I have a hard time, lately, hanging on to my optimism and it's only by controlling my exposure to news, etc., that I manage to avoid being angry some or all of the time. I see stupidity on the rise everywhere, and I don't react well.
Last night I went to dinner with a good friend of 20 years (who is also a FB friend, so thank goodness once again for ODO) who recently lost one of her 3 dogs, and wanted to get a third dog. Her three dogs, and the dogs before them, came from rescues. Lab mixes. Nice dogs. My friend does not 'do' anything with them: no training classes, no dog sports, no excursions. Not criticizing, just saying, she is the pet owner who wants her dogs to be family members and they might get taken for walks, but they are house and yard dogs almost exclusively. So no real big items on her list of what she's looking for in a dog.
She got a third dog last week: she went to a breeder of Labradoodles and bought a 10-week old puppy. She decided that she liked the 'hypoallergenic' bit, even though (1) it's bullshit and (2) neither she nor her husband are at all allergic to anything.
She called the rescue where her rescue Doodle (who is now 4) came from and they provided a referral to this breeder. The breeder then gave her a 'discount' for the rescue referral, and my friend paid $500 for her puppy, instead of the $1500 the breeder usually charges.
That's not a typo, folks.
So my friend is telling me all this, and I am sitting there drinking my Dos Equis and smiling as my back teeth grind down to nubs; what am I going to say? That she has now encouraged this breeder of mutts to produce even MORE dogs who may be nice but add nothing of value to any breed or job, when there are already so many dogs who are nice and who are also homeless? She'll justify her decision with more BS.
At the $1500 mention, though, I did splutter on my beer. I can buy a *really* well-bred Border Collie from WORKING LINES for half that!
There is one born every minute, and it just confounds me when a friend of mine joins the ranks of those suckers.