RICHOCHET: A VISIT TO FACEBOOK

EDITION OF MONDAY, January 23, 2017 (PetPowellPress) Let’s start the week with something upbeat. I saw a news story that said Dallas was going to hold off on repairing 105 miles of streets. All I can say is "THANK YOU!" Anybody whose been putting up with the I-30/I-35, main route and on- and off-ramp reconstruction deserves a time-out on road hazards, detours and route changes. 
A NICE SENTIMENT ABOUT A PUPPY
This Sunday morning trip through Dallas’ animal world was launched by a tip from Mary Frazier and it led me to The Street Dog Project Facebook page and this photo.  We’ll get to Mary’s tip in a second -- it has a chance to be an upbeat story, too. First, though, how about this photo! Is that not an authentic puppy?

The message from the SDP folks proclaimed, “One more dog off the streets, woo-hoo! Welcome to the good life little puppy! He'll be available through our friends at 4Paws2Love soon! Hoping his siblings will cooperate soon!"

That's the pups being fed below.
The posting included a comment from the great Pat Rodriguez, veteran rescuer: 
“He doesn’t know it yet, but this is the start of something wonderful! Great job, you dauntless Street Dog Warriors.
"
Pat’s comment led me to her site where we found a great reflection from her on her Dallas Pets Meals on Wheels January delivery experience.
“Every time I do Meals on Wheels, I have experiences that make me happy, and experiences that make me feel dejected. One experience today was the elderly woman with four female dogs who was very excited about getting them sterilized. As soon as the words came out of my mouth, she said with great enthusiasm  ‘yes.’
“The dejection came from another experience with a man; he had a male German Shepherd that looks well taken care of. And I asked him if the dog was fixed, and he said no. And then I spoke to him in a gentle way about getting the dog fixed, and he said he was opposed to having the dog fixed for the same reason he opposed to having humans fixed.”

[LARRY ASIDE: Pat has more -- and she writes gently about trying to help this man see the light, but I’m not doing field work with spay/neuter so I feel free to type the word “idiot” in reference to a man who was described as being  “a little on the mean side.” Geez, mean and stupid -- bad combo. Maybe someone will read this to him. I double-dog DARE him to get his dog fixed. How’s that for lowering the intellectual content of the discussion?]
So, that all brings us back to Mary’s tip and hit has to do with four dogs in the southeastern portion of Dallas, the city that grinds my gizzard sometimes. The subject line read “4 puppies need help. Owner doesn’t’ want them...” [That's some of the gang next to the road.]
Mary’s tip sent us to Iching Beil’s Facebook page where the story reads: “4 puppies NEED HELP. Owner doesn't want them and not feeding them. They are roaming on street eating trash ... They are around 12 -14 weeks old. 2 more months they can produce more puppies, if they still living on street.. The big black dog and white dog in the picture are the owners’ dogs. I offer to fix for them, they don't want to fix their dogs.”
The post ends with this: “Please share and help in anyway.
This is really breaking my heart.”
CONTEMPLATION: There you have it, Dear Readers, what happens when you go ricocheting through the Facebook posts by animal advocates who are trying to help animals while taking a long shot at helping offensive people understand that they are responsible for the lives of their animals. It’s a one-on-one witnessing of the Gospel of Decency and you’d think people, given the opportunity to do right or to do wrong, would simply do right. But, I confess, I frequently underestimate the ability of humans to do the right thing. Reading these things, you can see how the assorted spay/neuter projects around here and the assorted Great Big Hearts that save animals are all connected by the desire to keep animals from being born just to be killed. Remember, most cities and counties that run animal shelters run them under the guideline of the ol’ Texas Theory of Animal Management: Got an animal problem? Let’s kill it.” Don’t help me off the soapbox -- when it comes to spay/neuter and treasuring the lives of animals, I’m up here for the duration.
--- To comment, grip your FixedMouse and multiply your support of spay/neuter with a nicely written sentence below. ---