one week for our two dogs. HSPR, nevertheless, is boasted to solve 60 cases, and protests to handle 12.000 animals per year. It asked to me if those purchases to lunch time were part of an ineffective daily routine or was done for my benefit, to cover the deficiencies in the operation with the refuge. Without to have received invitation I followed Freddy towards the sad office without windows of the HSPR. Freddy asked to me again: øpor what øcuál wants to see refuge --, is its intention -- "Usted comprenderá", Freddy noticed to me, that the refuges in Puerto Rico are not like those of NorteamÃ[emoji]169[/emoji]rica." Then it saw my camera. "No will be fotografÃ:censor:as", it added. That is to say, what was behind the doors he was so bad that it did not want that other people knew it. "Entonces is here where our conversation termina", I informed to him. I was more ahead able to see the part of the interior of HSPR. It was difficult to distinguish to the desperate dogs among the sweepings batteries. Behind the refuge there was more sweepings in decomposition, stinking out between the grass. Shortly after my return to Washington, the present president of the HSPR would call to lament itself that she had not been able to meet with me, and to complain about the difficulties the operation with so little money and public aid. Its office, I understood, was in the Santurce, which raised certain question on if she or Durham really they knew something on operations of refuge. Having seen many refuges in less propitious places and less prosperous communities, whose personnel ingeniaba to take shelter the left animals before they were squashed in the streets, that gathered the sweepings and they did not act like fugitive, at all I was not affected with the rosary of excuses, without the support that had given a description him of active efforts to control to the problems. I said to him that if she could not make work an operation that deserved the public aid visibly, would have to leave the business, and that HSPR was the worse one of all the refuges that had seen in so many years, and that to make a so terrible work it was not to make no favor to the animals. I returned to visit HSPR two days after my first visit, this time with Fine Perry, and we discovered that the grass had moved towards behind the barbed wire, that had been located one near way that the visitors who were decided to defy the sweepings badly and scent could not arrive at the later part of the refuge, and that in the place was a container of wastes -- although the sweepings that I had gathered I followed where she had left it, including the stinking stock market with the rest of the small dog... or the kitten. The purse did not represent an isolated incident clearly, because Perry soon discovered the right jaw of a small adult dog directly in front of the refuge. We could not capture two small satos, a male and a female, who we found living in the cemetery apparently, in the sidewalk of opposite. Going to the dogs It did not surprise to find satos close to us. As much in the continent as in Puerto Rico the animals left in the refuges in hours in which these are closed, they remain rambling by the environs. In the continent, often those are the cats that give in more. The dogs -- because most of the continental people of the United States it does not tolerate street dogs -- tend to be captured quickly. In Puerto Rico they remain loose. Where more amount of dogs and street cats I saw in Puerto Rico was near the animal refuges, not only of the HSPR, but also in the administered good Villa Michelle, in the crest of a mountain, Mayag¸ez. In Villa Michelle, directed by the academic Hilda Ramirez, the problem is simply to find the place. A signaling in the highway directs to the visitors towards Villa Michelle, but the way crosses then several intersections, raises hills and is so narrow that two vehicles do not fit. Incapable to find Villa Michelle or little arranged to risk in an accident, some people who try to arrive to give animals apparently render and finish leaving the animals in any place surrounds. I did not find anything bad in Villa Michelle, and I remained impressed by the exercises for dogs favorably and cats. But nowhere I saw so many dogs and cats stunned clearly, that they vagaban without home by the near streets, as well as I found the bones of a dog, apparently left, in the high grass directly in front of the door of the refuge, near the edge of the precipice, to a side of the way. Conjecturing, a car that descended the mountain she coiled and she killed to the dog, leaving the rest outside the Vista of the personnel of the refuge, without nobody knew that the dog had there been. I found street cats living around the rubbish dump, crossing the street from the Control center and Animal Adoption of the Municipality of San Juan, in charge of the School of Veterinary medicine of the University of Puerto Rico. Protected behind the crystal, the personnel of the Center, disappeared one behind another one, after each one said to me that it was going to speak more with somebody. The management could have been surprised when knowing how much it can discover a reporter in one hour and twenty minutes listening behind the doors the conversations