Chinese county clubs to death 50,000 dogs - Page 5

There is an article in the new "Review" that is called My dog votes, does yours?. I agree that boycotting is not going to solve anything, letters to elected officials might. Will it adversley affect US / China relations? No. Will they keep the torture in mind in future dealings and votes regarding China? Maybe, if our voting dogs make them. Senator Stevens from Alaska is leading a senate delegation to China in a few days. He doesn't seem too enthused about hearing from non-Alaskans, but he heard from me anyway as president pro tempre of the senate and third in line to the throne. He is also one of the sponsors of the bill that will allow companion animals in evacuations. Let him know how you feel, Alaskan or not. Heck, American or not. My two state senators heard from me too, as did the white house. A small drop in the bucket, anybody care to join me? Hell yes, MY DOGS VOTE! Lorri Rowlett

Hi Sumo, I believe you. Emotions run high when you see this kind of brutality. I'm afraid you became the target when it really should have been those club-toting monsters. Also, I've been thinking all day about the pet owners who had to see their beloved dogs killed right there in front of them. Dear God--those poor people. And what of the Chinese breeders who come on this site? How awful for them. Lorri, It's something. Just put some sort of address here and I'll email.

Grimmdog, I agree 110 % very nicely put! As I stated in another post,ANYONE WHO SELLS THIER DOG TO CHINA HAS NO SOUL!!!!!! This is absolutely appalling, I am deeply hurt by this, I do not know how people can live with themselves after taking part in such ATROCITIES (sp?)!! My only hope is that those chinese officials will one day be clubbed to death!

I'm not sure but I think Larus, Bax, Nero were all sold to China. Lets come up with a list of dogs we know that were sold to China and try and find out if they're safe.

It is my understanding that 3 people (out of how many millions?) died of rabies which is what precipitated this action. My first question would be, what about the billions of rats, bats, foxes, skunks, etc. roaming the countryside? Dogs don't contract rabies out of thin air! This is obviously a knee jerk reaction by a government out to show that they are doing something about a problem real or imagined. IMHO this only exacerbates this atrocity. I guess we should be happy that the government at least no longer condones the killing of female babies as a method of population control. sighhh

Can anyone tell me I am little confused. I read the news and think that in some province of China dogs are killed to prevent spread of rabies. But now I am getting the feeling that the whole China has been planned to be freed of dogs. Is that true? I think Whisky Bierstadter hof is also in China. Many many top dogs for sure are in China. Thanks LMH for understanding my point.

Okay to contact Ted Stevens, head of the Senate delegation to China: http://stevens.senate.gov/contact.cfm To find your senators; www.senate.gov To write to the Bush White House whitehouse.gov I also rattled a cage or two at Fox news and CNN but good luck getting anybody to quit covering Israel. AKC needs to take a position as well as parent breed clubs like GSDCA and WDA. It is not going to change things, I know. But voting dogs are smart enough to remember who helped em out before! Lorri

Sumo, Uwe, I am with you on this one. How long has it been since the people of the "civilized" Western World have actually stopped to hunt down and gas and clobber dogs and see them as pests? Really has not been that long ago. With increased wealth came the appreciation for the pet. Not before. Give these people a break for not having caught up yet. So the Chinese are a few decades behind us now. If that had been me walking my dog they would not be able to clobber him to death without going through me first. Had I been visiting then my dog would either not have been touched or it (or rather I) would have provoked an international incident. These people, who have lived in oppression for so long were only be able to look on and do nothing and go home heartbroken. If they'd fought back they would not even risk a local incident. Other than draw some very negative attention to themselves. The people and the government of China both lack the appropriate knowledge how to handle Rabies. Education is definitely needed. The knowledge will come in time. Every battle leaves victims behind and these dogs surely will not have died for nothing. In a way it was probably a good thing. If 50thousand dogs had been euthanized humanly there would have been hardly an outcry. Or does anyone outside of Germany remember the thousands of dogs brought into shelters by their owners when the German Dangerous Dog Law came into effect a few years ago? Probably not. Though German shelters are no kill shelters they were overwhelmed and many a previously beloved dog met an untimely end because the lazy owners did not want to deal with the consequences of the new law. This is different. Now there is an outcry and the reaction will get things moving. By boycotting Chinese products you are only hurting the people, not the government. Get some petitions out there and the press involved to show the Chinese government that that is not acceptable. In the village that the world is today public pressure works much better. It is very obvious that the Chinese love dogs, and not just for eating people. Anyone miss reading that 70% of Chinese households now have pet dogs! Be assured that the high priced imports are left untouched. Surely a warm handshake will have taken care of that. If the owners can afford to import a dog from Europe, they can afford to protect their investment. Stop being so paranoid and short sighted. Not everyone in China is barbaric. Its a country that had greater culture when the rest of the world was still in the dark ages. How different are things really? The very fact that some posting in this thread seem to have so little respect for other creatures if they are not dogs is pretty pathetic. Do they not feel the same pain as a dog does? I have friends who have chickens as pets. Their kids love them dearly. Ja, well, they are cute. Would not want them, but can appreciate them and the love their family feels for them. Then there are friends who have cows and sheep and goats and pigs. Potbellied pigs living in the house, with the dogs and cats and the kids and they come and greet visitors and beg for food and do tricks for a snack or a kiss or a good scratch. Should not forget the horses. All those are good eating, but also good pets.

