Quote Originally Posted by Longdogs View Post
A pet is a luxury item, not an essential. There is insurance for those who need it. I'm sure fees contribute to abandoned animals- but should we encourage irresponsible ownership by giving our services for free? In genuine cases we often do.. but on the whole how would it make it better?
LD I'm not at all inferring that vet fees aren't good value; that has nothing to do with it at all. What I was saying is that vet fees, with certain people, can contribute to the number of dogs that are discarded and passed on the rescue pounds . Equally little old grannies dying and leaving their dogs homeless do, people who buy a dog 'for Christmas' and can't then cope do, dogs that run away with no identity tags or chip do and, I'm sure, loads and loads of other reasons all mean that dogs unfortunately end up in the pound.

People who sell purposely bred puppies on the other hand don't directly contribute to any dogs going into pounds - they just reduce the rate of take up of rescue dogs because some people choose to prefer to buy a bred puppy. I don't think they necessarily deserve you to dump on them or dump on people who choose to buy dogs from them just because of their indirect influence on the population of dog pounds. Its like you're blaming the least guily first.