NYS, My Backward State Home

I have lived in NYC all my life, and being in the epicenter or a melting pot, you take for granted certain realities, such as the fact the rest of the state is extremely conservative, homophobic, and callously indifferent to any cause which does not involve Jesus. I am sad to confess this, but it’s very true. If your GPS wasn’t brazenly indicating you were still in NYS, you would think that you took a wrong turn into the Bible Belt instead of being in Upstate NY.

Personally, I am still disgusted by the whole gay marriage thing. I do not hide how much it saddens me to see these people suffer such unfair treatment by our local government. But, today I have found another reason to be disappointed by the fact that my beloved hometown clings to archaic values at the expense of ‘others’. This time, these ‘others’ are furry creatures who also cannot speak our language. And we all know how much we, New Yorkers, love, support, and welcome those who cannot speak our language!

I was outraged to find out that such a thing as canine and feline devocalization exists. Why in the world would you want your pets devocalized? Then, I recalled there are some people who function within our own plane of existence, but who happen to live in Fantasy Land. When you had this brainstorm of adopting or buying a dog or cat, you thought it would not make any noise? None at all…no barking, yelping, howling, nothing like what dogs normally do? Yup, that right there is some Fantasy Land $#*t! As of today, Massachusetts is the first state to ban devocalization of our furry friends. Way to go, trailblazing Massachusetts…much much love goes out to you!!!

The sad part is that this can be enforced when you are referring to a Vet performing the cutting of the vocal chords, but how do you control the animal breeders, who are ramming metal pipes down the dog’s throat to achieve the same result without getting caught? This is yet another reason why it’s a bad idea to buy pets from pet stores or anonymous breeders, whose breeding practices you are not thoroughly knowledgeable of.

The pet breeding is an industry which is so badly regulated and allowed to morph these poor animals into mutant versions of themselves, which is why so many of these ‘breeds’ have so many genetic and incurable health problems. The fact that there are millions of animals in shelters and so many are euthanized daily, makes buying dogs from stores or puppy mills extremely unnecessary and frankly rather reprehensible. At least this is something a reasonable sound minded person can accept. But, on the other end of the spectrum you have people who get pets solely as fashion accessories to follow in the footsteps of so called celebrities, such as Paris Hilton and her Chihuahua, Tinkerbell. Didn’t any one of these impetuous people look up the fact that Chihuahuas are hot-headed little noisy dogs? They usually are not the best behaved dogs or the easiest to train, either. Come on, you can’t claim stupidity during the era of the Intenet…sorry!!!

And so, the final result of this fashion trend was that a couple of hundred Chihuahuas were flown to New England by the ASPCA and several other humane societies from California since they make good apartment dogs. Luckily, the event was a huge success that even the airlines were flying the dogs from California for free.

Then, in the same vein, we have the declawing of cats. I can’t understand this one either. Cats can be trained to scratch a post without too much effort, and you can always simply trim the cats nails every few weeks. Yes, it takes some effort to get them to tolerate trimming their nails, but it can be done with time and patience. So, instead, let’s pay several hundred dollars to amputate all the digits below the third knuckle of their paws and then wonder why several years later the cats have behavioral issues…more sadistic Fantasy Land crap!!!

What really irks me are landlords who are allowed to require that the tenants’ pets be mutilated in order to approve a tenant to live on their property. Ummm….excuse me, the last time I checked this is not a favor you are providing out of the goodness of your heart! You are getting paid for these people to live on the property. Furthermore, if you want to be compensated for damage to the property, isn’t that the very definition of a security deposit?

I naively hope that NY will also catch up in cracking down on these landlords, but I suppose that hoping for that would place me right in the middle of Fantasy Land myself. If slumlords still abuse elderly tenants, and people, who are undocumented, and if these same landlords are allowed to neglect repairs, provide adequate heating, fire escapes, extermination services, etc. because people are afraid their rent will sky-rocket in one fail swoop, then there is no hope in pointing the finger at these same landlords in regards to demanding they cease abusive practices in regards to prospective tenants pets…is there? It does seem like an exercise in futility, but as high as the odds are stacked against us pet owners, we should immediately dismiss any landlord who refuses to consider that these are anything short of brazen acts of animal cruelty. If this person has no sympathy towards your plight in this respect, how sympathetic do you think he/she will be when your rent is late because of a major life change, such as the death of an income provider, loss of your job, overwhelming debts, or anything else life may throw at you; when it’s time and their right to pursue litigation against you and your children? My guess is not very sympathetic at all.