between the personnel and the visitors, reading the warnings, seeing the Literature who were in writing-desks and walls, observing the behavior, visible and audible, of the animals. When retiring to me, it had been clear for me that the Adoption and Control center Animal of the Municipality of San Juan is, when more, a bureaucratic agency of control animal, with facilities to promote adoptions, to make great amount of sterilizations to low cost and of educating on the care of domestic animals, but without true will to do it. The contact between the human visitors and the animals is discouraging. Most of the animals they are maintained outside the Vista. At sight of the delay premises there were cages of kittens that played, but nobody delivered an attack to show them, or to caress them, to promote the desire of llevárselos for the house. Except in the environs of the refuges, the loose dogs more often appeared in old slums and suburbs. The satos were on the lookout near traditional barbecues, that scatter the scent to hot chicken by the vicinity, they produce abundant nutritional sweepings, and they serve a customer who eats outdoors, almost outdoors vulnerable to alms. Also they appeared satos around the rubbish containers of the food restaurants fast, where also is one street cats in the United States continental. The street cats are little in Puerto Rico, I saw 23 cats hardly altogether. The cats never have been popular domestic animals in Puerto Rico, and although most of the cats that I saw were vagabond and they were not castrated, the presence of street dogs apparently has inhibited the proliferation of street cats. It could have told many more dogs concentrating my efforts in the places where it was more probable to find them, or spending more time with the rescatadores that take care of the colonies of vagabonds, but the intention of an ecological evaluation is not to produce exaggerated counts. Instead of it, the objective is to make a valuation true of a situation, including a description of how the habitat of a particular animal class can be related to the means that surround it. The street dogs, including the satos, are common in certain sites in Puerto Rico, but altogether, the places for the genuine satos it seems that it is diminishing. This seems to be the cause of its fast declination, more than nobodies of the small subsidized programs of sterilization, between which oldest it is STOPS, of Caguas, that it sterilizes less than 50 animals to the week. No of the other programs seems that they sterilize to more than 25 weeklies. Death in the way Like any fauna, wild or no, the satos need suitable food to survive and to reproduce in a proportion that exceeds to the exhaustion. During centuries, the dogs of Puerto Rico have undergone little depredation. The only native mammals of the island are bats, and no of the native birds are the quite great thing to be much of threat, even for the puppies; as well as no of the reptiles -- mainly eslizones, with some serpents cecko and iguanas -- would damage to a dog except in self-defense. The satos not long ago enjoyed relatively abundant food time, when the greatest businesses of Puerto Rico were the cattle farms, with by-products that included the menudencias of the slaughter, the animal shells died in the field, the placentas and the excrement animal. Since there was little, if some refrigeration, the satos also enjoyed more nutritional remainders. They suplementaban their diets with the fruits knocked down by the wind. This began to change more ago than 30 years, but the true transformation was made in the last decade, with the explosion in the use of the automobile; the simultaneous coming of the refrigeration and the industry of foods of fast preparation; the disappearance of the slaughters in the towns; the declination of the roasted one to parilla outdoors; the contraction of the cattle business and the irregular urbanization that made also disappear many farms of cattle and fruit trees. Said of simple way, the increase of the use of the inflicted automobile to the population of street dogs from Puerto Rico in almost a depredation of levels without precedents, and the development has contracted the food provision, exception done of the dogs with owners. The studies of the Dr Splatt and Strah Poll on deaths in the way suggest them cars annually kill near 0.3% of the continental population perruna in the United States. In Puerto Rico it seems that the cars kill 20% or more. The food provision would have to be abundant to elevate the canine fecundity the enough thing as to compensate such losses -- but the canine births are surprising low in relation to the number of dogs, due to the very out of proportion low amount of females. If Puerto Rico had native mammals such as red deers, rabbits, raccoons, marmotas, squirrels and dogs of the prairie, a greater use of the car could have increased the provision of foods for the dogs without home, that would be the animals of other dead species accidentally in highways -- but Puerto Rico does not have native species in sufficient abundance to make of the accidental slaughter in the highways an important source of canine nutrition. Mangostas wild which they live in and around the Anvil is relatively