The US and Europe are considered so civilized but we treat the animals in our care with incredible cruelty. The animals we eat are not really cute and cuddly, they do not make for good press, so few people pay attention. Well, you eagerly read that article above, how about a look at your own doorstep: http://www.factoryfarming.com/gallery/photos_video.htm Take the time to read through some of the articles too. I am sure there are similar sites for Europe, this is not meant to single out the US folks here. In this day and age we discard chickens by the thousands by throwing them into woodchippers. Pigs are boiled alive if the guy responsible for killing it was not fast enough. And cattle are dismembered and skinned while still alive. While their calves are taken away within moments of birth for the veal production and piglets have their tails amputated without anesthesia, and if they survive the first few weeks the males are then neutered without any of that either (have actually witnessed that once). Mortality rates during transport alone are huge and already calculated into the profit. Read the articles in the link above if you have the stomach for it. The pix are very graphic and actually pretty harmless compared to what they could be. That is the reality folks. We are worse than animals. We are all barbaric. As I am writing this I am munching on a ham sandwich, though my personal meat consumption is a lot less these days than what it used to. These days meat and eggs preferrably come from free range, hormone and antibiotic free or organic sources. As long as my dogs get pigs ears and hide chews I can have my steak too. But at least I try to be a bit respectful. If I cannot respect the cow or the pig or the chicken, I have no real respect for the dog either. The Rabies threat in China is not so far removed from us. About 2 years ago several people died of Rabies in Germany. These people had never been in touch with a rabid animal. They were recipients of organ transplants. The person that these organs came from had been on holidays to India and while there had been infected with Rabies. That was not known at the time the donor died. It is a pretty small world. How can we keep forgetting that in this day and age?

From the WHO: Most of the 55 000 deaths from rabies reported annually around the world occur in Asia and Africa, and most of the victims are children: 30–50% of the reported cases of rabies—and therefore deaths—occur in children under 15 years of age. The main route of transmission is the bites of rabid dogs. Most of the children who die from rabies were not treated or did not receive adequate post-exposure treatment. Although the efficacy and safety of modern cell culture vaccines have been recognized, some Asian countries still produce and use nervous tissue vaccines, which are less effective, require repeated visits to the hospital and often have severe side-effects. Moreover, these patients do not receive the necessary rabies immunoglobulin, because of a perennial global shortage and because of its high price, so that it is unaffordable in countries where canine rabies is endemic. Where surveillance data are available, children from 5-15 years of age consistently represent 40% of people exposed to dog bites in areas where dogs are infected with rabies. The majority of the bites that occur in children are not reported and go unrecognized by both parents and health officials. Consequently, exposed children do not often receive timely and complete post-exposure treatment. It is likely, therefore, that there is a higher proportion of young children contracting and dying of undiagnosed rabies - many more than even the most pessimistic estimates from Asia suggests. It is estimated that at least 50 million dogs are vaccinated each year against rabies either in private practices or during national campaigns organized by ministries of health or agriculture. In many parts of Asia and Africa, the vaccination coverage established in the dog population (30% to 50%) is not high enough to break the transmission cycle of the disease. About 98% of human rabies occurs in regions with large numbers of both stray and domestic dogs. In these parts of the world modern rabies vaccines and immunoglobulin are usually in short supply and their high costs often prevent their use by those most in need for those products. Measures to control rabies in these areas, such as bait-based vaccination of wildlife, elimination of stray dogs and vaccination of domestic dogs, have not yet been fully implemented.