little and able to repulse attacks of the dogs. Although some dogs of Puerto Rico are hunters of rats, these do not seem to contribute perceivably to the diet of most of the dogs. The dog can eat other dogs died in the highway, but the cannibalism intrinsically does not stimulate the growth of the population. Said briefly, the information seem to exaggerate the gravity of the subject of the street dogs in Puerto Rico. And it is not only my own observation: a team of 22 voluntary civil employees of control continental animal of the United States, organized by the retired veterinarian of the USDA, Isis Johnson, into the Port Rican Street Project Animal (Project On Street Animals of Puerto Rico), with the aid of the American Humane Association (North American Humanitarian Association) and the National Animal Association Control (National Association for the Control Animal), in two weeks to patrol the streets of Puerto Rico in January of 1997, hardly informed to have captured and to have killed 70 dogs -- well below a dog per hour by person. I calculate that, in agreement with the amount of dogs that i myself I saw, the control civil employees animal captured probably 75% of the vagabond dogs that saw. Numbers Partly, the lowest numbers of dogs without home that has been disclosed can reflect a recent declination in the population. It can partially be that because the previous investigators have trusted information of the rescatadores, and these tend to deal with the animals in worse state, typically sobrestimando the universalidad of the personal experience. As distantly as in 1981, the investigators Robert Calhoun and Carol Haspel documented that the feeders of cats of Brooklyn tended to sobrestimar the number of the cats that consumed the food that they left, in around a third, and he would not be surprising that the rescatadores of satos thought analogous, that they are dealing with more dogs than those than really exist, only because to a rescatador seems to him that the number of animals that need aid it does not have aim. I think mainly, that the investigators, familiarized with the norms of continental maintenance of dogs in the United States, tend to underestimate greatly how many of the loose dogs they have owner. In fact, Puerto Rico seems to have the same proportion of dogs with respect to people (around a dog by each five inhabitants) that the United States continental, but is more probable that the Puerto Ricans let leave to their dogs -- as it were common in the United States continental until 20 years ago, and that continue being the norm in many rural areas. The refuges of Puerto Rico mainly inform that they receive near 50.000 animals per year, dogs. This is reasonable. But also it means that the 3.5 million residents of Puerto Rico are sending an almost equal number of dogs and cats to per capita to the refuges that the 3.5 million residents of ngeles; 2,7 million residents of Chicago; 1,6 million residents of Filadelfia and 1.6 million residents of Houston. There are differences. Puerto Rico does not have a great amount of street cats, and therefore, does not have a great amount of cats, in relation to the dogs, that to incorporate to the refuges. The cities of the United States do not have great populations of loose dogs. In addition, the refuges of Puerto Rico tend to have very low rates of adoption, typically below 10%, so animals kill themselves much more. The domestic animals are not adopted of the refuges, mainly, because they are easily available from friends and neighbors. But proportion of adoptions in the United States, now in more 25% like average, was also typically smaller than 10% for hardly 15 years, and began to increase only with coming of sterilization reasonable, that reduced the percentage of domestic animals with owners who give birth or those that eliminated the young, to less of 10% for the cats and less of 30% for the dogs. Humanitarian Etica The care of the domestic animals in Puerto Rico requires clearly of improvements. Most obvious it is than the owners sterilize their domestic animals. Also they must be animated to that they put under them treatments against parasites, that prosper more in warm climates -- they are easier to see in the rural areas skinny horses due to the worms, that skeletal or sarnosos dogs. There are three evident obstacles: deficiency of veterinarians whom they love to sterilize gratuitously to low cost or, vaccination and treatment of parasites -- all it against the express opposition of theMe'dico-Veterinaria Association of Puerto Rico --; lack of an aggressive sterilization, vaccination and promotion for the treatment of the parasites; as well as lack of reasonable veterinary clinics. The importance of the access does not have to be underestimated. Although Puerto Rico is small and highly agile, the displacement tends to be slow due to the winding ways and to the congestión of the transit. Routes must be found to make sterilize, vaccinate and deal with the parasites, that are reasonable, to half an hour way, to all the Puerto Ricans. The coming of the injection to sterilize the male dogs is now in phase of test in the land, in Mexico, by Arizona Humane Society. Soon the tests will begin by the North Shore League Animal, that must solve the problems of cost and accessibility, since he is much more easy and less expensive to transport a syringe that a movable surgical clinic. Sterilization by injection must also solve the psychological problem that alleges the men of Puerto Rico, like many in the continent, to have to put under their dogs to the castration. The use of economic sterilization and other reasonable treatments veterinary could be announced by means of the many popular radio stations of average sauce --un that I can say that until it has not been used now. The Puerto Ricans are eager listeners for the radio, and the fierce competition by the dollars of the announcements must put the airborne time within reach of the pocket. To lead a campaign of "mantenga its dog in hogar" by means of radio announcements it could be a good idea -- but it must be adjusted with the recognition of the differences between the typical space of a house of Puerto Rico and one of the United States. The message that I would use I would be: "usted has made an investment in its dog -- it, cuÃ:censor:delo, esterilÃ:censor:celo to me. Their children would suffer if to his dog he kills a car. Please, he maintains to his dog in hogar". The houses of Puerto Rico much more tend to be small that those of the United States, reason why the message "mantenga its domestic animal within casa" he is little realistic. The Puerto Ricans who can allow to fences --y patios to surround -- have them already, for security reasons, in addition to maintaining their surrounded dogs. To say to the rest of the population of Puerto Rico that maintains their dogs under physical restriction, if were successful, would only mean that more people will maintain her dogs tied, single and displeased. My conversations with the owners of dogs in Puerto Rico, nevertheless, I suspect that the majority would end up making contingency not covered by law to the message. In agreement with my observations, the male dogs do not become sterile in Puerto Rico, and the dogs do not tie themselves, generally not by negligence, but by the opinion of which as much the castration as tying to the dogs is cruel procedures. At least, in which it concerns dogs, basic the humanitarian values are in their place. This also demonstrates the public resistance that the control civil employees animal had in Puerto Rico to the idea of Isis Johnson to massively capture and to kill the street dogs. As Johnson lamented itself in the edition of December of 1997 of NACA News, many Puerto Ricans did not cooperate because they thought that the slaughter was cruel and unloving. What Puerto Rico lacks is not of ethics and kindness towards the animals, but of more knowledge about the quality in the care of the animals. The extension of the promotion for the adoption would be a successful limited in Puerto Rico: most of the people who wish a dog already has it, the houses and the patios are small, and the maintenance of the dogs costs money. Nevertheless, to me it seems to me that the refuges for the adoption in the United States, in the areas where the demand of dogs exceeds the one births, including the North Shore League Animal, could easily accept placing almost each healthy or recoverable dog of the refuges of Puerto Rico during some years to come. Most of the dogs that get up themselves to the refuges of Puerto Rico are classified like of small size to medium, young and socialized. I saw some potentially dangerous dogs in the refuges, including some Pit bull truely scared, and also Rottweilers, but most of the dogs of the refuge of Puerto Rico they were of good disposition. Two projects, To save to a sato, organized by Karen Fehrenbach, and Pet Search, with base in St. Louis, lead by Alicia Dodge, already have done that take animals to the refuges of the United States on a base to regulate, although limited. Fine Perry of Pet Savers, and Emilio Massas, director of the refuge STOPS, in Caguas, are next to finalize details of much greater programs of transportation, at the moment that ANIMAL PEOPLE between in press. Analogous to which the countryside happens in sureña of the United States, where the rescatadores of animals have provided the transport of the animals from important refuges for the control animal towards refuges of adoption of North Shore League Animal, in Long Island, during one decade, this successful program of transport of dogs, was possible to be used like a magnet to obtain that the owners bring undesired domestic animals to the refuges. Then mothers or with great discounts could be given gratuitously. Judging by the expresses and recent successes against the sobrepopulation in the United States, an effective extension of these services could less maintain under control the fecundity of dogs and cats in Puerto Rico -- without more slaughters in the refuges -- in five years or. My hope is that the extension and expansion of or the successful program STOP, taking it to other sites, would animate to the HSPR and the control animal in San Juan, to improve its services noticeably, in order that sigua being competitive and that Puerto Rico can have a control animal without deaths, so fast or the more quickly that in many of the main cities of the United States, with very similar tariffs for the refuges.
